From left, Tom Neely, Ward Schumaker and Esther Watson
Post-Bubble Portraits The great housing-fueled market bubble couldn’t burst, could it? The best Wall Street minds and their best risk-management tools failed to see the crash coming.

By JOE NOCERA

‘The story that I have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.’

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
Alexandra Chunn waited her turn to be introduced. Forty-seven women debuted at the ball on Monday night, 11 fewer than in 2006.

By LISA W. FODERARO

You had to look hard amid the four-foot floral sculptures and the Vera Wang originals to see signs of the economy’s collapse at the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria on Monday night

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

THE FACTS

With all the open bars, people on the road and rejoicing in the streets, it is easy to imagine that New Year’s is a risky time. Holidays are the most hazardous time for drivers, a result of sharp increases in travelling and drunken driving. And when it comes to New Year’s, research over the years offers sobering statistics.

According to research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which examined accident data in the United States from 1986 to 2002, the day of the year with the most fatalities from accidents is the Fourth of July, with an average of 161. Not far behind are July 3 (149) and Dec. 23 (145). New Year’s Day is fourth, with 142.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Allergan Inc, the maker of Botox, said on Friday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its eyelash-thickening drug Latisse.

Latisse is designed to treat a condition known as hypotrichosis of the eyelashes, which means a person does not have enough eyelashes.

The active ingredient in Latisse is bimatroprost, the same ingredient that is in Allergan’s glaucoma treatment Lumigan. Patients taking Lumigan found a side effect of the drug to be eyelash growth, prompting Allergan to study it for the new use.

LONDON (Reuters) - A slow, chronic reduction of blood sugar to the brain could trigger some forms of Alzheimer’s disease, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The study of human and mice brains suggests a reduction of blood flow deprives energy to the brain, setting off a process that ultimately produces the sticky clumps of protein researchers believe is a cause of the disease, they said.

The finding could lead to strategies such as exercise, reducing cholesterol and managing blood pressure to keep Alzheimer’s at bay, Robert Vassar and colleagues at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago reported.

London

Some say hemlines and heels rise and fall with the state of the sharemarket. But for those who really want to know how bad things are there is only one item that counts: lipstick.

When times are tough, consumers stop spending on big-ticket items. Car sales are down by a third; the drop in demand for mortgages has taken its toll of spending on carpets and furniture.

But, according to one economist, rather than lose the spending habit consumers simply trade down to less extravagant items to cheer themselves up. What’s more, this effect has held good in recessions of the past and in countries with different cultural traditions.