Friday Lite - R.I.P.

This will be the last edition of Friday Lite. As things are changing a bit around here - more frequent, mostly shorter posts (or at least an attempt at brevity) - the whole idea doesn't make as much sense as it used to.

As part of the once-a-day routine, the Friday post was intended to cap off the week with a series of shorter, lighter pieces and then the normal fare would reappear on Monday morning.

Since that routine has been broken and fingers are tapping on the keyboard here for what seems like 24 hours a day, seven days a week, continuing the year-long tradition no longer fits in.

Yes, it was almost one year ago today that the very first Friday Lite appeared:

With the week almost done, bracing for a weekend of retrospectives and next week's perhaps tumultuous conclusion of Alan Greenspan's long career as head of the world's most important central bank, there are but a few unrelated items to share today.

Uh, ahem - excuse me while I step away from the keyboard for a moment...

OK, one last time and very litely...

Friday Lite - One Last Check of the Search Engines

One last check of search engine results for the phrase "Friday Lite" shows the real reason why the regular Friday fare is being discontinued.

Two women have thwarted all attempts at dominating the search phrase "Friday Lite" since that goal was first set and then achieved last year.

It was believed that simple repetition would do the trick, but apparently website traffic is much more important - an August archive from Michelle Malkin (left) sits in the top spot at Google while the number one position at MSN is held by her (right).

Final rankings for Friday Lite here: #2 at Google, #1 and #2 at Yahoo!, and #2 at MSN.

Yahoo!

Home Prices are Falling (and not just 1.3 percent)

The drop in sales prices for real estate seems to be accelerating in these parts. Tens of thousands of dollars now seem to be casually lopped off of what a buyer asks or accepts and For Sale signs are blooming rather early, two months before the arrival of spring.

A young real estate salesman was seen setting up an "Open House" sign at noon on a Wednesday the other day. He appeared bright-eyed and bushy-tailed which was more than could be said for the sales reps at the local master-planned community that looks to be about 30 percent built and 10 percent occupied.

Not far from here an 1800 residence community with schools, shopping, parks, and an assortment of other infrastructure seems to have been stopped dead in its tracks. When the wind whips up, dust flies and tumbleweeds blow through while the few residents who call it home seem to walk around with a dazed look.

It was not more than four or five months ago that the sales office was visited to have a gander at some of the 2,200 to 2,400 square foot homes - just out of curiosity. Not long ago, the builder's price sheet was full of numbers starting with sevens and the incentive package was only four digits.

Yesterday, the price list showed numbers like $646, 625 and $654,600 along with an additional $15,000 in incentives. The local paper was right - ten to twenty percent down from last summer's prices.

MLS-2

Patrick Boyle, head of the new real estate information service MLS-2, sent mail the other day about their new software that, among other things, provides keyword searches for real estate sales listings. Here's a screenshot of how you can quickly find motivated sellers, highly motivated sellers, and sellers so desperate that they'll probably accept just about any offer with six figures.
In the press release Patrick noted, "In today's real estate market, many buyers are looking for deals. For these buyers, MLS-2.com allows them to search a complete MLS database of homes specifically for bargains, in new and unique ways."

Currently MLS-2 covers seven counties in the greater SF Bay Area, but may be coming to a county near you.

Is Someone Expecting Something Bad to Happen?

Signing up to get news or alerts from different organizations sometime results in interesting things showing up in your inbox. For example, yesterday a message from the Kansas City Fed showed up with the following subject line:

Test Your Discount Window Access for Contingency or Liquidity Purposes

Here's the message body:

Institutions are encouraged to periodically test their ability to borrow at the Discount Window to ensure there are no unexpected impediments or complications. For more information visit http://www.kc.frb.org/CRM/DiscountWindow/Discountwindow.htm to perform the test.

Here's what you see when you click on the link:
Having neither an institution or a contingency/liquidity plan, it's hard to come away from this feeling anything other than a bit unsettled as to why others are urged to conduct a test on theirs.

Is someone expecting something bad to happen?

The Thin White Duke is Now a Sexagenarian

David Bowie turned 60 the other day and yes, someone between the ages of 60 and 69 is indeed a sexagenarian (the younger age brackets sound even more strange). The story about the song TVC15 is probably typical of his early years.

TVC15 was a single by David Bowie.

The song was inspired by Iggy Pop who, during a drug-fuelled period at Bowie’s LA home, hallucinated and believed that the television set was swallowing his girlfriend.

Beyond oblique mentions to absorption via television, the lyrics are largely nonsensical. Bowie himself hasn’t been able to shed any light on their meaning beyond the Pop anecdote, having very limited recollection of the Station to Station sessions. The 1983 film Videodrome explores similar themes.

Whenever Under Pressure comes on the radio, the volume gets turned up - it's a conditioned response.