As requested.
From the NYT:
The Housing Market Is Tilting Back Toward Buyers
Rukmini Callimachi, who covers real estate, polled five housing economists to report this story.
On the windswept coast of North Carolina, Ron Hertrich has spent months trying — and failing — to sell his parents’ 40-year-old beach house. He scrubbed off the old paint and repainted the walls a warm “shiitake beige.” He replaced the furniture, including a glass-top dining table with rattan legs, with something more modern.
When that didn’t work, he offered a $10,000 cash “incentive” that a prospective buyer could use as they pleased.
Despite all this, the condo — which sits 100 yards from the water line — has become a monument to the shifting tides of the real estate market. After just two showings in two months, his real estate agent advised him to take new pictures in an effort to relaunch the listing this spring.
The same thing happened hundreds of miles away in Atlanta, where Aimée Berry, 56, put her furniture in storage and lived in a perpetual state of readiness, only for a total of six people to come see her one-bedroom condo in six months.
“It was depressing,” she said, explaining that she too was advised to take her home off the market.
Make him a new thread, he doesn’t show up.
#1
Damn!
Chicago says:
February 26, 2026 at 8:39 am
RentL0rd says:
February 26, 2026 at 7:51 am
The new thread of life: leaving America
Rent: before you start a reflexive flagellation of the U.S., from the same article.
Says it all.
The bargain: The U.S. has larger salaries, mobile talent and millions of citizens craving a better life. Europe needs such workers—and their income—to prop up a pension system so top-heavy that French retirees now outearn working age adults, according to the Luxembourg Income Study, a research agency. European salaries are constrained by high taxes and low growth. Retailers, restaurants and real-estate agents want foreign clientele.
But America, it’s the land of the free. free to fuck children if you have enough money and power. then again it started by killing all of the buffalo, and using germ warfare against the indians.
The President and the CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which organises the annual Davos summit, has quit following speculation over his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Borge Brende said on Thursday he was stepping down, a few weeks after the forum launched an independent investigation into his relationship with the late sex offender.
Low hire, low firm environment appears to be the norm for 2026 b according to multiple CEO’s polled.
Chgo; I love Europe, but it has huge problems as you know. It is one thing to retire there, or spend a lot of time there when you retire. It is another thing to move there and work and raise a family there . I also question how many full-time remote jobs are out there now, that allow Americans to move to Europe, and for the ones that are, what happens if that changes, and you have to move back to the USA. As well the two big economies of Europe are struggling to say the least (Chad Powers can attest to that in Germany).
The WSJ article notes that a pensioner in France collects more in many cases than w working age adult. That says it all ,
Should be low hire, low fire environment.
Chicago downgraded to BBB-, long term outlook remains negative, not surprising,
It’s not the current state, but the near future.
America has taken a huge gamble with AI investment right now and no plan at all to take care of their citizens’ health in a meaningful way. So, by many standards we are on a run-away train that is overtaking Europe – and fast, heading towards the cliff. And, while we are at it, we are mocking the folks on the slower train.
I thought I have been a good community member here. I am sorry.
3b says:
February 26, 2026 at 9:20 am
Chicago downgraded to BBB-, long term outlook remains negative, not surprising,
Chicago; You just gotta get your shit together and try harder!!
Sounds about right. Numbers bear it out.
Millions of Americans have knowingly had sex while infected with a sexually transmitted disease, according to a survey.
A poll of US adults found 45 percent of Americans diagnosed with an STD have had sex without disclosing their status.
Of those who did not disclose their status, nearly six in ten said the encounter was unprotected, significantly increasing the risk of transmitting the infection.
A further 17 percent said they were aware they passed the STD to their partner, while overall, out of the nearly 8,000 people surveyed, one in ten admitted they knowingly gave their partner a disease, according to sexual health swabbing service Testing.com.
Computer monitored robots
HR said all remote employees must be “visibly active” on Teams during core hours.
The Kristy Noem defense
A Wyoming man who tortured and killed a wolf is set to dodge prison under a plea agreement.
Cody Roberts, 44, allegedly ran over a young wolf named Theia with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut, and brought it to the Green River Bar in Daniel, Wyoming, before killing it in February 2024.
Shortly after the incident, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department determined Roberts’ actions did not violate state animal cruelty laws.
Dark: Having an STD, and not disclosing it, is just absolutely shameful, and sadly maybe not that surprising.
Favorite actor who is named multiple times in the Epstein files but never cheated on the daughter he married.
Some guys are tit men. Some guys are leg men. Some guys are ass men.
Woody Allen is a family man.
Woody just being woody.
What’s happening with NVDIA?
42.96 billion in Q4 net income, more than double that of last years and yet stock gets slammed.
Other people: “Yen or Triss?”
Woody Allen: Aww Yiss. 😂
Other people: “Yen or Triss?”
Woody Allen: Aww Yiss. 😂
How Trump humiliated Jared Kushner for ruining daughter Ivanka’s chance at love with Tom Brady.
I guess Trump considers Brady as more “manly.”
Everything’s red but the VIX.
I suppose the SOTU show wasn’t to be believed?
Hmmmmmm.
3b , you would be surprised at the number of guys that go on a buddy trip to the Dominican Republic and sleep with their wife after.
As a side note if your wife is getting frequent UTI you probably have a dirty wee wee and should get tested.
And if your wife tests for HPV, you have a higher rate of prostate cancer.
I’ve proudly never cheated on my partner. I suppose this is why I am not fit for politics.
Though I not so proudly, did get a UTI once.
Mortgage rates fell below 6% this week for the first time in more than three years, welcome news for waves of house hunters heading into the busy spring home-buying season.
Yeah, but how thoroughly was the system stressed tested?
Libturd says:
February 26, 2026 at 11:53 am
I’ve proudly never cheated on my partner.
Germany is in very bad financial shape. This is effecting the entire EU because Germany has been the economic locomotive of Europe. Just look at the downward trend of the EU’s GDP over the last few years. High energy costs due to no more cheap energy from Russia as well as high taxes has caused German goods to be non competitive on the world market.
There is no digital nomad visa in Germany and for the most part remote work while a resident here working for a non German company is not permitted. If someone working for a non German company wants to work remotely here, then the company needs to adhere to German labour and tax laws. Very expensive so most companies won‘t do it.
Reference pensions, health insurance as well as long term are mandatory. Once those are deducted most retirees probably receive a pension of between 1,200 to 1,500 Euro. Not everyone here is a retired Siemens engineer! Salaries are much lower than in the US and taxes are high. The future is not looking bright across the entire EU. There is also a housing crisis in the EU.
You need to wipe front to back 🤣 Libturd says:
February 26, 2026 at 11:54 am
Though I not so proudly, did get a UTI once.
Chad
I’d suggest you make friends with the Russians.
Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.
Walking: Like I said disgusting and pathetic that a man or woman would cheat on their spouse and then sleep with their spouse afterwards. No conscience, no soul. If they want to that, they should just get divorced.
I bet at some point we will see articles on American returning home from Europe as it was not everything they thought it would be. If I had to guess more than a few move there without doing much research.
U.S. credit card debt hits a record of 1.28 trillion dollars.
3b – I have a CO worker who has his retirement banked in crypto and a beach town in Portugal. Something about crypto not taxed and easy transfer out of the US via a smartphone and USB thumb drive. I did not fully understand it, but this was when Bitcoin was at 110k. Not sure what it does to my is dream now
Does to his dream now.
Smalls, Gary,
You going?
https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0200636E071EEDD1
Walking: Your co worker was foolish. Why screw around like that with retirement money.
He works with Pumps.
A couple of years ago a rich client of mine was bragging about all the NFTs he bought for his grand kids.
He was supposed to retire, but changed his plans. I wonder why.
NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill booed at Devils game honoring US Olympic hockey hero Jack Hughes
https://nypost.com/2026/02/26/us-news/nj-gov-mikie-sherrill-booed-at-devils-game-honoring-jack-hughes-olympic-gold-medal/
re: “crypto not taxed?”
Tax evasion is not the same thing as not taxed.
D-Fens,
I saw it. Definitely a mixed response, but nothing like when Trump shows up and the boos are clear as day.
BREAKING!
LIVE
Updated
Feb. 26, 2026, 4:18 p.m. ET
4 minutes ago
Clinton Briefly Halts Epstein Deposition After Republican Leaks Photo.
Epstein Files: A closed-door deposition of Hillary Clinton before the House Oversight Committee was briefly interrupted when Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado leaked a photograph from inside the proceedings. Ms. Clinton had demanded a public hearing, which the Republicans who control the panel rejected, but after the leak she halted the proceedings to argue that reporters should be let in. The hearing eventually resumed
Feb. 26, 2026
Annie Karni
Reporting from Chappaqua, N.Y.
Representative Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, is now calling on the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer of Kentucky, to release a full transcript of Hillary Clinton’s deposition within 24 hours of its conclusion. He is asking that reporters be allowed into the room on Friday to hear former President Bill Clinton’s deposition. A spokeswoman for Comer has previously said the committee intends to release the full transcript and video, both unedited, but did not say when.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ekd4vb6b-4
Also keep in mind, many fans were chanting Hughes. But MAGA has a precedent of lying that goes unmatched.
Go back to your cave.
Remember, Crypto maybe taxed.
But AI agents never pay taxes.
BREAKING!
World Economic Forum Chief Resigns Over Epstein Ties.
Borge Brende, a former foreign minister of Norway, had maintained contact with the convicted sex offender.
Listen to this article · 3:27 min Learn more
By Amelia Nierenberg
Reporting from London
Feb. 26, 2026
Updated 2:07 p.m. ET
Borge Brende, the chief executive and president of the World Economic Forum, said on Thursday that he would resign, after an independent investigation by the group into his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
His resignation came less than a month after the release of the latest batch of files related to Mr. Epstein appeared to show that Mr. Brende, a former foreign minister of Norway, had stayed in contact with the disgraced American financier long after Mr. Epstein had been convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Just got off the phone with President Trump.
In our meeting earlier, I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning.
He has just informed me that she will be released imminently.
– Mayor Mamdani
Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts 2.0 Is a Risky Revival
A $150 million campaign to restore the run-down street that is host to many of the city’s performing-arts institutions is noble—but could well backfire.
By Michael J. Lewis
It was the immortal insight of Jane Jacobs’s classic 1961 book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” that urban planning always goes wrong when it ignores how people actually behave. We should remember this whenever we are offered a visionary plan, accompanied by inspirational prose, alluring drawings and the inevitably rosy calculations of benefits.
Jacobs’s insight will once again be put to the test. On Jan. 14 Philadelphia broke ground on a $150 million campaign to create “a world-class cultural boulevard and green civic destination.” Its focus is a one-mile stretch of South Broad Street known as the Avenue of the Arts. Although it contains two orchestra halls and several theaters, it currently gives you little reason to linger after the show. The street has a down-at-the-heels character, particularly in its southern end, and is badly in need of repair.
Things were worse in 1993, when the nonprofit Avenue of the Arts Inc. was formed to make common cause with the city’s various cultural institutions, which have clustered along Broad Street, Philadelphia’s principal north-south thoroughfare, since before the Civil War. Avenue of the Arts Inc. succeeded spectacularly during its early years, finding an ally in an uncommonly energetic mayor, Ed Rendell. Among other achievements, it helped build a new home for the Philadelphia Orchestra—Rafael Viñoly’s Kimmel Center—and several theaters, including the Wilma, designed by Hugh Hardy, the prominent theater architect. Today there are more theater seats in Philadelphia than in any other American city except New York.
Having lost momentum after this first flush of success, Avenue of the Arts Inc. found new life during Covid-19, which made all of us more aware of the deep need for human society. The decisive figure was Carl Dranoff, the real-estate developer responsible for four projects on the Avenue of the Arts. The newest is the 47-story Arthaus, a sleek residential tower designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. During the lockdown, while offering outdoor concerts on its seventh-floor patio, he noticed people gathering on the sidewalk below to listen. During an interview he told me that this made him realize that Broad Street had untapped potential, if only the street could be “reactivated.”
To this end, he commissioned a study by Gensler, the international design and construction firm, not only to restore the infrastructure of South Broad Street, but to reshape it in a way that gives it visual and social coherence. This will be achieved by installing “landscaped medians, seating, enhanced lighting, outdoor performance spaces, rotating public art, and sculptural elements.” The goal of AveArts 2.0, as the project is called, is to turn the street into “a green, pedestrian-centric boulevard.”
The most tangible effects will be the introduction of planters with native trees in the central median and along an expanded sidewalk that will create “pods,” 20-foot-long zones for street performances. New light poles with festive banners are to complement the trees in giving the street a sense of continuity. The results are appealing, at least in the renderings, but whether they will accomplish their ultimate goal—to make the area a pleasant destination for pedestrians—is quite another matter. For that to happen, commercial activity will need to supplement the cultural life, and restaurants can only do so much.
The sad truth is that Philadelphia’s commercial streets have been ailing for some years. Online shopping has ravaged retail in Center City (true Philadelphians do not say “downtown”), and it is not as if there is a surfeit of boutiques searching for fashionable new quarters. One of Jane Jacobs’s other insights is that a city’s most vibrant neighborhoods have a mix of new and old buildings, because it is the low-rent older ones that let the entrepreneur take risks and try something new.
It may be that the very factors that make a tree-lined boulevard so lovely are at odds with commercial activity. The aptly named Broad Street is 100 feet across, permitting 20-foot-wide sidewalks on either side. The benefits of expanding them to accommodate pop-up performances must be weighed against the cost of paring down two side lanes that are variously used for parking, loading buses and turning—functions that may seem superfluous but are indispensable in a street lined with performance venues and hotels, with constant passenger drop-offs and pickups. A traffic bottleneck does business no good.
A city is an infinitely complex organism, where commerce, urban amenities, street traffic and pedestrian life interact in mysterious ways. Decisions made with the noblest of ideals can have unintended consequences. Philadelphia has been here before. In 1975, on the eve of another national anniversary, the city created the Transitway, a sweeping transformation of Chestnut Street—then the city’s most successful commercial corridor. It would be closed to automobile traffic during working hours, with the exception of buses, turning it into a pedestrian mall by day. After an initial flourish of activity, commercial life declined. Ultimately, it succeeded only in shifting business a block south. A few decades later, the Transitway was abandoned, traffic resumed, and the concrete planters with their shriveled pear trees and ginkgoes were quietly removed.
The die is now cast for AveArts 2.0. The first block will see its new landscaped median installed by June 15, a hard deadline as Philadelphia will be hosting the World Cup and the 250th anniversary of American independence this summer—after which work will resume on the sidewalks and continue, block by block, over the next 10 years. At this point we have to cross our fingers that the Avenue of the Arts will be the city’s Champs-Élysées, as Mr. Dranoff hopes, and not Transitway 2.0.
I knowBroad Street well. I always found it a strange road as it’s really wide, but lined with a lot of art deco architecture to go with many empty and abandoned commercial space. There are quite a number of hipster homes there, so this project actually has a chance of being successful. Philly is a weird city in that there are lots of pockets of nice areas spread sporadically throughout the city. Fishtown was a recent crime infested neighborhood turned fancy due to the hipster/craft restaurant effect for example. East Passyunk too is reviving in a similar fashion. If they are talking Broad Street closer to Center City, then they are fixing up an area that’s already quite desirable. Broad Street is a strange road in that they left the center of the five lanes free to park in. Only place I’ve ever seen this.
https://www.avenueofthearts.org/
Yeah, it’s Center City. It should do quite well. If you look at the area around the Reading Market by Chinatown, its a huge tourist area.
Lib, I did snort when you say I worked with pumps. The guy is definitely a prepper and spends time remotely out Maine off the grid. So I sort of listened and agreed , while making sure I’m not a target if he flips one day.
As for the tax evasion, I did just Google what Portugal Bitcoin benefits are and apparently if Bitcoin is held for more than a year Portugal does not tax any gains. Im sure there are other issues with being an expat or dual citizenship or just doing a long term stay there and not paying US taxes.
Not my plan so I’m not that intested
“Arrival bias”. The guy who wrote this article doesn’t know Grim.
https://news.amecopress.net/according-to-psychologists-people-who-grew-up-in-the-80s-and-90s-have-developed-the-arrival-bias-from-having-been-raised-on-stories-that-always-end-well/
My bad. It’s a woman author. Not sure who did the research – but that’s not the point.
We’re post-peak happiness.
We should all start embracing the Amish lifestyle, it’s what the future holds for us.
Going to learn how to sew pants out of scrap cloth, so I can be useful in the new era.
Well, and booze, we’re going to need a lot of booze.
I know how to shoe horses.
Grim, too bad you will be shunned.
Stu: my daughter spent three weeks last summer at Rock.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/r4JL3ntUEAiDQcaK7?g_st=ic
Saw Broad down to Washington. Interesting mix. They have leveled ENTIRE city blocks and put up luxury apartments. I’m talking glass buildings. Massive gentrification.
https://liveonethousandone.com/?utm_campaign=gmb&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=local
A lot of people don’t realize the declines in stocks have happened beneath the indices. Buy treasuries bros.
I head down to the Italian Market every 2 months or so in Philly. I load up on Cheese from Claudio/DiBruno and Bread from Sarcones that I freeze.
Lib will tell you, they have the best sandwiches ever in that area. Veggie Hoagie from Antonios (formerly Chickies) is off the charts good. Around the corner, Ricci’s Hoagies, the Italian is amazing. While tourists are going to Pats/Genos, these places are the next block over.