Will the Stock Market Crash Wipe Out the Socialite?

As investment banks collapse, insurance firms file for bankruptcy, and jobs continue to be lost, it seems that New York socialites deserve some of the blame for jinxing the stock market.

On March 7, Arden Wohl, Derek Blasberg, Amanda Hearst, Claire Bernard and nightclub owner Simon Hammerstein rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange--seemingly also ringing in the period of financial ruin that directly followed the ceremony, reports Cityfile, which even retrieved graphical proof.

We suppose that's what we deserve for allowing the party people of our city to handle such historically important tasks. But all of this also got us thinking. While Ms. Hearst's old money will probably keep her afloat in the coming year as the rest of Manhattan scrambles for financial safety, what about the socialites who might not have the cash to weather the form?

What if, on the other side of this financial crisis, Manhattan not only emerges as the cheaper, tourist-free, city it once was (as Fran Lebowitz hopes it will!), but  also free of society's hangers-on whose frequents snapshots on Patrick McMullan merely accentuate their naked ambition.

Perhaps Maggie Betts was right all along when she told Vogue last month that the end of the revered socialite is near as the city gets ready for “something grittier and more real."