Debt trumps savings

Forget deleveraging: Nearly half of all American families carry a credit-card debt load that exceeds their stash of emergency cash.

As 2013 unfolds, Americans are also feeling more insecure about their finances. Worries about job security, savings, debt and overall financial health are on the rise, according to new research by the personal finance website Bankrate.com.

In February, the company’s Financial Security Index slid further into the troubled territory below 100 (which signals deteriorating financial security), dipping to 96.8 from 98.6 in January.

“Despite all the talk about consumers paying down debt and boosting savings, very few people have moved the needle of one relative to the other,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

Rainy-day funds aren’t the only area where Americans fall far short as savers. Squeezed by stagnant wages (which fell 3.2 percent in January, largely due to tax hikes), fallout from the housing crash, rising food prices and high unemployment, Americans are not socking away enough cash for retirement.

In a new survey from a group of organizations, including the Consumer Federation of America and the Employee Benefit Research Institute, less than half of the respondents who were not retired expect to have enough money saved to enjoy a desirable standard of living in retirement.

Lack of retirement savings is a ticking time bomb for both baby boomers and Generation Xers. Skimpy emergency savings and heavy debt loads, however, are already sending local families to bankruptcy court after a sudden financial shock.

That was the case for a Westchester family of four who recently turned to attorney Linda Tirelli for help. After 25 years of steady employment, the father lost his job in 2012.

The family turned to credit cards to pay its bills, expecting to repay the debt after the breadwinner found work again. He did get a new job, but at salary that was 20 percent less. The cut proved too severe for the family to climb out of debt without reorganizing in bankruptcy court.

Families must find ways to overcome the biggest hurdle to savings: the belief that it can’t be done, said Nancy Register, associate director at the Consumer Federation. She suggests tapping that coffee can full of spare change that many families keep. It can be hiding as much as $90 — enough to start a savings account.

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Business briefs

Bid for Kings

The NBA has received an official offer from 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov and billionaire Ron Burkle to buy the Sacramento Kings and keep the team from moving to Seattle.

Fraud queen

A former Chicago lawyer, Donna Guerin, who participated in what authorities have called the largest tax fraud in history, has been sentenced in New York to eight years in prison.

Autos roll on

US auto sales in February were on track to show a fourth straight month of strong sales with new vehicle purchases on pace to come in around 15.3 million for the year, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas.

Pay up boys!

Ernst & Young will pay $123 million to settle a tax-fraud probe as part of a non-prosecution agreement, according to the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office.

Still spending

The Commerce Department said consumer spending increased 0.2 percent in January as Americans spent more on utilities after a cold snap during the month.

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New York’s clueless GOP

Ever since the American voter gave Mitt Romney a drubbing in the November election, the best minds in Republican circles have been debating how to revive the battered GOP brand.

You might think this would be a special priority for New York City, where Romney captured just 18 percent of the vote. You might think in a sluggish economy, there’s an opening for a party that distinguishes itself from the usual run of candidates vying to out-spend, out-tax and out-regulate their rivals. You might even think conservative and Republican leaders would be looking for ways to make this year’s vital mayoral race a contest of ideas.

Staten Island Advance /Landov

James Molinaro

You would be wrong.

Take the effort to get Adolfo Carrión — a two-term Democratic Bronx borough president who just finished an undistinguished stint in the Obama administration — onto the Republican ticket.

Now, anyone who admires Ronald Reagan can hardly oppose Democrats turning Republican. But when Reagan switched, it was over ideas, and that’s what he brought into his new party.

In contrast, all Carrión offers is that he’s a Latino with a $1.2 million campaign kitty. Yet, in New York City’s modern GOP, two of the three county chairmen whose OK he needs to get on the Republican primary ballot have signaled they’ll give it to him.

Or take Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro.

True, Molinaro is a registered Conservative, but he’s successfully run three times for office on the Republican line. So what’s his answer? Endorsing City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — the leading Democrat in the race.

Is this opportunism the best conservatives and Republicans can do? At a time when Democrats are fielding candidates beholden to more spending, more taxes and the public unions, isn’t there an opening for an opposition party that makes the case — moral as well as practical — for the markets that create this city’s wealth?

This may not be a recipe for instant success. But we guarantee that treating the GOP as a flag of convenience instead of working hard to bring its message to new voters and new constituencies will only guarantee that Republicans will forever remain a New York minority.

Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Vornado ceo out, roth in

Michael Fascitelli, the dynamic chief executive officer of Vornado Realty Trust, is stepping down to “take a break” from the company after four year atop the firm.

Chairman Steve Roth, who served as CEO for 20 years until Fascitelli took over in 2009, will step back into the chief executive role.

Both moves take effect on Apr. 16 and Roth said he expects the transition to happen “seamlessly.”

Fascitelli, 56, will remain on Vornado’s board, keep an office at the 888 Seventh Ave. headquarters and be available for “advice and counsel.”

The news rattled both the stock and the real estate world as the company owns more than 100 million square feet of offices and retail properties in the US and is one of the city’s largest office and retail owners.

Getty Images

Michael Fascitelli

“Vornado has been my consuming passion for the past 16 years,” said Fascitelli on a conference call yesterday, praising Roth as a “great partner.”

Obviously suffering a cold, Fascitelli also said, “I am a firm believer of not being afraid to try something new.”

The CEO left McKinsey in 1985 for Goldman Sachs and then joined Roth at Vornado in 1996. “Now is the right time to take a break and try something different,” he added.

Fascitelli, an avid athlete and sportsman, has led an adventurous life out of the office.

In 2006, he hurt his foot while playing basketball and was in a cast when, weeks later, he took a tumble while riding a snowmobile that ventured into a hidden ravine in Utah — breaking a bone in his wrist.

Last summer, Fascitelli suffered a serious shoulder injury and sources said he was almost killed in a horrific auto accident when the hired driver of a car he and his wife were riding in had a heart attack, hit a truck and flipped the vehicle, leaving Fascitelli and his wife Beth, who suffered a concussion, trapped for more than an hour.

He is leaving Vornado as one of its highest-paid executives — having earned $64.4 million in 2011.

Roth said Fascitelli worked “like an animal” and had executed 172 transactions on more than $17 billion worth of properties, all of which were fueled by 125 capital markets transactions totaling over $27 billion, making an “indelible impact on Vornado.”

In addition to its real estate holdings, Vornado has sizable investments in Toys ‘R’ Us and JCPenney — deals that have dogged the company, which yesterday reported a $224.9 million loss on Penney and a $40 million on Toys.

“Mike is one of the smartest and well-respected people in our industry,” said Jared Kushner, a partner with Vornado at 666 Fifth Ave.

“He is a great partner and a great friend,” he added. “And somebody for everyone in our industry to look up to.”

Mitchell Konsker, vice chairman of Jones Lang LaSalle, agreed, saying, “He’s one of the class acts of our industry, and truthfully, has the utmost respect of his peers.”

Possible successors include SL Green’s Marc Holliday and Andrew Mathias, as well as Vornado’s own execs, including David Greenbaum and Mitchell Schear.

CBRE’s local president and dealmaker, Mary Ann Tighe, and Cushman & Wakefield’s former CEO, Bruce Mosler, who now leads its global brokerage, were also mentioned as candidates.

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Bond brawl

It’s not quite Bush v. Gore 2.0, but the two legal protagonists of that epic showdown before the Supreme Court will be back at it today.

Lawyers Ted Olsen and David Boies will appear before a Manhattan US appeals court to argue over how $1.44 billion in Argentina debt should be paid.

Olsen represents billionaire hedge fund magnate Paul Singer, who claims he and other bondholder holdouts should be paid alongside those holders who agreed to a steep haircut during a debt restructuring.

Argentina President Cristina Kirchner has long insisted she will never pay “one dollar” to the Singer holdouts.

Boies represents the bondholders who agreed to the restructuring — and they oppose Singer, believing that Argentina will never go along with a pro-holdout ruling, thus putting their bonds at risk of default.

The bonds tanked last fall when the appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that said that Singer’s group must be paid whenever the exchange bondholders were paid.

After those bonds went into free fall in late November, about a dozen investment funds — mostly hedge funds — lined up opposite Elliott and three other hedge funds on its side.

The Bank of New York, the trustee agent for the bondholders, also protested being dragged into the fray.

The hearing is “critical for Argentine bond markets,” JP Morgan analyst Vladimir Werning said last night in a note to clients.

Market players — who are expected to flood the courtroom — “are going to try to read into the judges’ questions whether . . . they sympathize or are hostile to one side or the other,” Werning told The Post.

Longtime Argentina lawyer Jonathan Blackman will represent the South American country.

The appeals court is not expected to issue its final ruling for at least a month, and Argentina is likely to appeal any ruling that goes against it to the Supreme Court.

mcelarier@nypost.com

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The devious diva

Talk to the dial tone, Martha.

The CEO of Macy’s said he was so shocked when Martha Stewart phoned him to admit she had cut a secret deal with JCPenney that he hung up on her.

“I don’t remember hanging up on anyone in my life,” Lundgren testified yesterday in a Manhattan Supreme Court trial over Stewart’s Penney pact, which she cut despite a preexisting licensing agreement with Macy’s. “I was sick to my stomach.”

In a tense phone conversation on Dec. 6, 2011 — the day before Stewart announced Penney had shelled out $38.5 million for a 17-percent stake in her company, and cut a 10-year, $200 million licensing deal — Lundgren said he repeatedly asked why she had pursued the tie-up behind his back.

WireImage

To hear Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren tell it, Martha Stewart (above) — who jumped to JCPenney’s Ron Johnson — acted like a schemer from a classic film in their bubbling feud.

Stewart began responding in stilted language, saying she was bound by a confidentiality agreement with Penney, as if she were reading from text written by lawyers, Lundgren testified as part of Macy’s case.

“She said this was going to be good for Macy’s. I think that’s when I hung up,” Lundgren said, adding that he hasn’t spoken to Stewart since.

Sales of Martha Stewart-branded goods at Macy’s surged 8 percent last year, Lundgren said, pooh-poohing the notion that he would have considered dropping the line instead of suing to block the Penney deal.

Later, under cross-examination by lawyers for Stewart and Penney, Lundgren was grilled on the finer details of the Macy’s licensing pact.

Stewart should be able to open in-store boutiques inside Penney stores, for example, because some Macy’s stores have a Starbucks in them, lawyers argued, pressing the CEO.

Lundgren countered that Charles Koppelman, then chairman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, had told him when they originally negotiated their deal that Stewart only wanted to build an upscale flagship store “in Times Square or on Madison Avenue” — not at a downmarket rival like Penney.

Stewart wasn’t the only one cozying up to Lundgren as a friend while also double-dealing behind his back, the executive testified.

Shortly after JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson made a splashy presentation to Wall Street on Penney’s turnaround plans, Lundgren said he wrote to Johnson to congratulate him.

“Thank you, Terry. Your note means a ton to me,” Johnson replied in an e-mail dated Jan. 27, 2012, which was submitted as evidence by Macy’s.

“I consider you a friend.”

At the same time, however, Johnson was trading snarky e-mails with colleagues about Macy’s — including one in which the former Apple exec said Macy’s management “look asleep at the wheel.”

While Stewart chatted and negotiated with Johnson and his JCP higher-ups, she put on a friendly face toward Lundgren, according to testimony.

For example, in October 2011, in the midst of her Penney talks, Stewart called Macy’s and begged Lundgren for a $10,000 VIP seat at a posh New York dinner honoring Ralph Lauren and Oprah Winfrey.

Lundgren, knowing nothing of her pending Penney double-cross, gave her a ticket.

Then, a few weeks later, just a few weeks before the Penney pact went public, Stewart asked for and got exclusive tickets to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, Lundgren said.

jcovert@nypost.com

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Total Kimfestation

You can run, but you can’t hide — from Kim Kardashian, that is. She’s everywhere, famous for being a professional celebrity who’s never really “done” anything to speak of.

It’s a falling Star — and not because of media cross-currents eating away circulation — but because it keeps chronicling the likes of KK as an anointed queen of pop culture. Even the checkout-aisle crowd is weary of the over-exposed plump tart, who is getting attention simply because she’s expecting. Indeed, Star’s cover trumpets: “Kim Got Pregnant For $22 Million!” Sure she did, the story goes, and it says Kim’s also using her baby bump to cover up fraud allegations. Along the edge of the cover, thumbnails of celebrities reveal another four show-business scandals, e.g., tragic last words of a star’s suicide, cocaine woes, divorce crises and battles with a new beau. Back in the early days of Star, in the late 1970s and 1980s — it turns 40 next year — the tabloid thrived on the hard work of real reporters. Not anymore.

Leave it to Us Weekly to suck the life out of celebrity dishing. The celeb rag is a downright drag to read. That’s mostly because it fails to dig up real dirt or titillating tidbits that might merit a read during a wait in the doctor’s office. Instead, readers get bored by a tired array of silly photo spreads. One titled “Umbrella Holders” shows — yes, you guessed it — photos of George Clooney and Justin Timberlake holding umbrellas. One might conclude that this is some sort of inside joke if it weren’t for other equally vapid photo features, such as “Stars — They’re Just Like Us!” If that were the case, why buy the magazine? The longer features fall flat, particularly the one on Kardashian clan matriarch Kris Jenner. Another piece fails to reveal any of the promised “secrets” of the final three women vying for the affection of ABC’s reality show “The Bachelor” Sean Lowe.

Since when did InTouch morph from celebrity mag to reality rag? The mag’s cover is overly strewn with reality stars we never heard of, touting news on the “virgin” bachelor and the “booty wars” of the “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” (Seems one of the “RHOA” stars is claiming a co-star’s tushie is filled with silicon.) But while we’re sick of hearing about the queens of reality TV, the Kardashians, we must admit that the cover story is scandalously intriguing. According to InTouch, Kris is so desperate to stay on top that she’s started promoting her young teen daughters, Kendall and Kylie.

It turns out there is more to life than looking at stunning actresses wearing swanky gowns. You can always fixate on their pregnancies, as the baby bump issue of OK! does this week. Pregnancy and childbirth is not a new phenomenon, so there is really not much to say. Jennifer Aniston is pregnant and getting married, in that order. It isn’t even scandalous. Yawn.

People is not keeping up with the Kardashians. Mercifully, you won’t find Kim or her sisters on the cover this week. This edition leads with the suicide of Mindy McCready. It is hard to tell if People just took a different route than competitors as some kind of Kardashian protest. People has only one Kardashian photo, and it has nothing to do with pregnancy or divorce. Photos of Kim and other fashionable women are compared with styles worn by dogs at the Westminster Dog Show. It is a new inter-species take on “Who Wore It Best?”

You can imagine that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has no love for the New Yorker. The March 4 issue’s convincing cover story “What’s Wrong With The Republicans” makes the case, after spending time with him, that he is a big part of the problem since he feels the Republican product is still saleable. Another revealing feature describes how reporters at the Newtown Bee weekly had mixed feelings reporting on the national tragedy that gripped their town. BTW, New Yorker editors, even the Newtown Bee wouldn’t have seen the news value in the “Talk of the Town” piece about how Bruce Ratner loves the food at the Barclays Center.

New York’s feature story on gay divorce is neither shocking nor particularly interesting. After all, a great majority of gay couples, it admits in the piece, are still trying to get married, not untie the knot. Better in the content-starved issue is a feature on St. John’s former dean Cecilia Chang and how she justified stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Catholic university before committing suicide. Even David Bowie, who has released his first album in 10 years, might have a chuckle at New York’s three-page tribute to him. The hard-to-read feature says he was “always sincere with his insincerity.” Even Bowie would have be smirking over that one — see China Girl or Tin Machine.

Time’s ground-breaking cover story on “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” will make readers angry and could possibly change the way people think about hospitals. Reporter/Editor Steven Brill makes the case that even hospital CEOs do not know why hospitals charge multiples more for aspirin and gauze than patients could pay in a drug store. Time does not necessarily get to the bottom of why hospitals charge so much but it deserves much credit for highlighting the huge inefficiencies.

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The week's winners and losers

WINNERS

DAVID EINHORN

Hedgie seeking to return some of Apple’s $137 billion to investors wins big court ruling.

MICHAEL CORBAT

Citibank CEO rakes in $11.5M pay package. Not bad for 4 months’ work.

LARRY PAGE

More good news for Google CEO: Analysts project $1K share price.

LOSERS

JAMIE DIMON

JPM CEO/chairman fights move to split the 2 jobs in wake of London Whale mess.

CHARLIE ERGEN

Dish Network boss has disappointing Q4; shares plunge earthward nearly 7 percent for the week.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Moody’s sees sun setting on the empire’s finances, downgrades UK a notch to Aa1.

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Suisse M&A big cheese

Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse and relative newcomer LionTree Advisors are putting up some surprisingly strong numbers early in Wall Street’s investment banking leagues.

LionTree, run by former UBS rainmaker Aryeh Bourkoff, is ranked seventh on the coveted merger and acquisition rankings in the US, with some $18.2 billion in transactions, including Liberty Global’s $23 billion bid to acquire Virgin Media, according to Thomson Reuters.

The investment boutique is in its first year of operation, after Bourkoff hung out his own shingle in July.

By comparison, Bourkoff’s former firm, UBS, which has been slashing staff in droves, ranks 18th in the overall M&A tables through Feb. 22.

Meanwhile, leading the technology “league tables” is Credit Suisse, which has bagged some choice deals, including advising private-equity firm Silver Lake on its bid to purchase PC-maker Dell.

This time last year, Credit Suisse was an also-ran, languishing at No. 25 in US tech M&A, according to Thomson Reuters.

Insiders, however, say that the bank’s telecom media and technology unit, led by David Wah and Mark Simonian, has made some key hires, pushing the bank into the upper echelon.

Credit Suisse, anticipating that the tech space would be a big driver for M&A activity, hired tech banker Chris Gaertner away from Bank of America less than a year ago.

The Swiss bank also relocated a key member of its M&A team, Anthony Armstrong, closer to Silicon Valley so the firm can rub elbows with brainy tech CEOs.

One major factor benefiting all banks is a decidedly more upbeat economic outlook shared by corporate bosses, which has driven a recent deal-making resurgence.

To be sure, it’s too early to declare any winners.

A smaller firm like LionTree is likely to lose ground to perennial leaders JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

mark.decambre@nypost.com

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Closing in on catsup culprits

The Securities and Exchange Commission was informed that a trader who conducted allegedly suspicious transactions of Heinz was a “private wealth client” of Goldman Sachs, according to court documents.

Goldman Sachs informed the SEC that it does not have “direct access” to information about the owner of the account, which is based in Zurich, according to filings.

SEC Senior Counsel Megan Bergstrom said that “the account holder is a private wealth client of Zurich.” She went on: “Goldman informed me that it does not have direct access to information about the beneficial owner of owners behind any particular transaction or position in the GS account.”

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Secret’s out

Jennifer Gould Keil

GIMME SHELTER

Want to live like a Victoria’s Secret supermodel? It’s not as expensive as you might think.

Runway-strutting Angel Lindsay Ellingson, who’s also modeled for Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana, has put her one-bedroom co-op on the market for $589,000. The 650-square-foot unit is in Gramercy Park Towers at 205 Third Ave. and comes with a renovated chef’s kitchen and ample storage, perhaps for the Victoria’s Secret perfumes and bras that Ellingson is the face of.

The full-service building has a landscaped roof deck, garden and gym. Listing brokers Eyal Amir and Rachel Alexander (a former model herself), of the new brokerage firm I & I Real Estate, declined to comment.

Getty Images for SWAROVSKI ELEME

Victoria's Secret Angel Lindsay Ellingson

The Aldyn residences

Ellingson — who studied biology at UC San Diego before she was discovered on the street — has, we hear, bought an 1,100-plus-square-foot duplex loft on West 19th Street for $1.67 million.

Saget full house

Lara Saget, the artist daughter of actor-comedian Bob Saget, is hosting an art installation today to celebrate the Chinese New Year at the Aldyn condo development on Riverside Boulevard (pictured). Saget will display her work — along with art by her friend Jing Chen, a Corcoran Group broker who has sold multiple units in the building to Chinese buyers — in a $13.9 million, 17th-floor corner duplex designed by Roman and Williams. The 6,000-square-foot, six-bedroom, 7 1/2-bathroom home, which comes with a terrace, features double-height ceilings and dramatic Hudson River views.

The Aldyn, which includes 40,000 square feet of amenities like an indoor pool, basketball/squash court, climbing wall and bowling alley, is where Knicks guard Jason Kidd paid more than $4 million for a four-bedroom.

Zoom with a view

Celebrity photographer Mike Ruiz, who’s worked with Kim Kardashian, Kirsten Dunst and Nicki Minaj, his put his stylish condo on West 24th Street up for rent at $8,900 a month. “I’m moving to horse country in New Jersey. I’ll be on 4 acres in a four-bedroom home with lots of space to possibly give my dog, Oliver, a sibling,” Ruiz says.

The 1,127-square-foot two-bedroom unit he wants to rent out in the Chelsea Stratus features lots of B&B Italia furniture — including a suspended wall unit that hides the TV. The building features an indoor basketball court and a lounge. Brokers Ralph Modica and Vickey Barron of Core have the listing.

DeLooking

Celebrity chef-restaurateur John DeLucie, of the Lion, Crown and the new Bill’s in the old Bill’s Gay Nineties space, is on the prowl for a new home.

He recently checked out a four-story townhouse at 115 E. 35th St., which Nest Seekers International broker Ryan Serhant had on the market for $3.99 million before another buyer signed a contract for it.

While DeLucie wasn’t able to snag that 3,664-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse, it looks like he got some TV time out of his home search. Serhant is on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York,” and there were cameras present during DeLucie’s visit — filming for an episode that’s slated to air in May during the reality show’s second season.

We hear . . .

That real estate photographer Evan Joseph is signing copies of his latest book, “New York Then And Now” at 183 E. 73rd St., a stunning $22.8 million townhouse listed by Douglas Elliman broker Corinne Pulitzer. The five-story townhouse, built in 1866 and renovated by William Lawrence Bottomley in 1922, features a garden and brick patios. Currently a multifamily home, it is in prime shape to be “easily converted” into a single-family mansion, according to the listing . . . That the broker stars of two rival reality shows, Michele Kleier and daughters Samantha
Kleier-Forbes and Sabrina Kleier-Morgenstern of HGTV’s “Selling New York” and Fredrik Eklund and Ryan Serhant of Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York” were well behaved in front of one another at an Eleven Madison Park shindig to launch Douglas Elliman brokers’ Melanie Lazenby and Dina Lewis’ new project, the Whitman. Douglas Elliman’s Howard Lorber and Dottie Herman were also at the launch party for the new boutique building on East 26th Street, where full-floor condos start at $10 million and the penthouse duplex is $22.5 million. The landmarked 1924 building was originally the headquarters for a textile company, Clarence Whitman & Sons.

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Poupon’s ‘pardon,’ part deux

Grey Poupon’s famous “Pardon Me” TV commercial is returning for a moment of Oscar glory.

After a 16-year hiatus, the mustard that mocked its own stuffy image in one of TV’s most famous commercials will once again take to the airwaves during the Feb. 24 Academy Awards show.

The spot comes as Kraft Foods looks to boost sagging sales of the Dijon mustard, which is facing competition from a growing variety of high-end condiments on supermarket shelves.

The new ad begins in the same way as the original — an aristocratic English gentleman is being chauffeured in the countryside, when another car pulls up alongside them at a stop. The back window rolls down and a second man asks in an over-the-top snooty accent, “Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?”

MUSTARD COLONELS


Ad homage video still.

The first man courteously responds, “But of course” and hands him a jar out the window.

In the new version, however, the scene continues with the second car speeding off without returning the mustard.

Jokes aside, there’s a seed of truth to that higher-end image; Grey Poupon customers tend to be skewed toward household incomes of $70,000 or more.

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Times talks: Tesla test tellingly tainted

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is still fast — but far less furious.

After his dust-up with the New York Times, the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, offered her take on the now infamous Tesla test drive and found that the reviewer came up short.

In a blog posting yesterday, Sullivan said the reporter, John Broder, didn’t always use “good judgment” and that he took “casual and imprecise notes” during his cold-weather trip in the Model S sedan.

While Sullivan rejected Musk’s claims that Broder “faked” the story and set out to sabotage the test drive, saying he acted in “good faith,” her take bolstered Musk’s argument that the review was flawed.

AP

Tesla’s Elon Musk took a victory lap after the New York Times public editor dented the paper’s testdrive report on the Model S sedan.

“A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs, which Mr. Musk has used, in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) ways possible, as he defended his vehicle’s reputation,” she wrote.

Her conclusions were enough to mollify Musk, who tweeted, “Faith in @nytimes restored,” shortly after Sullivan’s piece came out.

In a harsh review that ran Feb. 8, Broder reported trouble keeping the electric car’s battery charged during a drive between Washington, DC, and Connecticut in the freezing cold. Broder said the car’s power was significantly diminished after a night out in the cold, resulting in an emergency tow.

Musk fiercely attacked the article and published a blog post — complete with charts and graphs using data collected during the drive — to defend the car.

Sullivan was vague about what errors she found with Broder’s judgment, mentioning only the point in the trip when Broder stopped for an emergency recharge in Norwich, Conn., after the battery power was depleted from sitting out overnight.

kwhitehouse@nypost.com

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Business briefs

Fb pulls a GE

Facebook, which turned a $1.1 billion profit in 2012, took a page out of GE’s playbook when it did not pay a dime in federal and state income taxes, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Facebook will get a $429 million refund.

Headwinds

US stocks could struggle to extend their seven-week winning streak as the quarterly earnings period draws to a close and the market hits technical resistance.

Coach

Coach has promoted Victor Luis, its CEO-in-waiting, to president and chief commercial officer, with an annual salary of $1.1 million and a bonus of up to twice that amount.

Boeing’s fix

Boeing may suggest a temporary fix to improve the 787’s ability to withstand overheating of its lithium-ion batteries as soon as this week.

Housing cools

New residential construction cooled in January and US existing-home sales slowed after the strongest year since 2007, economists said ahead of reports this week.

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Consumer confidence treaded water in Jan.

Consumer confidence didn’t fall in January, but it remains low, according to the Discover US Spending Monitor.

The survey found that only 31 percent of respondents thought the economy improved in January, which was almost the same as the December number. And just 15 percent of those polled thought the economy was good or excellent, the same number as the previous month. The overall confidence level on the economy was about the same as the previous month.

“People have tended to be cautious about the economy for a long time. We haven’t seen much change in that sentiment for a while,” said Matt Towson, a spokesman for the poll.

The Discover US Spending Monitor surveys some 8,200 consumers over the course of a month. It talks to about 275 people per night.

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Walmart sweats Feb.

Walmart Stores had the worst sales start to a month in seven years as payroll-tax increases hit shoppers already battling a slow economy, according to internal e-mails obtained by Bloomberg.

“In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Walmart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales.

“The worst start to a month I have seen in my [7 years] with the company.”

Walmart and discounters such as Family Dollar Stores are bracing for a rise in the payroll tax to take a bigger bite from the paychecks of shoppers already dealing with elevated unemployment.

The world’s largest retailer’s struggles come after executives expected a strong start to February because of the Super Bowl, milder weather and paycheck cycles, according to the minutes of a Feb. 1 officers meeting Bloomberg obtained.

Murray’s comments about February sales follow disappointing results from January.

Walmart fell 2.1 percent yesterday to $69.30 in New York for the biggest decline since Dec. 12.

“As with any organization, we often see internal communications that are not entirely accurate, that lack the proper context and represent individual opinions,” David Tovar, a Walmart spokesman, said in an interview.

Murray declined to comment.

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Time Inc. magazine deal may fetch a bit less

Keith J. Kelly

MEDIA INK

Time Warner’s talks to spin off most of the Time Inc. titles into a new publicly traded company controlled by Meredith Corp. were quietly started last fall, sources said.

Now that they are out in the open, insiders expect the pace of negotiations to pick up with a final deal hammered out within 30 days.

With Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune excluded from the deal, sources say the price could drop into the $1.7 billion range — below the $2.5 billion to $3 billon or so that the entire company might have fetched.

The three titles that will stay with Time Warner are believed to have cash flow of around $80 million. The entire company posted a profit of $420 million last year on revenue of $3.4 billon, but minus those three titles, profit would have been closer to $340 million.

With an earnings multiple of five — which is the most even the best print properties can expect these days — it puts the price tag at $1.7 billion. Before the 2008 recession, quality publishing operations could command multiples of 10 times earnings.

Meredith execs are expected to stay in town through today to try and hammer out terms of the deal, which is expected to yield a new publicly traded company that includes People, InStyle, Real Simple and other women-targeted titles.

Meredith, based in Des Moines, Iowa, owns TV stations and magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal, Family Circle and Fitness.

Meredith posted cash flow from operations last year of $195 million — less than half that of Time Inc.

But Meredith, headed by CEO Steve Lacy, will have control over the new entity — and that has many Time insiders nervous.

“I’d guess that most of the centralized jobs in Time Inc. will disappear,” said one source.

Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang, who has been on the job a year, and Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Martha Nelson, who has been there just a few months, should be feeling jittery.

There has been no sign of another suitor.

On the strategic front, rivals Hearst and Condé Nast are not interested.

Hearst Magazines, which dipped during the recession, is rapidly improving after digesting Hachette Filipacchi Media two years ago.

But another big deal as large as Time Inc. could raise anti-trust concerns.

Condé Nast parent Advance Publications still has most of a $500 million war chest from its sale of Discovery stock two years ago. However, it has a lot of headaches in its newspaper wing and has been using its cash judiciously to make small bets on digital properties.

On top of that, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes wants a deal done as quickly as possible.

“Jeff wants a clean exit,” said one source. “He’s not trying to get the extra $200 million he might get if he conducted an auction.”

Penguin deal OK’d

The Justice Department gave its blessing to the proposed merger of Pearson’s book publishing unit, Penguin, with the Bertelsmann-controlled Random House.

The deal, which was announced in late October, puts best-selling Random House author John Gris- ham under the same corporate umbrella as Tom Clancy.

Bertelsmann will own 53 percent and Pearson 47 percent of the new company, Penguin Random House, which will be the world’s No. 1 English-language publisher.

The deal still needs clearance from the Canadian Competition Bureau and the European Commission, among others, but both companies said they expect the deal to close in the second half of the year.

Adweek goings-on

It was not all pink slips at the restructuring of Guggenheim Digital Media — formerly Prometheus Global Media — earlier this week.

At Adweek, James Cooper has been running the show since Michael Wolff was given the heave-ho in October 2011, but he still had the title of executive editor. This week, new CEO Ross Levinsohn promoted Cooper to editorial director of Adweek and gave him control of digital content and production.

Levinsohn is decentralizing the digital operations and pushing it down to individual editors Bill Werde, editorial director at Billboard, and Janice Min, editorial director at the Hollywood Reporter.

Exit at Vogue

Laurie Jones, managing editor of Vogue and Anna Wintour’s right-hand woman, is stepping down Feb. 28. One of her claims to fame was hiring a young Wintour as a senior editor of New York, where Jones was the managing editor.

A few years later, after Wintour had edited British Vogue, HG and American Vogue, she returned the favor and hired Jones at Vogue.

kkelly@nypost.com

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Buy hard

Jennifer Gould Keil

GIMME SHELTER

Bruce Willis is back on movie screens with “A Good Day to Die Hard” and he’s back on the Upper West Side, too.

Willis, who once lived on Central Park West with then-wife Demi Moore, is in contract to buy a co-op at the famed El Dorado building at 300 Central Park West for $8 million.

The three-bedroom, four-bathroom unit, which was listed for $8.695 million, offers plenty of space for Willis, wife Emma Heming and daughter Mabel Ray, who turns 1 in April. The living room, dining room and master suite face the park, and there’s also a “massive” windowed eat-in kitchen and a 38-foot formal gallery that’s “ideal for exhibiting art.”

FilmMagic

Bruce Willis

Getty Images

Meg Ryan

The building is a 1931 Art Deco structure created by architect Emory Roth. Amenities include a gym and a mini basketball court.

Levitt or leave it

Dede Sheoris-Levitt, ex-wife of hedge-funder Michael Levitt, has sold the gargantuan home she once shared with her husband at 4 Stone Tower Drive in Alpine, NJ, for $13.3 million — down from its $18.5 million asking price.

The 23,000-square-foot mansion comes with a gym, theater, two-lane bowling alley, nine-car garage, elevator, pool, spa, putting green and a tennis court. There’s also a 2,000-square-foot guest or staff house and a pool house.

The buyer is Joe Scott, who owns Mayrich Construction. Listing broker Dolores McCormack of Prominent Properties Sotheby’s International Realty declined to comment.

Scott has sold his home at 2 Margo Way in Alpine for $20 million to a mystery Russian buyer. Listing broker Rosemarie Campi of Prominent Properties Sotheby’s International Realty declined to comment.

We hear . . .

That music mogul Lyor Cohen is looking to buy a family-size residence on the Upper West Side. He recently checked out a $15.95 million unit at the Majestic at 115 Central Park West. He loves the neighborhood, our spies say, but not the layout of the unit he saw.

Fifth have

Billionaire Marc Rowan, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, and wife Carolyn have put their three-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom first-floor co-op at 927 Fifth Ave. on the market for $16 million.

They bought the space (which was previously owned by late plastic surgeon Robert Schwager, who had his office there) in May for $7.7 million. The unit has been converted into a 4,000-plus-square-foot, loft-style unit with a great room, Central Park views and 10-foot ceilings. There’s a pool table, a glass and stone bar and a “media wall.” The chef’s kitchen comes with a wine cooler and a sliding glass door, along with an “extra large” pantry.

It’s all set in a 12-story limestone-clad 1925 building with one apartment per floor — designed by Warren & Wetmore, the primary architects of Grand Central Terminal.

The listing agents are Douglas Elliman’s Kim Shepard-Fabrizi and Sandra Ripert (wife of Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert).

The Rowans aren’t leaving the building. In December, they bought a fifth-floor apartment from Claire Edersheim, the widow of financier Maurits Edersheim. They also own a sixth-floor spread in the building.

Meg’s moves

Meg Ryan’s uptown home hunt continues. The actress just returned to “You’ve Got Mail” territory when she saw a $8.75 million brownstone at 126 W. 87th St.

The residence, which dates back to 1888, features a front parlor with 12 1/2-foot ceilings. The top story includes an 18-foot ceiling, a skylight and front and back terraces. Listing broker Deborah Sabec of Town Residential declined to comment.

As Gimme Shelter previously reported, Ryan, who’s been renting in SoHo, recently had a broker inquire about a 907 Fifth Ave. apartment, as well.

Rest of the West

The last sponsor unit is now on the market at Extell Development’s 535 West End Ave. The full-floor condo is priced at $19.5 million and was previously packaged with an upper unit as a $37.5 million penthouse duplex, but the upper floor sold separately for $22 million.

Matt Damon (who at the time was living on a West 87th Street Belnord rental with his family) bid on the upper floor, but was outbid by a Wall Street family.

Brown Harris Stevens broker Lisa Lippman has the listing for the remaining unit.

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Brill sold to tune of $185M

Lois Weiss

BETWEEN THE BRICKS

Eric
Hadar has signed a contract to buy the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway for $185 million.

The sellers are Ofer Yardeni and Joel Seiden’s Stonehenge Partners, along with Invesco of Texas.

Hadar and Abraham Merchant and Richard Cohn of Merchants Property Group, signed a contract to buy the building last week, sources said.

The direct deal is being completed without brokers and may have begun as a retail play.

Sources said the group intends to bring the 175,000-square-foot building back to its roots with pre-builts targeting budding music and entertainment companies. Colony Records recently vacated the retail portion of the building; with a spread from the basement to the third floor of more than 45,000 square feet, it could be the most valuable portion of the asset.

In its 1950s and ’60s heyday, the building’s offices were filled with agents, publishers and rehearsal studios.

Singer-songwriter Paul Simon still maintains his office there.

No one could be reached for comment at press time.

Once an active investor, Hadar previously owned both the Citigroup Building and the LVMH Building at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.

*

A downtown dorm currently used by Pace University is on the market through Jimmy Kuhn, David Kolan and Lawrence “Chip” Porter at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. The former office building at 55 John St., and its income stream, could bring in $90 million for seller Yitzchak Tessler.

The dorm is entirely leased to Educational Housing Services, which has an agreement to provide Pace with 285 fully furnished dorm rooms. Not like the dorm rooms you lived in years ago, these all have flat-panel TVs with built-in game consoles, small desks, captain’s beds and full-size refrigerators.

There is also a small H&R Block office on the ground floor for when the students graduate and finally earn some dough to pay back their loans.

*

We just got a first look at the Real Estate Board of New York’s nominations for the most ingenious sales, leasing and financing deals of the year.

We’ll be reviewing the deals in more detail in The Post’s March 5 commercial real-estate special, and the coveted “Oscars” of the industry will be awarded on April 23.

The deals include: the sale of CUNY’s 20 East End Ave. and relocation to a tax-exempt office condo, submitted by Studley’s Ira Schuman, Daniel O. Horowitz and David Carlos; the sale of 88 Leonard St. by brokers Helen Hwang and Nat Rockett of Cushman & Wakefield; the purchase of a condominium by Y&R at 3 Columbus Circle by CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe and Gregory Tosko; a flea market-to-flagship sale of 144 Spring Street by broker Christopher Owles of Sinvin Realty; the sale of 525 Broadway back to its original owner by ABS Partners Real Estate brokers Alan S. Cohen and Gregg L. Schenker.

Leases include: the pact for the New York Genome Center at 101 Ave. of the Americas by Bill Harvey of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank and Daniel Segal, now with Orchard Real Estate Partners; Chadbourne & Parke’s lease at 1301 Ave. of the Americas by Moshe Sukenik, Barry Gosin and Chris Mongeluzo of Newmark; leases at 11 Times Square by Jones Lang LaSalle’s Mitchell Konsker, Paul Glickman and Matthew Astrachan; the lease of newly built 33 Beekman St. by Pace University through Newmark’s David A. Falk and Kyle J. Ciminelli; the Havas lease in Hudson Square by the Newmark team of David A. Falk, Jason T. Greenstein and Frank Kajon; the Viacom renewal at 1515 Broadway by the CBRE team of Michael R. Laginestra, Scott L. Gottlieb and Andrew J. Sussman; and a lease for Times Square Capital at 7 Times Square from CBRE team Ben Friedland and Silvio Petriello.

Both sides of Morgan Stanley’s 11.2 million-square-foot lease at One New York Plaza were nominated. The tenant’s team was Barry M. Gosin, Brian S. Waterman and Romel Canete of Newmark, while the Brookfield Office Properties’ agent was Duncan McCuaig.

Finance entries included the financing for 837 Washington St. through HFF’s Evan Pariser; 50 Oceana Drive West in Brighton Beach by The Singer & Bassuk Organization’s Scott A. Singer and Jeffrey Moroch; 1515 Broadway by HFF’s team of Whitney Wilcox and Michael Tepedino; HSBC Tower’s refinancing by the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group’s Shawn Rosenthal; and 542-580 Second Ave. through NY Urban’s Chris Lama.

Lois@Betweenthebricks.com

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Bus strike: ayor Mike wins

Michael Benjamin

This afternoon, it will be checkmate for the school-bus strikers. The strike essentially ends — thanks to the Bloomberg gambit.

The mayor played it perfectly, and willingly sacrificed pieces to achieve his endgame.

At midday today, the Office of Pupil Transportation will open the bid packages for the K-12 school-bus routes. It can start service under the new contracts before September — though not as soon as parents hope, since the contracts must go through the city’s lengthy review process. Still, those bids are what the strike was supposed to stop.

AP

Losers: Local 1181 boss Michael Cordiello (r.) with International ATU chief Larry Hanley.

But yesterday, in a bid to be competitive, several bus companies went to court to void the employee protections in current contracts and to halt the new bids.

If that suit fails, a mix of new and currently-contracted bus companies will likely win contracts. Meanwhile, a number of bus companies with current contracts will probably decline to submit bids, because their union contracts would leave them uncompetitive. Their unionized employees, now on strike, would be out of jobs as of June 30.

For these workers, the only rational decision will be to return to work. Already in the last few days, workers have crossed union picket lines to return to their jobs.

After today (assuming the bus companies’ suit fails), it will make sense for more striking drivers and attendants to return for their last few months of pay and benefits, especially their health-care coverage. And it makes even more sense for these workers to seek work with the new companies.

In a sense, the worker-protection bubble finally burst. Small bus companies and their workers are collateral victims; the worker protections put those companies, already operating on a slim margin, at a competitive disadvantage.

When the city, citing court rulings, put out for bid new bus contracts that didn’t require the employee protections (as these contracts had for 35 years), that didn’t mean the bus companies could break their contracts with the unions to provide those priveleges. That left them handicapped in bidding, since they’d have higher labor costs than firms without the generous protections.

To stay competitive, the companies needed the union to work with them to lower costs. But the union instead went on strike — trying to force Bloomberg to retain the protections, and even to get the state to pass a new law to undo the court ruling.

When the National Labor Relations Board this month failed to force even a temporary resolution favorable to the union, the end was in sight.

Mind you, Mayor Bloomberg sacrificed a number of chess pieces to achieve his endgame.

Parents, especially of special-needs children, are angry at him for four weeks of educational disruption. The stress on special-needs kids is incalculable. The city schools lose federal funding for students who couldn’t attend during the strike.

Bloomberg alienated the bus company operators — who feel caught in the middle of the dispute — by not paying them for service they didn’t (couldn’t) deliver during the strike.

Finally, after more than a decade of fairly good labor relations, he will be remembered for breaking one union’s hold on an industry.

Bloomberg’s bold gambit will benefit his successors, who won’t be saddled with needlessly high school-busing costs.

If the city’s lucky, the mayor in his final months in office will use similar gambits to tackle some of the much larger union-benefit issues that are consuming ever-larger chunks of the municipal budget.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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