A Visual Drive On Scenic Route 22 - Bedford to Katonah

Here is a video to brighten up the Winter blahs!

A visual drive on scenic Route 22 from Bedford to Katonah.

This video (which as of today has been viewed 4,000 Plus times on Youtube) was done by
atmasphere Katonah, NY - http://www.atmasphere.net/wp

Have Cabin Fever Need To Get Away?

Have cabin fever need to get away? TripTouch, is a service meant to be an aid for travelers.

TripTouch claims to cover more than 4,000 destinations worldwide in its database - through basic blogging software.

Katonah is included as a destination and gives a good overview of the village.

Furthermore, the website allows users to invite friends to follow and/or share in a journey, as well as find fellow TripTouch fans to interact with, and even meet in various places.

TripTouch is something to try if you happen to be in the market to go places - worldwide or a couple of hours away.

Democratic Primary Candidates Sproutbuilder Update

Sproutbuilder.com is a website that enables anyone to build great content online. I have been playing around with it this weekend (as a beta tester) and I think it is very easy to use.

The end product you create is called a sprout that you can share with anyone on the net.

Update: on 2/8/08 I updated the sprout widget to include a news feed and daily gallup poll updates:

2/8/08 According to Time, McCain and Clinton would be in a dead heat 46% to 46% but Obama would overwhelmingly beat McCain 48% to 41%, suggesting that Obama is more electable than Clinton.

But according to the Democratic national polls, Clinton is the most likely nominee.





Here is the link to find out more about sproutbuilder what I think is a fantastic online tool.


Comments welcome.

The Worst Market Crisis in 60 Years By George Soros

Katonah resident George Soros has just published in the The Financial Times a
very insightful piece on why we are where we are with regard to the current financial crisis that seems to be going into deeper free fall.

The equity market sucks.
Where does one put their money to invest? Bonds don't seem a safe haven in the current financial environment.

IS IT SAFE ANYWHERE TO INVESTMENT (Soros seems to have an answer - outside of the U.S)




Here is the piece in the FT.

The worst market crisis in 60 years

By George Soros

Published: January 22 2008 19:57 | Last updated: January 22 2008 19:57

The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.

Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case.

Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.

The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.

Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks’ commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.

Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.

The writer is chairman of Soros Fund Management

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Here is the link to the FT piece.

Comments welcome.

Think Green Locally For 2008

Here is an excellent New Years resolution for 2008.With all the concern about global warming here is something you can do on a local level to be part of the solution. Earth911.org is an excellent resource for ideas and how to's in helping you and your family on a local level do your part in keeping the earth green.

Happy New Year!

Holiday Treat - A Big List Of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff

Here is a link to a big list of sites that teach you how to do stuff on the Internet.
This ia a great way to enjoy the holidays in a leisure way and learn something new in the process. Enjoy the Holidays.

I belated Merry Christmas. Enjoy this little Merry Christmas animation!

Neighbor's View: An Interview With George Soros

Katonah resident, George Soros in conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussing his book The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror and other domestic and world view opinions as part of the Authors@Google series.

This conversation took place on August 9, 2006, at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Free Books on The Internet - Early Holiday Present

I just came across this and thought I would share it with readers of this blog.

I think it is really neat.. you can download these books for FREE! Seems to be no hidden agenda going on.

It is like a virtual bookstore for FREE!

Here is is the site: wowio.com


Comments welcome.

Chief Katonah (Song For Marthat Stewart) Download

Katonah resident and singer Marc Black's "Chief Katonah(Song For Martha Steward)" - a take on the Katonah Trademark issue - can be sampled/downloaded from here:




On a serious note (excuse the pun) Marc is an accomplished musical artist.

Check out his website to listen to some of his work.

Katonah "Trademark" Dispute Settled

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., the Katonah Village Improvement Society, Katonah Paint and Hardware, Inc. and Katonah Architectural Hardware Ltd. have reached an amicable resolution to their trademark dispute.

Here is the link to a joint statement.

Halloween Day Sightings

Here are Halloween Day Sightings in the neighborhood.

Halloween Night Sightings

Here are some Halloween Night sightings in the neighborhood.

Katonah Area Fall Foliage Update

Katonah area is still seeing low levels of color change and are at midpoint.

New York Fall Foliage Forecast

Week of October 10-16 2007

In the Katonah Area green leaves still predominate with hints of red and orange beginning to emerge.

Katonah Avg Home Sale Price Highest In New York State

According to the 2007 Coldwell Banker ® Home Price Comparison Index (HPCI) released September 26, 2007, in the New York markets surveyed, Katonah ranked as the most expensive with Rye ranking as a close second.

According to the HPCI, the average home sale price of a home in Katonah is $904,750.


Here is the link.

Presently, Realtor.com list 119 available properties in the Katonah zip code (10536) ranging in price from $477,777 to $9,985,000.

An instant appraisal (two) of your home can be determine at Yahoo Real Estate.

Since it is an "instance appraisal" your real home value will vary - more likely downward.

Local realtors can be very helpful in establishing your real home value in today's real estate market.

MARTHA STEWART SONG BY MARC BLACK (ascap)

Here is the Martha Stewart video song by Marc Black (Katonah resident) that is getting a lot of views (28,000 plus) on YouTube (posted about a week ago). Runs a little over 6 minutes.



Here is a link to Marc Black's website.

KVIS Campaign - Nobody Owns Katonah

Katonah Village Improvement Society has underway a campaign to prevent the name of Katonah from becoming a registered trademark of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc.

If you would like to help their efforts to block the trademark applications by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia you can send a contribution made payable to KVIS:

Nobody Owns Katonah
Katonah Village Improvement Society
PO Box 263
Katonah, NY 10536

Here is the link for more info on the KVIS campaign.

1914 Children's Book With Katonah Poem Up For Sale on Ebay

The book is Grandma's Country Life Stories for the Children, by Mrs. Emmet Smith, put out by the Methodist Book Concern, New York, 1914. The first poem is titled Katonah, and it is a poem to that town.

Named from tribe, and Indian chieftain, In the Valley of the Croton, With its lakes and sparkling water, and its hills and towering summits, and its roadways, so inviting, With their flowering shrubs and grass plots, Such is beautiful Katonah.

Here is the ebay link auction ends June 7th.

About the Indian Chieftain:

Chief Katonah

Chief Katonah was a Native American tribal chief from whom the land of the town of Bedford, New York was purchased. The hamlet of Katonah, New York, located within Bedford, is named for him.

Chief Katonah lived in the area in the late seventeenth century. Records show that in 1680 he sold local land to settlers. Legend has it that he died of grief after his wife, Cantitoe, and their son were killed by lightning. Chief Katonah is said to be buried with his wife and son in Katonah Woods, off Rt. 22. The Chief, as the story is told, is said to be buried beneath a giant boulder, and his wife and son are buried beneath two smaller immediatley ajacent boulders. It is said that on a warm summers night, when the moon is full, you can hear the Chief and his family weeping for the land that the white man has abused and disgraced.

Source: Answers.com

Local Writer Starts a Newsletter to Lampoon Katonah Trademark Issue

Bill Tisherman a local writer has started a satirical newsletter, The Marthometer, a comic put down on Martha Stewarts attempt to trademark the Katonah name.

Here is the
link.

CBS News Video: Katonah Says No Thank You Martha!

The Monday CBS News evening broadcast did a piece on the Katonah Trademark issue.

Here is the video link. You may need RealPlayer to view this video.

If you do not have RealPlayer you can download it here - it is free!