Microsoft News, "Trusted news from the world's best journalists", claims that those filthy Jews, the Rothschilds are sitting on 700 trillion bucks.

That would be three times the world's total estimated wealth, combined, but is there anything those Jews can't, and won't do to hide their perfidy? 

The world's richest families' staggering wealth

Rothschild family: net worth estimated at up to $700 trillion

One of the wealthiest and most influential families in the world, the banking dynasty was founded in the 1760s. Because the family’s wealth is private, it’s difficult to ascertain its net worth – estimates range all the way up to a staggering $700 trillion, split between legions of descendants. The philanthropic clan has interests in real estate, art and wine.

It astonished me when it sold for $3.850 in 2003, and it continues to surprise me now

14 Mountain Wood Drive, currently asking $3.485 (down from its original March, 2017 asking price of $4.495) finally reports a contract. I didn't understand that 2003 purchase price for this nondescript, 1977 house, and notwithstanding the current owners expanding it by a third and renovating all of it, I still don't get it. 

De gustibus non est disputandum

circa 2018

And what it looked like in 2003, when it sold for $3.850 million. Go figure.

Almost a year ago, after he'd taken yet another price cut, I warned the then-listing agent that he'd misstaged it, but he ignored my advice.

Virtue signalling in Greenwich also means control of the masses. "We Have to Regulate Every Aspect of People's Lives"

A local Greenwich advocacy group, having managed to solve the non-existent problem of plastic shopping bags, has turned its attention to the latest media craze, the plastic drinking straw, a national frenzy that uses a figure of 500 million discarded straws a day — a statistic arrived at by a 9-year-old boy doing a school paper. I kid you not. 

There's been plenty of debunking of this latest hysteria (including the fact that the U.S. generates 1% of the world's plastic waste, while 90% of the plastic that's ending up in our oceans comes from just 10 rivers in the world, all of which serve as sewers for the poorest cities in Africa and Asia), but to virtue signalers, that's irrelevant: it's all about establishing moral authority over the little people. And, of course, shining a golden glow on their own purity and, as one of them puts it, "forward thinking".

“What does your town want to be? Taking a chance of polluting your environment? Or forward thinking and innovative? When the whole world is addressing plastic pollution, why wouldn’t Greenwich be right up there, too?” asked Jeanine Behr Getz of BYO.

Here's what's really behind the attitude and ambition of this crowd:

In Santa Barbara, where that city just enacted its own ban on plastic straws, a councilman gave the game way for himself, and like-minded people, including those here in Greenwich.

“A little noticed detail in Santa Barbara’s recent drive to criminalize plastic straws, which culminated in the Santa Barbara city council taking testimony from a nine-year-old about the planetary menace, has come to light in recent days. During that council session, councilman Jesse Dominguez said the following in response to citizens who asked “what’s next?”:

“Unfortunately, common sense is just not common. We have to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.”
”

Just out of curiosity, I looked up the addresses of two of these social justice warriors and, not surprisingly, they turn out to live in two very comfortable, spacious homes, neither of which would seem likely to be candidates for "low carbon footprint" awards.

One is 4,785 sq.ft., 3 acres in the R-2 zone, oil heat, with an in ground pool; estimated vale, $3.5 million (it's located in an area of town that's seen some severe drops in value in recent years — judging from other details available on the Internet, the lady and her husband can take the hit). The other advocate's home is larger: 9, 800 square feet, hot tub and spa in addition to the mandatory pool, six bedrooms, 7 1/2 baths. Estimated value, $5.5 million.

I don't begrudge these ladies their homes — who doesn't wish to live in a nice house? — but I do resent a couple of very wealthy women instructing the rest of us to do without, as they term it, "convenience" so that they can position themselves as leaders of the new order. If they wish to eliminate convenience, for instance, maybe they should stop heating their pools, fill them in, and bicycle down to the new Byram Pool to join the equally-inconvenienced proletariat on hot summer days.

People who live in stone mansions shouldn't throw plastic straws at the rest of us simply to show that "they care".

OMG, my grandfather dated a cultural approrpriater!

Plucked eyebrows are now considered to be the exclusive property of Mexican Americans.

According to a piece in Marie Claire, deciding to pluck your eyebrows so that they are very thin is “problematic” and “cultural appropriation.”

The author, Krystyna Chávez, explained that she was absolutely horrified when she saw a photo of Rihanna with skinny eyebrows.

“When I saw Rihanna on the cover of British Vogue this week with a set of ultra-skinny brows, my immediate reaction was, ‘Wait, WTF?’” Chávez writes in a piece titled “I’m Latina, and I Find Rihanna’s Skinny Brows Problematic.” “Why is Rihanna wearing chola brows?”

“Considering it was highly unlikely that Rihanna had suddenly joined a gang, and seeing as the Caribbean singer wasn’t exactly raised on the streets of East L.A., my Mexican-American heart was deeply confused, and deeply annoyed,” Chávez continued.

About as asinine, ignorant and arrogant as modern-day blacks appropriating dreadlocks as their own, despite a history of braided hair dating as far back to 3,600 B.C..

The pervert should have restricted his activities to Target's former ladies rooms

One Jorge Iberra caught snapping pictures up teens' skirts while they shopped at Target. Target, you may remember, just last year opened its female bathrooms to all men, just so long as they "identified" as women. "Nothing to worry about", it assured its customers. Under Target's new rules, Iberra could not have been prevented from entering the bathroom, or using a stall and staying there, unless and until he was caught using his camera.

Target may soon find itself as uncomfortable as Planet Fitness,which just suffered an appellate court decision allowing a woman to sue the company for not informing its female members that they would henceforth be showering with naked men brandishing penises.

Onward and upward.

This latest price cut might do it: we'll see

10 Hillside Drive — the other Hillside Drive; this one's in Rock Ridge — has dropped to $4.950 million. A 1905 mansion, reasonably updated, on 2 acres within easy walking distance of Greenwich Avenue, yet it offers another example of overpricing when first starting off in an attempt to sell a house.

Back in 2011 I had a client who very much wanted an older house in this neighborhood, and she was struck by this one when we toured it. But it needed too much work to justify its then-price tag of $6.395, so  we moved on. Chalk up one lost sale.

The new price of $5 million might have made this property attractive back then, but after sitting unloved on the market for seven years, can you blame a buyer for hesitating at buying a house no-one else has wanted, for years?

All that said, Rock Ridge is a great, expensive neighborhood, so it wouldn't surprise me if a buyer who loves old homes decides to take a chance and grab this at, say, $4.5ish?
 

Property taxes hit home in Westchester

From Blumberg's Oshrat Carmiel: Home prices falling

“This has become a summer of discontent for those trying to sell their homes in New York City’s leafy suburbs — in no small part because of the Trump administration.

In affluent enclaves in Westchester County, New Jersey and Connecticut, a federal cap on state and local property tax deductions has begun to bite hard. Longtime homeowners who dreamed of offloading their empty nests are finding their plans complicated by the tax bill, as would-be buyers hold back, expecting sellers to cut their prices.

The issue is especially acute in areas of Westchester, the county with the nation’s highest-property taxes, where annual bills of $35,000, $50,000 and more are not uncommon.”

Read the whole article. Basically, sales are down, prices being cut, as potential buyers balk.

(I'll be traveling today, so no more blogging. Back tomorrow)

I'm not being (particularly) lazy, there's just little to report during the dog days of summer

Mostly rentals, but here are three significant sales:

17 Midwood Drive (off Glenville Road), $4.125 million, asking price $4.2, contract in 19 days. Different experience for the previous owners, who listed it in December, 2015 for $4.195 and sold it in June, 2016 for $3.650. Other than finishing the basements fairly inexpensive improvement, not much was done here.

25 Grove Lane

On the other hand, 25 Grove Lane is a 1979 house that was pretty much completely redone in 2014. Listed at $2.2 million, it found a buyer i just 19 days, for full price. I'm not wild about the house itself, but it sits on 2.5 acres (one-acre one), on a great street close to town, and that should certainly command a premium.

7 Wynn

7 Wynn Lane, asked $4.995 million, sold today (60 days on market) for $4.8. This sold for $4.145 in 2012, after a long period (years) on the market, but it needed significant work, both mechanical and interior renovation, to bring it up to speed. These owners did that, and got their price. Good for them.

Trump Derangement Syndrome approaches its apex

People are literally signing up to donate their organs to Justice Ruth Ginsburg.

I'm not a huge fan of the Justice, but I certainly don't wish her ill, and if she can stay healthy and active for another five years and retire at 90, as is her stated wish, well good for her. 

But as Amelia Hamilton suggests in her linked-to post, "If the Supreme Court is so important you are willing to die for one of the justices, the government is officially too intrusive. It’s time to vote for smaller government, not give up your literal organs."

I was wrong, you readers were right

When 2 Dewart Road hit the market last February, I wrote that its $4.750 price "didn't seem unreasonable". Readers vehemently disagreed.

Toady it's been marked down to $3.795 million. 2000 price: $3.195