FINANCE • It's a busy day for private equity! Blackstone, TPG Capital, and Apollo Management are working on a deal to buy $12.5 billion of loans that were used to finance corporate buyouts from Citigroup. Meanwhile, TPG funneled $7 billion to WaMu to help stabilize the firm's finances, and Apollo is planning an IPO (a move that KKR will probably be keeping its eye on). Phew! [NYT / DealBook/NYT, Reuters via DealBook/NYT] • Morgan Stanley's CEO and chairman John Mack wins reelection despite thhttp://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/04/priva...

The new mayor of Watervliet, N.Y., is inviting business owners to a meeting April 8 to talk about possibly creating a Watervliet Business Council.http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/searc...

The Real Hip-Hop Is Over Here… April 9th, 2008 Tuesday night in NYC is the best night of the week. If there isn’t some entertainment industry party offering a top shelf open bar, what I like to call O-Bamas, there is a rap music showcase hosted at the venerable nightclub S.O.B.’s. This spot has been around since I was a little dude. I can’t even enumerate all the parties I have been to in the space and the people I have seen perform in this shoebox size venue. I will go in for a second thoughhttp://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=20792...

This comes from Amazon’s Beedle the Bard Page: Calling all Harry Potter fans! Want to get your (gloved) hands on J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Amazon.com wants to send you and a friend to London, England to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course), handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself. Open to muggles ages 13 and older in 24 countries, the Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest challenges you to creatihttp://www.hpprogs.com/2008/04/09/amazon-i...