Economic downturn? Recession? Job losses? Really? Sure, Seattle's housing market finally cooled a bit, but listening to business news this morning you'd be excused for thinking all this talk about a bad economy is a crock of shit, at least here in Seattle. First there's Microsoft (via the PI):Microsoft Corp. announced a bid to buy Yahoo Inc. for nearly $45 billion on Friday, pursuing a blockbuster deal that could reshape the Internet industry by......

We're not actually gloating over WaMu's travails -- there are too many lives involved likely to be disrupted. But there's no denying the majesty with which its home loan mortgage unit steered into the subprime iceberg. The Seattle Times headline reads: "WaMu posts first quarterly loss in a decade," thanks to a $1.78 billion writedown by the home loaners. Oddly, the bigger news -- "For the full year, WaMu reported a $67 million loss —......

It's become fairly commonplace for the brighter real estate bloggers, like Timothy "The Tim" Ellis over at SeattleBubble, to mock P-I reporter Aubrey Cohen once a month. See Cohen--the P-I's lead real estate reporter--writes an article about the state of the national housing market once a month when the industry standard Case-Shiller numbers are released. The Case-Shiller index (from S&P) tracks the changes in home prices for 20 US metropolitan areas each month as......

Tonight, the nation's hardcore gamblers' eyes will be on Seattle as our fair burgh hosts Monday Night Football. The Hawks' opponent is the San Francisco 49ers, the team that was everyone's trendy pick to be a darkhorse contender in the NFC, with the eminently predictable result that they've started 2-6. Here's how ESPN's The Sports Guy saw it in his season preview:Call it the Winston Wolf "Let's Not Start Sucking Each Other's Popsicles Yet"......

Did you know that there's only one credible real-estate industry voice in Seattle? It's a marketing firm in town that works with real estate developers. We've learned this from reading Aubrey Cohen's real estate reporting in the Seattle P-I. Here's a search on articles containing the exact phrase "Williams Marketing" -- they're quoted in at least one article per month since last November. (Who are the schmoes paying the P-I for ads when there's so......

It’s been hard for us to admit this, greenie that we are, but a vote for Prop. 1 is in order, at least from this Seattlest's perspective. This has been hard because we're as environmentally friendly as they come. We ride our bike; compost; and we reduce, we reuse and leave the recycling as only as the last step of a long process. So the news we saw when we opened our e-mail this morning,......

It's a big, bad world out there, and there are plenty of reasons to be mad as hell. An undisclosed conflict of interest? Well, depends on the circumstances: whose conflict, whose interest? Used to be, reporters of all stripes were treated to trips, tickets, meals, drinks. Then came a wave of holier-than-thou moralizing and publishers began to insist on paying reporters expenses. Granted, Seattlest gets an occasional free beer, but big whoop. More of an......

If you're in the mood for some wide-eyed, Kool-Aid stained boosterism, look no further than this article in today's P-I. It's in response to the New York Times piece announcing a condo-sales slump. The tone is strictly "move along, nothing to see here." It begins: Seattle's market was not to blame for a recent decision to change a planned 34-story downtown building from condominiums to apartments. Rather, the slumping condo markets in cities such......

The Post Intelligencer did the obligatory Boomerang Generation story today - You know the one, where they talk with a bunch of late-twentysomethings who moved back in with mom and dad to "catch up on bills" or whatever. The headline is, "You can go home again -- and in this housing market, many do." Our take is; no you can't. Maybe it's because Seattlest's parents live in a suburb outside Chicago (go Bears) or maybe......

We're glad we stuck around for the audience Q&A after the panel discussion on gentrification Thursday night, hosted by the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs. That way we got to hear from the intense woman who discoursed on a variety of topics, including the abomination of Wal-Mart, things being done in Boston, and the lack of education about some guy whose name we can't remember; and from the gentleman who wondered aloud......

-Mercer Island was swallowed by the righteous sea today and no longer exists on any chart or map. -Area Man Richard Honour was arrested on charges of transmitting a computer virus via a Darkmyst chat room. -Add the bus shelter to the list of place you can't legally smoke in the state of Washington. Do we have the same 25' rule for the bus shelters? -Tonight is this month's Drinking Liberally so get your......