New York City is second fiddle to Silicon Valley when it comes to tech start-ups. But one intriguing new Internet company is about to launch here in Manhattan in two weeks.

Have you heard about Hunch? This morning at a Women in Media breakfast, I ran into Caterina Fake, the  entrepreneur best known for co-founding Flickr and selling it to Yahoo (YHOO). Last time I saw her was at the home of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, in Silicon Valley. As I’ve written, Sandberg frequently hosts tech’s rising-star women for soirees with guest speakers.

Hunch was just a glimmer of an idea back then. It was going to be site for consumers to use to help them make decisions. But, Fake (left) told me today, she hadn’t a clue about what it would look like or how it would be used.

Now she knows. She describes Hunch as a mix of a “decision tree” and a “Magic 8 Ball.” (Remember the toy black ball that told you your fate and fortune when you were a kid?) On Hunch, you type in a question like…

What car should I buy?…

What’s wrong with my pet?…

Should I write a novel?

And Hunch responds by asking you questions. You click Yes or No in response to each one, and eventually you arrive at an answer. Fake says that she and her colleagues worked to make Hunch fun, like a game, so people stay on the site for a while.

What will visitors use Hunch for most often — career advice? Food tips? Shopping savvy? Fake doesn’t know. That’s part of the excitement of launching a new venture, she says.

This breakfast, part of Internet Week in New York, included lots of high achievers, who have jumped from traditional companies to the digital space. There was Betsy Morgan, who left CBS (CBS) to be CEO of the Huffington Post. And Susan Lyne, ex-Disney (DIS) and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO), who is now CEO of Gilt Groupe. You wouldn’t think that this online fashion-brand merchant would have a Gooogle-like growth trajectory, but it does in its first two years. Watch for Lyne to broaden the platform  beyond high-end clothes and accessories.

It was a kick to see Eileen Naughton, who was, in the mid-’90s, general manager of Fortune and later president of Time magazine. She spent 16 years at Time Inc. (TWX), got squeezed out in 2005, and landed on her feet. Actually, she landed at Google (GOOG), where she’s now director of digital platforms. Her purview includes YouTube and DoubleClick.

Naughton echoed the other women at the breakfast, who said that New York City needs more engineering and tech talent to compete with Silicon Valley. “The best place to get engineering talent right now is investment banking,” Naughton said.

That’s a silver lining of the recession: tremendous talent, looking for new employment. Another silver lining is attractive real estate prices. Another tech entrepreneur, SheFinds Media CEO Michelle Madhok, told the group that she just rented 1,000 square feet for new offices and scored a deal: $22 per square foot. That’s about 40% lower than a year ago.

“This is a time for smart people. This is a time for entrepreneurial people. This is a great time for people like me.”

–Donald Trump on Larry King Live Wednesday night. With his trademark bravado, Trump told Larry the moment is ripe for investing in real estate. “You go see your bank — maybe you can make a deal, maybe you can’t. But you can make a deal with a bank on another house, and much better than the one you’re living in.”

For more evidence supporting the Donald’s claim that this is a time of opportunity, see my post today, which mentions two new businesses helping people find flexible part-time work. Also, “Get Rich Slow,” a story in the current issue of Time that says there’s never been a better time to start your own Internet business. –Jessica Shambora

Blackstone Group (BX) CEO Steve Schwarzman is worried. Very worried.

Last evening, at the firm’s annual press dinner, the big boss of the buyout industry riffed about what he’s been hearing as he has circled the globe. I was lucky enough to sit at his table — and I asked him that question, in fact: So, Steve, how do you think the U.S. and its economic policies are being viewed abroad? Though the dinner is a strictly off-the-record affair to convene financial journalists with the Blackstone brass, Schwarzman agreed to let me share some of his thoughts here.

Schwarzman says that foreign leaders and investors abroad have been telling him that they can’t quite believe what they see happening in the U.S. — the decline of capitalism, no less. And they’re asking, he says, how they can drum up public support for capitalistic endeavors in their own countries when the nation that’s long been their model — the U.S. — is shifting away from a market economy. The international anxiety, Schwarzman contends, can’t be good for global stability.

Yes, he’s a Republican, as you might have guessed. (Last summer, Schwarzman, along with other business VIPs including Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers and former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman — who’s now running for governor of California – tried to help John McCain with his economic policy.)

Clearly, though, it’s not just GOP-leaning financial execs who are fretting. When Tony James, Schwarzman’s No. 2 at Blackstone and his heir apparent, swung by our table, he too expressed worry that if the U.S. government shackles the financial giants with rules and regs and pay caps, the whole industry will have trouble luring talent.

Meanwhile, Blackstone’s share price has sunk more than 50% to below $9 in the past year. The firm has picked up advisory work for some casualties of the crisis — AIG, for instance — and for healthier companies like Microsoft (MSFT) (on its failed bid to buy Yahoo last year) and Procter & Gamble (PG) on its 2008 sale of Folgers coffee to J.M. Smucker.

Blackstone is reportedly considering launching a $3 billion fund to provide financing to companies on the brink of bankruptcy. But for the most part, Schwarzman & Co. are sitting on the sidelines with some $25 billion in capital, waiting to invest again in major real-estate and private-equity deals. The firm’s last big buyouts happened last fall: Apria Healthcare and the Weather Channel, where Blackstone partnered with Bain Capital and General Electric’s (GE) NBC Universal.

Blackstone wins big, of course, only when it sells the stuff it has bought — properties in its stable such as Hilton Hotels, Freescale, Nielsen and SunGard, all acquired before the global markets collapsed. The firm’s last major sales? That was in 2007, when it flipped Equity Office Properties months after acquiring it from Sam Zell for $38.7 billion in the largest real-estate deal in history. Ah, remember the good old days of get-rich-quick capitalism?

Defining a brand and sticking to it is always difficult. Particularly in a downturn.

Which is why the success of Bravo – the NBC Universal cable network that serves up food, fashion, beauty, design and pop culture to upscale audiences – is all the more impressive.

This morning, I went to Bravo’s “upfront” presentation, where NBCU’s Lauren Zalaznick, who built the network, and her team pitched their new season and their growth story: a 38% year-to-year rise in adult 18-49 TV ratings, bigger gains online, and 97 new advertisers, including AT&T (ATT) and McDonald’s (MCD) and BlackBerry (RIM), in the past year.

Sales chief Susan Malfa noted that Bravo’s “affluencer” audience (the network claims to have the most upscale and educated viewers in cable) is “fairly recession resistant.” So she says, but don’t you think that investors in Saks and Coach and other beaten-down high-end brands would wonder about that?

Here’s the thing: Bravo’s success derives, really, from brand consistency that other marketers could learn from. The network’s unscripted programming – primarily, cutthroat creative competitions like Top Chef and over-the-top docudramas like Real Housewives of Orange County – are pure escapism. That escapism syncs with boom times but may resonate even more during times of crisis like we’re in right now. Among the new shows on Bravo’s let’s-deny-the-downturn slate: NYC Prep, which follows six privileged kids who attend private school in New York City, and Miami Social, a lush-life version of Friends set in Miami Vice territory.

Double Exposure, another new show that Bravo previewed this morning, features backstabbing fashion photographers. It looks as loud and annoying as CNBC’s Jim Cramer (another over-the-top character in General Electric’s TV cable stable). The new Bravo program that might appeal to business folks: Design Sixx, about entrepreneurs Bob and Cortney Novogratz, who have six kids (now seven, since the show’s filming) and make their living buying, rehabbing, and selling homes to rich people. Great people, the Novogratzes – I know them, though not well, since Bob is the brother of Jacqueline Novogratz, the CEO of Acumen Fund, and of Mike Novogratz, the president of Fortress Investment Group (FIG). (See Jacqueline’s Guest Post about her investing in to help the poor in Asia and Africa.)

Bravo also announced today that it’s branching out into scripted programs. More escapism – what else would it be? One show is called Blueprint, about best friends, one straight and one gay, who run an architecture and design firm in Manhattan. The other is 30 Under 30, which tracks the interconnected lives of 30 young people who have been christened superstars by a hot magazine (Fortune?!).

And scheduled to launch next week, April 20: Bravo’s first iPhone application. The Real Housewives: Personal Favs app will be city shopping guides with recommendations by Bravo talent including, yes, those Real Housewives of the OC, Atlanta, New Jersey…and who knows where else that brand can travel?

As for NBC Universal, the boss, CEO Jeff Zucker, told me this morning, “It’s not as bad as it could be.” The local TV news business is “a disaster,” he admitted. But Universal’s movie business has held up surprisingly well, he said. And NBCU’s cable channels – including USA Network and SciFi and MSNBC, as well as CNBC and Bravo – are a much-needed growth engine for struggling GE (GE), which reports first-quarter earnings on Friday. Stay tuned, as they say in TV land.

P.S. Did you catch my boss, Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer, on The View this morning?! Andy was on with Joy and Whoopi and the gals to talk about Fortune’s cover story, How to Get a Job. He named two companies that are hiring: Wal-Mart, (WMT), which added 33,000 jobs last year alone, and HCA, the Nashville-based hospital giant. An HCA exec who was in the show’s audience said that 9,000 jobs are available there. Hard to believe!

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By Jessica Shambora

As the Obamas moved into the White House, the Bushes headed to Texas. Yesterday’s shift at the top of the government should give at least a little kick to the dismal U.S. housing market.

In the Obamas’ former home, Chicago, prices are down 14% over the past year. And home prices in the Washington, D.C. area? Down 14.3%, according to Move Inc., which runs Realtor.com, the official site of the National Association of Realtors.

It’s remarkable, actually that D.C.’s 2008 median home price – $343,196, $80,000 higher than Chicago’s – has held up as well as it has. Consider that D.C. had the biggest surge in year-over-year home listings: up 70% last year. Granted, the government’s coming expansion – our new president’s federal programs to lift America out of its crises – should fuel home-buying in D.C. But still, the outlook isn’t bright. Last month, Fortune predicted that the median home price there will tumble 20% in 2009. Among 100 regional markets listed on Fortune’s 2009 Housing Outlook, D.C. ranks near the bottom, 91st. (Click here for a gallery of the predicted 10 worst real-estate markets in the U.S. for 2009.)

Meanwhile, the Bushes, off to Crawford, Texas for a break, have bought a home in the tony Dallas neighborhood of Preston Hollow. They had nearly 4,000 homes to choose from. In fact, Dallas ranked eighth out of 146 metros in the number of new listings in December, according to Move. But this number was actually down 30% from a year earlier – so the Dallas market is not in such sorry shape. Prices fell only 1.2% in Dallas last year. Moody’s Economy.com, as reported in Fortune, expects the Dallas-Irving market to drop a mere 1.2% in 2009.

As for the Bushes’ new residence, 10141 Daria Place, it is a brick, one-story, 8,500-square-foot house on one acre at the end of a cul-de-sac. The home is worth $2.2 million, according to Zillow.com’s estimate. Quite a comedown from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Zillow says that residence is worth some $300 million.

“If I had perfect foresight, I would never have taken this job in the first place.”

– Richard Syron, the former CEO of Freddie Mac (FRE), in the current issue of Time, dubbed The List Issue. The Top 10 Quotes of 2008 includes Syron’s remark and is one of a myriad of lists — Top 10 Best Business Deals, Top 10 Worst Business Deals, Top 10 Financial Collapses — that prove this to be the business world’s most high-wire year ever. For the full list of lists, Time’s Top 10 Everything of 2008, click here.

“You don’t have to be a financial wizard (or go on a TV show) to become a millionaire. As Rock finally learned, you just have to stop spending all your money and save.”

– FDIC chairman Sheila Bair, in Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock, a children’s book that she wrote in 2006. Bair’s book is about twin boys who responded to their Grandpa’s savings proposal in opposite ways. Brock saved. Rock spent. After Grandpa matched the boys’ savings dollar for dollar, Brock’s dough doubled and redoubled, from $1 to $512 in just 10 weeks. The book includes Bair’s six savings tricks for kids. Such as: Save 10% of your allowance every week. And if you save, ask your parents to give you a “savings bonus.”

Maybe struggling homeowners should be reading Bair’s book. Today she introduced a radical plan to reduce payments to 31% of gross monthly income for homeowners who are delinquent two months or more. To urge participation, the FDIC would pay loan processors $1,000 for each reworked loan; if a borrower defaults, the FDIC would share up to 50% of losses. Of 2.2 million homeowners who would receive new loans under this plan, 1.5 million would keep their homes, the FDIC estimates.

Bair wants the plan’s estimated cost, $24.4 billion, to come from the $700 billion bailout. House Democrats have spoken out in favor, but she’s yet to secure the support of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the Bush administration, which has proposed less aggressive measures. On Tuesday, federal officials announced a mandatory program to modify delinquent mortgages owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNM). Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) have announced plans to modify monthly mortgage payments to between 31% and 38% of income. — Jessica Shambora

“The West is holding up, and search activity in Detroit suggests that the market there may be picking up.” That’s what Lorna Borenstein, president of Move Inc., told me on Friday–the same day that the U.S. Commerce Department released better-than-expected numbers on home-buying.

Borenstein, an alum of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), eBay (EBAY) and Yahoo (YHOO), is the No. 2 exec at the leading online company in residential real estate: Move owns Move.com, the most comprehensive home sales and rental search site, and REALTOR.com, the official Web site of the National Association of Realtors.

Over breakfast in San Francisco, Borenstein also shared her list of the top searched markets in June, noting that high search activity typically precedes a pickup in home sales:

• Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
• Chicago, IL
• Dallas, TX
• Detroit, MI
• Boston-Worcester-Lwrnce-Lowell-Brockton, MA
• Philadelphia, PA
• Riverside-San Bernardino, CA
• Orange County, CA
• Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
• Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
• San Diego, CA
• Atlanta, GA
• Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV
• Las Vegas, NV

No doubt, Borenstein is operating in the toughest housing market in decades. New home sales have fallen in seven of the past eight months, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. But many analysts believe that the industry is approaching a bottom, and Borenstein herself is optimistic. A recent Harris poll showed, she says, that homebuyers will sacrifice bedrooms or bathrooms for proximity to work and lower gas prices. The poll also indicated that consumers will cut back on luxury items, dining out and even clothing purchases to save money for a home. “That isn’t so good for the overall economy,” Borenstein noted.

The opportunity for Move is ripe, however: In the homebuying and rental business, Borenstein says, the majority of revenues are generated offline. Yet 80% of consumers search for new homes online. They spend eight weeks online, on average, before contacting a Realtor. To Borenstein, that’s a potentially lucrative window to engage consumers with new online services and advertising messages.