Blago convicted on one of what – 24? counts?

He’s nailed on the usual “lying to federal investigators” law, like Martha Stewart, but heck, who wouldn’t deny everything when questioned by the cops? As for the rest of the charges, like trying to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat, it’s always seemed like normal politics to me. And obviously, the jury thought the same.

No pardon for Dick Blumenthal

I‘m far more negative on the guy than this reporter, but he does expose both sides of the Blumenthal record, which is all I ask.

A pardon for Billy the Kid?

That’s what’s stirring up New Mexico these days. My ancestor, Col. Albert Jennings Fountain, unsuccessfully defended the man back then and from what I know of the Colonel, if he couldn’t get him off, no one could. Guilty as charged.

It’s Ramadan, so time to kill your fellow Muslims

59 dead, dozens more wounded. As the horrified BBC reporter notes, unemployment in Iraq is 60%, and these were just poor young men lined up all night for a chance at a job. Where are the “moderate” Muslims and why haven’t they condemned this act?

Tom Waits

WFUV (90.7) is playing a Tom Waits song just now : “The Long Way Home”. Waits is a close friend of my sister Lori and her family out in LA and, according to my nephew David, hates his early work. Geeze! He wrote “Jersey Girl”, covered by Springsteen, and a ton of other great songs. I’d be satisfied with my life had I written half of what he’s done. Great artist.

Well, this sucks

Lily drops Alzheimer drug after discovering it does nothing to prevent the disease but does cause skin cancer. So as of last week, victims can learn they’ll get the damn thing, but there’s nothing to do about it. Except a .45.

9/11 memorial is finally coming

The Great Captain’s lighthouse renovation is almost done, but a memorial to 9/11 victims is going to be completed, regardless. The two projects somehow got mired together and then a dispute between victims’ survivors over who should be remembered: Greenwich residents only, or people with ties to Greenwich – delayed matters further, but our Selectmen cut through the BS and we’re done. Of course, for people like me, who choke up when discussing 9/11, “it” will never be done, but I’m grateful that the town’s doing this.

Here’s a price reduction

10 Spring House Road

From $8.9 to, today, $6.9. Perhaps it will appeal to Westchester residents tired of taxes.

Are rents catching up to house values?

20 Innis Lane

I was going to show this house this Friday to a client, but, listed for rent at $6,500 and subject to a foreclosure suit, it rented yesterday for $9,000. That should give the owner some breathing room, but $9,000 for a nondescript builder’s special south of Old Greenwich Village? We may be witnessing a turn-around in the housing market.

Price reduction in Old Greenwich.

37 Irvine

 

Three years late, but this house, with pool, has been dropped from $2.750 to $2. 145. Not bad.

And it still goes on

From Peg in Minnesota, comes this story of mortgage fraud. We’re f…ked.

Foreclosure Nation: Houston, we have a problem.

From Reader Max, this from Bloomberg:

“The numbers are exploding due to unemployment and economic displacement,” said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of marketing at RealtyTrac. “We will see them get a lot worse unless we see some job creation.”

Initial jobless claims rose last week by 2,000 to 484,000, the highest in six months, Labor Department figures showed today. Unemployment is near a 27-year high at 9.5 percent. More than 4.4 million people are collecting unemployment benefits and almost 5.3 million are getting emergency and extended payments. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress on July 21 the outlook is “unusually uncertain.”

Chicago Jobs Disappear

Chicago lost 76,000 jobs in the year through June, the most in any metropolitan area tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Denver lost 18,900, Detroit 18,700. Employment dropped 4.1 percent in Grand Junction, Colorado, and 2.7 percent in Bend, Oregon, the data show.

Home seizures soared 822 percent in Idaho in the second quarter, and the state had the seventh-highest foreclosure rate, according to RealtyTrac. Boise’s median house price was $140,100 in the quarter, down 34 percent from the peak $212,800 in 2007, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday.

The metropolitan area, home to a third of Idaho’s 1.54 million residents, has been pummeled by housing-related construction and retail job losses, as well as layoffs at chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. and grocer Albertsons, said Michael Ferguson, the state’s chief economist.

Idaho’s jobless rate was 8.8 percent in July, up from 8.2 percent a year earlier and 2.9 percent in July 2007.

“This is an off-the-chart, extreme financial event,” Ferguson said. “I wasn’t around for the Depression, but in the last half century there has been nothing like this.”

Cows and Corn

In Charter Pointe, a development built on corn fields 11 miles from downtown, more than half of the homes listed for sale are bank-owned or “underwater,” meaning the property is worth less than the mortgage. Dairy cows wander in a nearby pen, and baling machines grind into the night.

“The neighbors aren’t used to living next to farming operations with manure and flies,” said Richard Murgoitio, who sold 70 acres to Hubble Homes Inc. in 2001 and would like to sell his remaining land to builders. “We’re hoping they take us all out, if the economy ever turns around.”

Micron, founded in Boise in 1978 with early investors including the late potato mogul J.R. Simplot, cut local production and 1,500 jobs last year as chip prices fell. The company has more than 5,000 full-time workers in the area, said Daniel Francisco, a Micron spokesman. It employed twice that number as recently as 2001, Ferguson said.

Budget Cuts

Albertsons cut its local payroll following a 2006 buyout by companies including Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Supervalu Inc. and private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP of New York. The acquisition ended seven decades of Boise ownership for the grocery chain and its plans for as many as 1,000 new hires, the state economist said.

Idaho lost 6.9 percent of its jobs from 2008 through 2009, compared with the 4.9 percent U.S. average, and its timber industry payrolls fell 38 percent, according to IHS Global.

Government workers and services haven’t been spared. The state budget, which peaked at $3 billion in 2008, dropped by a fifth to $2.38 billion in the fiscal 2011 year that began July 1. More than 200 positions were cut and furloughs imposed in agencies including health and welfare, tax collection and the attorney general’s office, Ferguson said.

The value of residential transactions in Ada County, which includes Boise, declined 62 percent in June from the peak four years earlier, multiple listings data show. Boise had the highest metro foreclosure rate outside California, Florida, Nevada or Arizona in the first six months of the year, RealtyTrac said.

Short Sale Sought

Holmes said her company, TitleOne Corp., is down to 80 employees from a high of 175 in 2007. Her lender, Bank of America Corp. of Charlotte, North Carolina, took the first step toward foreclosure in July.

Holmes, a divorced mother of two, put her house on the market in June and has applied for a federal program that offers incentives to loan servicers, investors and homeowners to complete short sales, in which the bank accepts less than what it is owed on the mortgage.

She’s asking $225,000 and hasn’t had an offer. A third of real estate listings in her area are distressed properties, with seven months of inventory on the market in Boise at her price.

“I was never raised to be in this position,” Holmes said, showing pictures of her 6-year-old granddaughter, as well as the oversize tub in her master bathroom. “I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

Bonds over Connecticut

Here’s a cryptic report that suggests trouble in Hartford but sheds no real light on the subject. I’m sure it doesn’t bode well for the state.

8 days to bomb Iran?

That’s John Bolton’s estimate, but he doesn’t think Israel (and its sponsor, the U.S,) will do it. Too bad.

NIMBYs stopping solar plant

NPR reports on “environmentalists” holding up a large solar plant in a California desert. I don’t blame the protestors – I resist change myself – but we can’t run this country on beanie propellers.

Eleven years later, hole in the ground begins construction

Greenwich Time has the story.

John Cooke’s sales statistics for Greenwich

Greenwich Time reports on John’s figures. John’s a great guy, and I’m sure his numbers are the same as I’ve reported here, but the article is more succinct.