Deep state? What deep state?

Former NY Fed president urges Central Bank to bring on recession to oust Trump

“I understand and support Fed officials’ desire to remain apolitical. But Trump’s ongoing attacks on [Fed Chairman Jay Powell] and on the institution have made that untenable,” Bill Dudley writes this week.

He adds, “Central bank officials face a choice: enable the Trump administration to continue down a disastrous path of trade war escalation, or send a clear signal that if the administration does so, the president, not the Fed, will bear the risks — including the risk of losing the next election.”

Remember: Dudley served as the president of the New York Fed for almost a decade (2009 to 2018, to be exact).

“There’s even an argument that the election itself falls within the Fed’s purview,” his op-ed concludes. “After all, Trump’s reelection arguably presents a threat to the U.S. and global economy, to the Fed’s independence and its ability to achieve its employment and inflation objectives.”

He adds, “If the goal of monetary policy is to achieve the best long-term economic outcome, then Fed officials should consider how their decisions will affect the political outcome in 2020.”

Intelligence services waiting out Trump

More than three months after President Trump granted his attorney general unprecedented power to declassify intelligence files, key U.S. intelligence agencies are still withholding documents related to the Trump-Russia affair, say people with direct knowledge of White House discussions on the subject.

The source of the logjam: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which Trump is in the process of shaking up after the resignations last month of its director, Dan Coats, and principal deputy, Sue Gordon. “Establishment” officials in that agency are still dragging their feet, say the sources, who spoke on condition that they not be further identified.

Mention of aged listings brought to mind 33 Meeting House Road

33 Meeting House Road

Out of curiosity, I checked to see whether 33 Meeting House is still available and by golly, it is. I’m not sure whether it’s our oldest listing, but it must be a contender for that unhappy prize, because it’s been on the market since April, 2008. Priced then at $8.995 million, it’s currently begging for $4.695, and it will surely fetch less when and if a buyer finally appears.

And it’s a nice house, too. The hurt was mostly done by Jimmy Licata’s House of Usher project at 24 Meeting House, and his ex-wife’s foreclosed home across from Jimmy’s. Both were locked into legal disputes since, I think, 2001, and slowly fell to pieces over the ensuing decades (Greenwich Time article on the story here, dated 2011). With those ruins flanking the approach, 33 has never really had a chance.

No. 24 was purchased from its foreclosing bank for $2.050 in November, 2017, and I’d thought it’d be razed and Meeting House’s approach would be made welcoming again but so far as I’ve heard (and I haven’t driven by to look), nothing’s been done.

Maybe someone should toss a pitch at 33 equal to its address: $3.3 million. Would the owner take it? Who knows, but eleven years of attempting to sell a no-longer-wanted home must be tiring.

24 Meeting House

(credit, Bob Luckey)

Well, you can't say it was met with a tidal wave of enthusiasm, but this Old Greenwich waterfront has finally found a buyer

15 E Point Lane, currently asking $4.9995 million, has a contract. It’s been for sale since July, 2012, when it was placed on the market at $7.8 million. The owners bought it new in 2005 for $5.1, and did no more than “merely” maintain it (maintaining waterfront is no easy chore), so I never understood that $7.8 price. Nice house, but as you can see from the picture below, it doesn’t command the same water views that its neighbor two doors up at 25 E. Point does. That one sold in 30 days in 2017 for $10-plus million. A much larger house, certainly, but also a much larger view.

15 E. Point (R), 25 E. Point (L)

Condos at Mel's place? WTF?

Go figure

A developer is trying to build 28 condominium units on the 75 acres up on (Okay, Old Mill) that once belonged to Mel Gibson. The Greenwich Time article makes no mention of any particular loophole the developers are using to advance this project, and I personally have no idea how, even with that much land, 28 units could be legally built here, so I asked my pal and founder of Lockwood & Mead Frank Farricker for his thoughts. Frank spent many years on our P&Z and knows all sorts of useful things about our peculiar zoning and regulatory practices. I summarize his response in the headline above, so you’re on your own here.

Without Israel to visit and the Muslim world now off limits, Ilhan Omar's tour itinerary is growing smaller

Having two husbands, one of them her brother, shouldn’t cause our prophetess of peace much trouble in the land of her people, but yesterday’s revelation that she’s also carrying on with someone else’s husband may give her pause before dropping by. They stone adulterers to death over there, and that’s said to be painful.

Endless loop video as he circles the drain

Bye by

And the soundtrack for that video:

Reminder: the minimum wage is always zero

Westport kayak operator turns turtle

After 15 years in business serving hundreds of thousands of paddling patrons from throughout the region, Downunder is closing its three Fairfield County locations after the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

The business had been struggling for several years, in tandem with the larger Connecticut economy and more recently in the wake of septic spills into the Saugatuck River that proved “the proverbial nail in the coffin,” owner Kim Hawkins told Hearst Connecticut Media on Tuesday.

Hawkins credits Downunder as the inspiration of Barbara Conroy, the former owner of the Rowayton Market, with the business starting as a boutique on the lower level of the market called Below Deck. In time, Downunder would expand to Darien and Westport, offering rentals, sales and lessons for kayaks and paddle boards, as well as summer camps for kids, naturalist tours, birthday parties, corporate events and other organized programs.

Things started to go south in 2016, however, with Hawkins noting the loss of corporate accounts moving out of state as well as some of its regular clientele. She added she had been trying to sell the business for several years, but that a few possible buyers turned away after septic spills into the Saugatuck River had customers questioning the safety of paddling. Hawkins cited Downunder managers Karen Jewell, Brenda Harrison and Nikki Fuentes for keeping the business running, particularly in the off-season the past three years when Hawkins has been living in California.

“It was very frustrating for all of us, but we hung in there, reducing expenses and trying to be innovative,” Hawkins said. “We started a ‘Paddle with a Pup’ program a few years ago ... A lot of people would come.”

In addition to its regular business, Hawkins has actively supported community charities, including the prominent Kayak for a Cause fundraiser that was held annually between 2001 and 2012, with hundreds of people raising some $2 million for varying nonprofits by kayaking across Long Island Sound.

The now-unemployed workers at these three stores will surely take comfort in reflecting that, had their employment continued, they’d have been awarded paid maternity/paternity leave, sick leave, “friends and relatives of employee” sick leave, and a pay raise to $15 per hour, all courtesy of their good-hearted legislators in Hartford, most of whom have never run a small business in their life.

Small businesses fail all the time, for all sorts of reasons (including the avoidance or abandonment of the state by large corporations who also support small businesses), but state-mandated expenses always hurt, and are often fatal. These remarks of House Minority Leader Themis Klarides regarding hiking the minimum wage to $15 sum it up nicely:

“Connecticut is among the most expensive places to live, it’s one of the most expensive and difficult places in the nation to run a business—stone cold facts that people who voted ‘yes’ tonight blatantly ignored. On top of that, they forced this through on the eve of rolling out a two-year state budget that’s heavy on not just middle class tax hikes, but one that also includes an insidious plan to burden the very people we need to help fire up economic recovery – small business owners.”

Pecksland Road closed

32 Pecksland Road, closed at $3.950 million. Gracious old 1929 home, a wee bit tired, that last sold for $5.2 million in 1997 (inflation-adjusted, that’d be $8,312,580). This time, it started at $7.2 million in 2017 dollars, and didn’t get it.

(Back in March, when the price had dropped into the $4s, reader Tulip predicted that the final selling price would start with a $3. And so it came to pass)

Was there a resurgence in land values while we were away?

406 Stanwich Road, a 2.61-acre building lot, sold for $1.2 million in January, and has been returned to the market today, unchanged, unimproved, at $2 million.

I’m sure there’s a hidden strategy here that I’m too dense to grasp.

Lower Cross contract

89 Lower Cross Road, asking $1.795 million. It was on the market for just 99 days, so it’s presumably going for close to that asking price. Train wreck aficionados may remember this site as one of the many Dominick DeVito-associated projects that went bust while Dom was in jail. Its concrete foundation, with a half-framed house atop and piles of rotting plywood scattered about the lot greeted passersby for years. Title reverted to the bank, eventually, and this owner paid $780,000 for it in 2015 and built this house.

I’m not a big fan of fiber-cement siding, and if I were to trade convenience for a house way up in the back country, I’d want more for a yard than weed-choked pond, but I’m particular that way.