If Martha Stewart Had Only One Arm, How Would She Garden and Decoupage?

MEDIA

• Martha Stewart’s arm was lost, but then it was found. [Gawker]

• NBC, CBS, and PSB will be moderating the three presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama. ABC is conspicuously missing from that list. Did it get the shaft because of the poor reaction to the network’s April debate between Obama and Hillary Clinton? [Mixed Media/Portfolio]

• Bob Pittman, who paid $2 million for a controlling stake in Daily Candy back in 2003, just cashed out by selling the e-letter to Comcast for about $125 million. That’s a $123 million return on his investment. [NYT]

• Activist investor Carl Icahn hired a Reuters reporter to blog for him. [DealBook/NYT]

FINANCE
• The market surged yesterday as a result of gas-pump demand dropping 2.2 percent in a month. Traders were surprised by consumer demand reclaiming its main role in the oil-price equation. “It’s keeping pension funds from buying and holding oil,” one energy analyst said. [NYP]
• Mortgage provider Freddie Mac reported an $821 million loss in the second quarter. Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury has hired Morgan Stanley for $95,000 to advise them on the futures of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. [NYT, DealBook/NYT]
• Blackstone’s second-quarter profits fell to $99.9 million. “Our balance sheet remains strong, and we are extremely well positioned in the current environment,” said Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chief. [DealBook/NYT]

REAL ESTATE
• Oil and auto billionaire Boris Berezovsky, who fled his native Russia in 2001 after he was found guilty of embezzlement, sold his 30th-floor apartment in the Trump International building on Central Park West for $7.55 million. [NYO]
• Fifth Avenue, where the average apartment price is $7,500 per square foot, is the third-most-expensive residential street in the world. Monaco’s Avenue Princess Grace ($17,750 per square foot) and Hong Kong’s Severn Road ($11,200 a foot) top the list.
[NYO]
• Commercial rental rates in Manhattan decreased 2.2 percent in the second quarter and availability is up 8.2 percent — the first time since 2005 that rents have declined and availability is so high. [NYS]

LAW
• A former Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe intellectual-property associate who alleged that the law firm broke a promise to promote him to partner can only seek nominal damages in his claim. He was originally asking for $100 million. [Law.com]
• European law firm Taylor Wessing is accusing Manhattan’s Nixon Peabody of attempting to poach partners from its ranks after merger talks between the two firms fell through. [Law.com]
• Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver shelled out at least $50,000 of his own cash to help finance small law firms that specialize in personal-injury lawsuits. [NYT]