Conde Nast cutting staff.

Readership and advertising is off and many people are cheering. Not me, because I have friends who work there, but I long since stopped subscribing. The comments to the article announcing the cuts all seem to be from former subscribers to the New Yorker and Vanity Fair who cancelled their subscriptions after both magazines tilted entirely to the left.
A typical comment:

It is a curious thing, how about fifty percent of the reading public is right-center, and how 100% of the publishing world goes to such strenuous efforts to insult the right-center. You've willfully alienated half of your potential customers with your incessant lobbying and condescending, contemptuous editorial attitude. 5% is only the beginning.

No fear of that here! Well, no fear of tilting to the left - condescension and contempt, we can do.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel?

Here are some folks who think it's time to invest in stocks. Makes sense to me, but what about Greenwich real estate? I remain cautious.

No doubt about it, Greenwich prices have softened but, with the exception of some spec houses and a few anxious owners, the price reductions so far aren't stirring many buyers into action and I don't believe they should. Even many of the massive cuts I've seen recently are simply lowering properties to where they should have been when they were first listed a year (or more) ago - they still don't reflect current market conditions.

I do disagree with some of my readers, though, who think that, just as stocks are trading for ten cents on the dollar houses should too. That's not going to happen or, if it does, you won't want to live in Greenwich anyway. I'd be on the lookout for prices that are, and this really is just a top of the head guess, 20% off three years' ago prices. There's bound to be a floor out there somewhere and I do hope that we'd be approaching that floor at that level. If I'm wrong, as is so often the case, well hey - you'll still be living in a great house that you wouldn't have been able to afford in 2005, so you can enjoy your new digs, including that swimming pool and tennis court, while you wait the market out. How bad is that?

Relax, Dickie, it's nothing personal

Scientists say urge to punish is instinctual.

“The urge to take revenge or punish cheaters,” said Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and author of the book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct,” “is not a disease or toxin or sign that something has gone wrong. From the point of view of evolution, it’s not a problem but a solution.
The downside of these instincts, Dr. McCullough added, “is that they often promote behavior that turns out to be spiteful in the long run.”

Darn it, there's always a downside!