Are high gas prices getting you down? Are you deep into credit-card debt? Do you lie awake at night fearing the economic crisis we're in will balloon into a full-blown depression, during which we will all be forced to wait in long lines for crusts of bread and thin, runny gruel as a dark malaise overtakes the entire populace? Well, rest assured: There are some people who will remain happy and well fed. Yesterday, Bank of America released the results of a survey of high-net-worth investors (with at least $3 million of investable assets apiece) tracking their level of satisfaction with the performance of their alternative investments (such as hedge funds), and guess what? They're pretty pleased!

Fifty-one percent of investors said they were satisfied with their hedge funds in the past year, 44 percent expressed satisfaction with venture capital, 41 percent with real estate and 35 percent with private equity.

Yay! A rising tide floats all boats, and all that. Of course, BofA only found 403 of these people. That's a pretty low tide-to-boats ratio.

Rich happier with alternative investments [AP/CNN Money]

Oh, no! Our local overpriced, elitist institutes of higher education are in a parlous state, say the press! The quality of scholarship and living at Columbia and New York Universities has gone straight to pot in a handbasket! (Sorry, hard to resist.) Outside of college public-affairs offices, most acknowledge that rankings like the Princeton Review's "Top Ten Dream Colleges" list, out today, have practically no tangible bearing on the education consumer. This year, NYU fell to fourth from its previous top rank, but, essentially, it just shuffled around a tad with its usual neighbors on the list — Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. So why all the calamitous talk? The annual rankings season spawns softball stories for reporters with column inches to fill. Plus, the Princeton Review practically wrote the story itself with its nyah-nyah annotation (the only one on the list) next to NYU's name. "Previously #1 for 3 consecutive years," it reads. Way to rub it in, guys.

NYU Falls in Eyes of Hopefuls [NYP]

Everyone is terribly, terribly excited at the possibility that Arianna Huffington's political blog site, the Huffington Post, may have raked in slightly more traffic last month than the Drudge Report. The left has triumphed over the right! The epic battle of the Greek socialites vs. the Miami fedora-wearing former psych patients has a winner! Rah! Or not.

Yesterday, we surmised that no one really cared about new governor David Paterson's affairs, and today new poll numbers confirm it. More than 75 percent of New Yorkers think Paterson will govern effectively, and 67 percent say he'll restore trust in state government, despite his admitted hanky-panky. Hear that everyone? Cheating on your spouse is officially A-OK in the state of New York! At least for now, that is, and certainly not if you're Eliot Spitzer. In fact, if you're Eliot Spitzer, you might want to consider the lam as a viable post-politics haunt. Poll numbers indicate that just under half of New Yorkers think Spitzer should be charged with a crime — the other half think his humiliating resignation was punishment enough. On top of that, prosecutors have asked New York authorities to pretty please put a hold on investigating Spitzer's philandering. If at all possible, they'd like to fry him in some federal oil, you see. So what's with the devil-angel governor dichotomy, and will it hold?

33.2: Percentage of New Yorkers who own their homes, a record high (compared to 28.7 in 1990).
68: Percentage of Americans who own their homes, proving that we're still, all things considered, a city of renters.
40: Percentage of New York City homeowners who are foreign-born, further proving that locally grown New Yorkers tend to rent (or perhaps proving that we just happen to host a planet's worth of pieds-à-terre).
47: Percentage of New York City homeowners who are women, which doesn't prove anything; it's just nice.
15,000: Projected number of foreclosure filings this year.
1: New York City neighborhood that actually registered a decline in home ownership from 1990 to 2005. (It's Bushwick.)

In a City Known for Its Renters, a Record Number Now Own Their Homes [NYT]

Finally, an evolutionary explanation for the overwhelming skinniness of the Williamsburg hipster, as identified through various statistics cited in "For Less Crowding on L Train, Think 2010, Report Says" in today's Times:

• Riders passing through the Bedford Street L station in 2006: 4.99 million
• Riders passing through the Bedford Street L station in 1995: 2.09 million
• Increase in riders passing through the Bedford Street L station in that period: 139 percent
• Rank of the L train among 22 subways lines for likelihood of getting a seat at rush hour, according to the Straphangers Campaign's annual report card: 20

Today's metro-crime headline is that Eliot Spitzer wants to close some prisons, at least in part, because declining crime rates have led to a smaller inmate population. But Saturday's metro-crime headline was quite different: Seems the NYPD's stopping and frisking New Yorkers in unprecedented numbers these days — five times more people were stopped last year than in 2002 — and that those stops, overwhelmingly of black New Yorkers, are leading to more arrests and summonses. Some numbers:

Number of people stopped and frisked by the NYPD last year: 508,540
Number of people stopped and frisked by the NYPD in 2002: 97,296
Average number stopped per day in 2006: 1,393
Average number stopped per day in 2002: 266

Today's Daily News has blockbuster front-page news: In a poll of New York City residents, more would pick their own senator to be the Democratic presidential nominee than would pick a freshman Illinois senator with far lower name recognition. (Who'd have thunk it?) If there's any interest to the poll, it's in the demographic breakdowns.

• New York City voters who would pick Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nominee: 43 percent
• New York City voters who would pick Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nominee: 24 percent

If you're like us, you've probably tried to reconcile your daily observations of forever-snarled Manhattan traffic with the fact that neither you, nor anyone you know, owns a car. Then, if you're like us, you've assumed that it's all suburban commuters' fault. If so, the Times has some shocking revelations for you today. The data:

• Total number of daily car commuters in Manhattan: 263,000
• Number of those commuters who live within the five boroughs: 141,000
• Percentage of total commuters who live within the five boroughs: 53
• Number of those commuters who live in Queens: 51,300
• Percentage of total commuters who live in Queens: 19.5
• Number of those commuters who live in Manhattan: 23,900
• Percentage of total commuters who live in Manhattan: 9
• Percentage of total commuters who merely pass through Manhattan en route elsewhere: 20
• Percentage of government workers who drive to work: 35
• Amount those government workers pay for parking: $0

In Traffic's Jam, Who's Driving May Be Surprising [NYT]

• Pounds of food waste the average New York City household produces each week: 7.1
• Pounds of food waste the average American household produces each week: 4.1

• Pounds of garbage the average New York City household produces each week: 40
• Pounds of garbage the average American household produces each week: 45
• Pounds of garbage "rich people in high-density neighborhoods" — e.g., Manhattanites — produce each week: 28.4

• Percentage of the city's current waste that can be recycled: 36
• Percentage of the city's waste that could be recycled in 1989: 45

• Tons of recyclables the Department of Sanitation is required to pick up daily, under a 1989 City Council law: 4,250
• Tons of recyclables the Department of Sanitation currently picks up each day: 2,000 to 2,200
• Tons of mixed paper — including junk mail — thrown out each year instead of recycled: 200,000

N.Y. Throws Away Heaps [NYP]