Crazy as a loon

Everyone’s favorite group they love to hate is back with still more inanity: PETA equates American Kennel Club with KKK

From the capital of dumb ideas, perhaps the dumbest ever

Here’s a Congressman who wants to take state pension funds, already grossly underfunded, technically bankrupt and heading for a financial disaster that will make the present fiscal crisis look like a day in the park and force them to buy banks’ worthless assets. That way we can postpone doing anything to solve the banks problems and hasten the day for the collapse of all fifty state governments. This is what passes for wisdom down there. Pray for our children.

Realogy: “I will survive!” (2009, anyway)

Realogy disputes the idea that it’ll go bankrupt, this year. Good for them – right now, polyester blazers are a drag on the market.

Who needs oil when we have propeller beanies?

Interior Department shuts down offshore oil exploration. I think this must be the open hand of friendship we’re now going to extend to our friends in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Wunnerful.

And who asked you, Microsoft?

Gates: Obama to decide on Afghan troop levels soon. As a Mac guy, this disturbs me.

Does a bear belong in the woods?

(some) Boston College professors are shocked and outraged to discover crucifixes in their classrooms. Some kind of attack on academic freedom, I suppose, but I don’t know – when I attended BC there were certainly crucifixes in most classrooms, I can’t say that I actually conducted an inventory but there were certainly plenty around and I, a non-Catholic, wasn’t as surprised as these professors are to see them there. Boston College is, as I understand it, a Jesuit institution and the Jesuits seem to have some kind of connection with the Catholic Church. Go figure.

Hat tip: Bovina Bloviator

Contracts

18 Baliwick Woods

Two contracts reported today. One, a little cape in Havemeyer Park will be of interest when we see what it sold for – last ask was $895 but these days ….

Then there’s this one on Baliwick. It’s gone to contract somewhere below, I assume, its last asking price of $1.275 million. It’s been for sale since March, 2007, when it started at $1.875. I realize that we’ve seen some upheaval in the market since then but when the last price is just 68% of the first price, a suspicion arises that the first price was overly aggressive. It certainly would be today.

Okay, a little good news for Greenwich residents

All that bulldozing around the clambake area at Tod’s is not, as I feared, yet another Kiwana’s “improvement” but the second stage of a long term plan to rid the Point of invasive species. Next would be Ned Cole, I suppose.

Chris Dodd – Scoundrel Time

Instapundit and the Hartford Courant are both doing a fine job exposing this blowhard’s crooked ways, but here’s a nice illustration of how our Senator’s “coming clean by cleaning up” refinancing deal saved him $7,000 plus a year. He waited to disavow the Countrywide sweetheart deal until after rates had dropped below he’d received as a favor and he still refuses to release the paperwork on those loans, despite promising to do so months ago. I’m beginning to think that the fellow isn’t on the up=and-up!

Uh oh – turns out there is no plan

Wall Street’s been hanging around the past week or so waiting for the Obama plan that was going to save the economy. I don’t what the folks were hoping for but they got nothing: there is no plan. That’s rather disturbing and the market is responding appropriately: it’s tanking.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which ended little changed on Monday as investors awaited action on the bailout and the economic stimulus package, was off about 307 points, or 3.7%, at 7963. Bank of America was its weakest stock, dropping by about 14%, and Citigroup was off by more than 10%. But all 30 of the blue-chip average’s components were in the red.

The S&P 500 was off 3.6% at 838, with financials down 6.2%. The Nasdaq Composite Index was off 2.8%, at 1547.

…. Despite the forceful words, Mr. Geithner noted his office was still exploring options and details for an asset value program, with little answer on what to do about banks’ toxic assets. 

We’re only a few weeks into this and it seems as though the new president is in over his head. I was thinking something along those lines this morning as I toured the scanty ranks of broker open house showings. I may have been seeing the last hurrah of dreamland prices, based on the Greenwich of old. I may never see their like again. I’ve been pretty calm about all this mess but the revelation that the leaders of my country are truly clueless is scaring me..

We don' need no stinkin' plan!

Talking down the local market

46 Terrace Ave. Rvsd

This house was sold as a shell for $902,000 in December 2003. The buyer gutted it, renovated it and resold it seven months later in July, 2004 for $1.775 million. That buyer sold it in August ’07 for $1.925 and now it’s been placed back up for sale, first at $1.850 and, today, for $1.745 – below its 2004 price. I, of course, take full responsibility for this unhappy result. If only I didn’t write about falling prices buyers would not only be paying 2007 prices they’d be happy to pay even more, all for the privilege of living in Greenwich.

I knew about the power of this blog, naturally, but even I was surprised to see that I’ve infected our new president with my pessimism. Here is what he said yesterday,which should do nothing to help the current climate of fear. Had he not read this blog, we could have expected a sunny prediction of good times to come:

And if there’s anyone out there who still doesn’t believe this constitutes a full-blown crisis, I suggest speaking to one of the millions of Americans whose lives have been turned upside-down because they don’t know where their next paycheck is coming from.

That’s scary enough but the man continued with this bit of economic wisdom that really alarmed me.

It is only government that can break the vicious cycle, where lost jobs lead to people spending less money, which leads to even more layoffs. And breaking that cycle is exactly what the plan that’s moving through Congress is designed to do.

I know that I attended the University of Connecticut Law School while our president’s degree is from Harvard, but somehow I seemed to have learned a little economics along the way while his career as a community organizer seems to have closed off that path of learning. Too bad for all of us. Would you go out and buy a house today with an expectation that its value would remain steady or increase in the coming year? I wouldn’t.

Tucker’s Horse Farm – going once …

(A little) more on the pending sale of Fairfield Greenwich Group co-partner Jeff Tucker’s sale of his Saratoga horse farm, this time from an Albany newspaper. (Amusing that the New York Post should beat a local paper to the story, eh?). When the Madoff scam first exploded in December Tucker allowed as he’d have to sell off his horses but now the landunderneath them is going too. Of course, what good’s a horse farm without horses?, so this makes sense.

One clarification: “It is absolutely not true,” Tucker told the Albany Times Union, “that any of Walt and Monica’s daughters are part of this sale. Or at least, that’s not anticipated at this time.”

“Natural” remedies laced with drugs

Thanks to a law passed by Congress in 1994 the FDA is denied jurisdiction over food supplements and weight-loss remedies until after these products are in the marketplace. No inspection or review while the Californian organic crowd picks wildflowers and woodsy bark and concocts their organic elixirs – or so went the theory. In practice, much of this junk is mixed up in China, home of lead-paint-soaked toys and poisoned milk. Now the FDA has inspected some all-natural diet supplements already in widespread distribution and surprise! This stuff can kill you. Which amuses me because, judging from the hysterical mommies I see buying this unexamined, unregulated crap in drug stores and supermarkets, the consumer of this stuff would never buy her precious children anything containing, say, high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fats, or whatever evil ingredient the local news had run a scare story on the night before. Duh.