Sunday, February 15, 2009

Barack "100 cents on the Dollar" Obama Will Save Us All

Sometimes it's good to remember how something Bad Got Started, so you can figure out how to stop it.

At some point, back in the 70's (80's?, 60's?), we started getting little applications in the mail. It was actually the norm to have only one credit card way back when, like it was the norm to have 1 TV or 1 car or 1 house.

Then people started applying for another. And things still seemed OK. You could get more stuff, and paying 3% on 2 cards with $1,000/ea was not the end of the World. It was actually nice, you didn't have such a rigid connection between earning & spending. People could bridge the gap on the odd occasion when they actually lost their job.

But saving became a little less important. And there was this strange creeping feeling that we weren't spending real money. I got my first credit card when I was fairly young, and I certainly remember that feeling.

Pretty soon though, the urge to save pretty much went away. The urge to spend increased with each new application filled out, and new plastic arriving in the mail became something of an expected ritual. In fact, those applications started to feel like income.

And things NEVER got worse because of this. People seemed happier. In fact a whole generation of people base their happiness on consumption. They don't even know it. I'll show an illustration in a bit.

So things seemed to get eternally better. More jobs. More income. More stuff. Every indulgence indulged, every craving sated.

Then, round about 5-10 years ago this credit-fueled industrial complex began engaging in some practices that seemed great, but they ultimately sowed the seeds of economic destruction:

  • We started putting unqualified borrowers in homes.
  • We started accepting nothing down on a home.
  • We started lying to put them in a home.

See, we did this with those credit card app's, right? Sure! Who hasn't hit hard times, got a CC app, and lied to get one, and bridge the gap? Or, maybe you just wanted another card, because you could get money at near 0%, and if you inflated your income, you'll be eligible for a buttload of extra cards, right? And the credit card companies NEVER CHECKED!

It was become standard issue to LIE on credit applications. So when they began Securitizing Mortgage Loans, it became OK TO LIE. Why not? They were going to sell the loan to someone, who was going to sell it again, ad nauseum. And this scheme was working out great! Everyone got a little slice of the action, and foreclosures, price declines, joblessness, and other such nasties had Never Been A Problem Before.

So we had historical evidence on our side. We had a booming economy on our side. We had rock-bottom defaults validating these practices. Everything was peachy.

So what did we have, circa 2005-2006? We had an incredible over-abundance of homes. An overabundance of cars. Overabundance of clothing, computers, food, carpet, factories, businesses. An over-abundance of JOBS. Yes. Most of the jobs created in the 5-10 years prior to The Boom, are artificial. They really are not meant to be.

The credit was not meant to be. The consuming was not meant to be. So the jobs & businesses behind them are not meant to be. We've had quite artificially low unemployment for a good decade. Go to Wal-Mart: Look at the troglodytes working & shopping there; those people should be kept in trailer parks, away from the rest of humanity.

And Yes,I went there yesterday. And on a Sat afternoon, I have never seen the parking lot so empty. EVER.

So lots of the stuff lying around you right now, is probably from a place whose existence is predicated on demand about 30% higher than it is right now.

So the upshot is that demand & spending need to crash for equilibrium to be reached. Unemployment goes way up. Lots of factories shut down. Demand just goes away, and simple economics of supply & demand reassert themselves, and prices fall.

As I said Long Long Ago: The only way to pay off debts is to sell stuff or make more money.

The "make more money" option is being lost at a clip of about 50,000 jobs/day. That leaves Selling Stuff.

Selling houses. Selling toys. Selling cars. Selling computers. Selling everything. And not just re-selling house, or re-selling computers: Builders have crushing debts & need to build & sell more homes. Dell has factory capacity that costs them when idle. Airlines. Flea markets. Garage sales. GM. Banks. Home sellers. All have product that must go.

We have a FLOOD of stuff from ALL CORNERS... and no one can buy it.

So along comes The Stimulus Package. That'll set it right... right?

Well, the first slug of the bank bailout billions is out there, and guess what? The Banks Are Not Loaning. Gee, I wonder Why?

Oh....right, right, right, right, right. Cuz they have TRILLIONS in bad loans on their books. Now they can do one of a few things.

They can go into the Free Market and SELL THESE LOANS, and realize essentially that they are insolvent. The banking system in the USA is technically INSOLVENT RIGHT NOW. If they realized the losses, the CEO-pay gravy train is over & Disgraced Idiot Era begins. Is it any wonder they are not doing this?

And really, why do this, when Obama, Our Lord & Savior, Has Promised that he'll Make It Right.
Father Barack "100 Cents on the Dollar" Obama

This brings up Option 2: Wait to be bailed out. Wait for TARP money that you can stick in the vault. Don't even have to worry about bad loans, or realizing the losses, cuz Barack gonna make it all all right.

"We gonna get that TARP money!"

So the bailout, and it's promise of making us all whole again, has actually exacerbated & prolonged the problem. Every bank in the country is waiting to accept & BANK their piece of the trillions. Ain't gonna lend it, that's for damn sure. Fool me once...

So we are caught in a deflationary spiral. Lots of people are looking out the Side Window, and telling us, "NO! We're Not In A Depression! Now Deflation seems to precede, cause & exacerbate a Depression, but we ain't in a Depression. Look. Out the side window. We're just in a rapidly deteriorating Deflation. There's really No Way To Know what lies ahead. Sure, about 99.9999999% of the time, deflation leads to Implosion, but we can't be sure! So all we can really do is Hope For The Best. And plan for the best. And start that new handbag store, despite the complete failure of the last one".

Stock slaughter

For equities, a sustained period of deflation is widely seen as a disaster By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- As 2009 began, U.S. dairy farmers slaughtered more than 70,000 cows in one week to fight slumping prices.

Herds are being culled at the fastest rate in almost two decades as the recession withers away consumers' demand for everything from frothy cappuccinos at Starbucks.

In January alone, milk and cheese prices plunged by at least one-third.
Similarly painful adjustments are playing out around the world as companies try to slash production and cut jobs in the face of falling demand and waning pricing power.

The problem is that, as more companies hunker down, demand may weaken further, spurring another wave of downward pressure on prices that would usher in a prolonged period of deflation.


"The combination of credit-crunch deflation and recession is forcing companies to conserve cash by firing workers and slashing capital spending," said investment strategist Ed Yardeni. "That should work for one company, but when they all do it, it just exacerbates the situation by cutting demand all over again."


Many investors believe that a lengthy bout of deflation is unlikely.

But if consumer prices do indeed fall for a long time, the result is likely to be a disaster for much of the stock market, investment professionals say.


Investors could minimize their losses in stocks -- and maybe even capitalize a little on the situation -- by paring their portfolios of the most vulnerable assets while steering toward sectors that are more resilient to a deflation wave.


Companies that may suffer less include those with costs that fall more than the price of their products, such as Dean Foods, and firms that help consumers save money, like Wal-Mart Stores and McDonald's Corp.
But many sectors including banks, metals companies, retailers and manufacturers would likely be crushed by sustained deflation. "Sometimes an entire asset class is not a good idea," said Kevin Harrington, chief economist at San Francisco-based Clarium Capital.

Clarium, which runs a $2.24 billion global macro hedge fund, is avoiding stocks, while betting on gains in the U.S. dollar, which Harrington describes as "implicitly a deflationary trade."

No global macro hedge funds were bullish on U.S. equities, according to a survey in early February by consulting firm Greenwich Associates.

That was down from 46% in January and 62% in December.
The lowest level of interest in U.S. stocks before that was 8% in October 2007, just before the Standard & Poor's 500 index began a 45% slump.

"It's not a question of if. Deflation is upon us," said John Brynjolfsson, chief investment officer at Armored Wolf LLC, a global macro hedge fund in Aliso Viejo, Calif. "It's a question of how bad it will get."

Steven Bell, a former Deutsche Bank economist who runs a global macro hedge fund at London-based GLC Ltd., has been betting against, European and Japanese stocks, while buying two-year German government bonds.


"Deflation is a serious threat," he said. "You have to say that all companies would lose in such an environment, but some would lose less than others."


In contrast to equities, deflation typically boosts long-term government bonds because their fixed payments become more valuable as the price of goods and services fall. See feature on deflation and the bond market.

Japan


When Japan suffered its most severe bout of deflation, from October 2000 through January 2003, only one sector of the nation's stock market -- electric power and gas shares -- posted gains, according to Morgan Stanley.


Shares of non-ferrous metals producers, communications, banks and services companies dropped more than 60% during the period.
And there's a worrying difference between Japan's experience and the current predicament of the U.S.: The Japanese had lots of savings when the country descended into its deflationary recession, but U.S. consumers are now mired in debt.

"The societal effects were not nearly as dramatic as we're experiencing now in the U.S.," said Brian McAuley, chief investment officer at Sitka Pacific Capital Management LLC. "People had much more to fall back on in Japan, while our consumption is falling dramatically."


McAuley is investing in gold and gold mining companies, while keeping his clients' equity exposure at zero.


He's expecting more stock market losses, with the Standard & Poor's 500 index possibly falling to 650 points, more than 20% below current levels.


Deflation scare trades


Morgan Stanley strategist Ronan Carr recently advised investors to keep most of their money in cash and gold.
Gold is usually considered a good hedge against inflation, rather than deflation.

However, Carr said the precious metal would likely provide protection in either scenario.
Banks should be avoided, partly because deflation increases borrowers' debt in real terms, making it harder for them to repay loans, Carr explained.

Bank stocks in Japan slumped 91% during its long fight with deflation and slumping real estate, according to Goldman Sachs. The KBW Bank Index, which tracks the largest U.S. banks, has dropped roughly 77% since the housing bust began two years ago.

That suggests, in a worst-case scenario, U.S bank shares have another 60% to fall, Goldman analysts warned this week.


Mining companies carrying lots of debt, such as Xstrata , may also be losers because the real value of their interest payments would rise while the prices they can charge for the metals they produce falls, Carr said.


Other so-called cyclical stocks, such as carmakers, should also be avoided, he added.
Relative winners include companies that generate strong cash flow and have little debt.

Industries that have pricing power and are protected from new competition could also survive better. Tobacco companies, drug makers and property and casualty insurers fit those criteria, Carr says.


Already declining


While debate swirls over whether deflation or inflation will emerge over the long term, prices are already falling in the U.S.


The consumer price index fell 1% in October, the most since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began publishing seasonally adjusted prices in 1947. The CPI slumped 1.7% in November, another record, and 0.7% in December.

Morgan Stanley estimates that by July, U.S. consumer prices will have fallen 3% from a year earlier.

Merrill Lynch sees the CPI down by the same amount by the third quarter.
Once falling prices form a trend, it's difficult to reverse, partly because consumers are encouraged to save rather than buy.

That dents demand and sales, potentially inflating companies' inventories and triggering more discounts.
"

Potential buyers realize that they can negotiate even lower prices simply by waiting," Brynjolfsson said.


Fixed debt payments get larger in real terms, which means any credit problems impacting the financial system only get worse, he added.


The auto industry has already been buffeted by deflationary winds.
Most new car purchases are at least partly paid for with loans.

The transaction results in two costs for consumers -- the extra money for the loan and the impact of an asset that begins to lose value the moment it's driven off the lot.


But in a period of deflation, the cost of the loan increases because the debt payments rise in real terms.


The result has been a plunge in new car sales which has pushed U.S. automakers General Motors, Chrysler and maybe even Ford to the brink of bankruptcy.


One carmaker, South Korea's Hyundai, is trying to tackle the problem by letting buyers return vehicles, at no cost in most cases and with no dent on their credit rating, if they lose their job or income within a year.


"That's a direct response to the deflationary psyche of buyers," Brynjolfsson said.
Cutting capacity Airlines performed relatively well last year when their costs fell as oil prices slumped. However, demand for flights started dropping too, pushing ticket prices down 11% from their August high, according to Yardeni Research. "

Airlines benefit when oil prices decline, but they lose if conditions are such that no investment bankers are flying to see their clients," GLC's Bell said. "Space in first class and business class has been dramatically reduced."


Bell was speaking from Kuwait, an oil-rich country which only a year ago was dogged by inflation concerns.
"January is usually very busy, but the Middle East is much quieter this year," he said.

"The hotels are empty and flights are not full."
The parent companies of American Airlines and United Airlines said in January that they would cut capacity further this year to try to halt the decline in airfares.

The retail sector has been particularly hard hit as slumping demand forced many companies to slash prices to whittle down ballooning inventories.


Costco Wholesale Corp., one of the world's largest retailers, sent a shudder through the industry in early February when it issued a big profit warning.

The company said it cut prices aggressively to drive sales, but that took a chunk out of margins.
Eggs and butter prices were chopped 10% to 20% and milk prices were slashed more than 20%, Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said. "

Arguably, a good chunk of that is short-term, as long as we don't live in a recession forever and as long as we don't see huge deflation," he added, during a conference call with analysts.
Even luxury retailers have slashed prices.

Saks Inc. cut designer-clothes prices by 70% before the holiday shopping season. Still, the department store operator reported a 24% slump in January sales, partly because shoppers continued to buy sale items, rather than regular-priced merchandise.


"What the sector will have a tough time doing is returning to full-priced business," said Brian Sozzi, an analyst at Wall Street Strategies.

"Consumers are now trained to expect discounts."
Nuts and chips Other companies traditionally considered resilient in recessions have also been hit by deflationary troubles recently.

Kraft Foods, the world's No. 2 food maker, reported a 72% drop in fourth-quarter profit as it struggled to deal with declining food prices.


In January, Kraft was forced to cut prices on its Planters nut snacks after it lost market share. When Kraft raised prices last fall, its rivals didn't.


Technology companies are used to falling prices, but the recent drop in chip prices has been so severe that several companies have suffered.


The price of DRAM, a memory chip commonly used in personal computers, slumped 77% from May to December last year. NAND flash chips, used in cell phones and digital cameras, have fallen 62% in price during the same period, according to iSuppli.


Shares of Micron Technologies, a leading DRAM supplier, dropped 64% last year, while SanDisk, one of the largest NAND flash makers, slumped 71%. Qimonda AG, a big German DRAM maker, went bust in January.


Possible winners


Some companies may benefit from deflation if their costs fall faster than the price of the products they sell.
Take Dean Foods.

The company buys milk from dairy farmers then processes it, distributes it in refrigerated diesel trucks and sells it to grocery stores and other food retailers.
The recent drop in milk prices and a slump in diesel in the past year have cut Dean's costs dramatically.

That's made up for declines in the price of the dairy products it sells, improving profit.
As recently as Wednesday, Dean Foods said that fourth-quarter profit more than doubled and issued a bright forecast for 2009.

Other companies that offer consumers ways to save money may also avoid some of the damaging effects of deflation.
Sitka's McAuley said Wal-Mart may benefit as shoppers become thriftier.

Meanwhile, fast-food giant McDonald's has remained resilient in recent months.
"Companies that provide consumers with the opportunity to save some money and still get fairly good service and products may do OK," Yardeni said.

Even so, Yardeni and McAuley warn, if deflation lingers for a long time, there would be few such examples for investors to consider.


So deflation, and it's attendant terrible side-effects, is here. Prices, demand, and jobs simply go into a self-reinforcing cycle of decline. Easily illustrated by Japan's economic conditions for almost the last 2 decades. Generation Lost.

Japan's reaction was to hope against hope. Still is. Banks STILL hold trillions in NPA over there. They are entering their 3rd decade of Asset Denial. They won't sell or re-price, or otherwise realize these loan losses, as the corporation would cease to exist. The Overhang Continues.

So what are we doing? Surely we aren't following Japan's Bad Example, right?

Ohhhhh, we surely are. Everything possible is being done to avoid realizing losses. Everything possible is being done make it to Barack's Promised Land, where TARP, and other bailout funds flow like water. Everything possible being done to Ride It Out, wait for the bailout some we can bank the money, wait for The Bad Bank to take All Our Bad Loans. Every bank in America made whole again.

Maybe. It's possible. We can certainly print the money.

But The Losses Will Be Recognized. At some Point. By Someone. And that someone is taxpayers. Which seems OK, since it's just us chickens. We made the mess, we'll fix it, we'll be fine.

Actually, this is true in some respects. But what is Really Happening, is that the wealth of this country is being reallocated.

All the banks with bad loans are having their negative net worth made whole.

All the people with foreclosures, are being made whole.

Trillions are being expended to do so. And we are all going to pay. Even those who had NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH CREATING THE PROBLEM.

The Responsible are bailing out the irresponsible. The Good bail out the Bad. The winners are being made to lose.

Did you buy 6 houses by LYING on your mortgage applications at the top of the Bubble mega-froth? Lucky me, I am going to bail you out, because I chose to rent, and not lie, and live within my means.

Citigroup and J.P. Morgan suspend foreclosures

Obama to provide more details about foreclosure prevention plan in Arizona

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. on Friday announced that they would temporarily suspend foreclosures, as Washington's debate continued about how to save the U.S. economy and moribund housing market.


In a letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass, J.P. Morgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said that he would set up a three-week moratorium on foreclosures.

Citigroup, in its own statement, said that it would suspend foreclosures until the Treasury plan is finalized.
The announcements by Citigroup and J.P. Morgan come as President Obama prepares to announce more details about his plan to stem home foreclosures in an address on Wednesday in Phoenix, Arizona, according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

The Arizona housing industry has been pounded by the slow economy and the state is now seeing some of the highest foreclosures rates in the country.


The Treasury plans to use $50 billion of the remaining $350 billion in bank-bailout funds for some form of foreclosure-mitigation program, but it has yet to produce details on the subject.

The goal of the program, which is part of a $1.5 trillion financial rescue program, is to help troubled homeowners avoid defaulting on their loans.


The Obama administration is working on a program that would subsidize mortgage payments for troubled homeowners subject to an affordability test, according to reports.

This approach would be different from other assistance programs, because borrowers would go through a standard eligibility test and could be approved before their mortgage becomes delinquent.


Citigroup and J.P. Morgan are responding to a request from Frank, who pressed bankers on Wednesday to voluntarily set up a moratorium on foreclosures until the Treasury Department has put in place a plan to alter mortgages.


In addition to Frank, the Office of Thrift Supervision asked the federal and many state-chartered thrift institutions it regulates to stop foreclosures on owner-occupied homes until the new plan is finalized in the next few weeks.


Frank, in a meeting with reporters on Wednesday, said he expects that more than 90% of banks will halt foreclosures until the program is up and running.

He declined to provide details of what kind of plan he would like to see take place, but he said some principal write-down for troubled borrowers would be a key part of it.


A Treasury staffer said Tuesday that the program could resemble a proposal introduced by Federal Deposit Insurance Chairwoman Sheila Bair that would use funds from the bailout package in a program to help avoid foreclosures.

It is a loss-sharing program between mortgage servicers or investors and the FDIC and deals with loans that fail six months or longer after being modified.


See? Everyone waiting. Everyone going to get bailed out.

In the end, it's so tragic, you just have to laugh. I am, at some point, going to pay higher taxes for the STD's built on the Eastside. I will pay so that mortgage app liars will be bailed out of the lies. I will pay to artificially somehow keep housing prices high, so that I cannot afford one. I will pay for being honest and living within my means.

I made a bad choice.

I'll learn next time. I want my bailout money. I want money re-allocated TO ME, not AWAY FROM ME. I will be irresponsible. I'll lie. I will fuck you over to get mine.

This is a great country.

OK, I said earlier I would end with an illustration of almost ridiculous self-indulgence. It comes from the owners of Pomegranate, the failed downtown crap-O-torium. This woman is still blogging, and still just oblivious as shit to the World around her. Check this out:

End of a dream (or two or three)

I miss Merenda. We would have gone there a few weeks ago after closing the doors on our own downtown shop for the last time. Instead, we went home and made a nice little dinner, sat in our pjs, and drank some champagne... to soothe our souls.

Truth is, we hardly ever (never) go out to dinner anymore, which makes us part of the problem for restaurants. It's endemic, this economic situation. Call it trickle down (too lite), ripple effect (better) or smashing tidal wave (apt), but it has affected everyone in one way or another.


When I lived in San Francisco some time ago (and please, no one needs to send an anonymous comment about Califungos
[sic: Cali-Bangers]) I used to frequent the wonderful Farmer's Market at Ferry Plaza, just like I frequent our wonderful Farmer's Market at Mirror Pond here in Bend.

Back then, the Ferry building wasn't yet refurbished into the foodie heaven it is now, but once a month or so, local restaurants would set up tented booths and cook up a storm for shoppers. At that time, Jody Denton owned Lulu's (south of Market area), one of the restaurants represented at the market. I didn't know him then, but clearly remember standing in line for a soft shell crab sandwich, and going crazy over the amazing taste and texture of it. A bunch of people around me announced (to no one in particular) that it was so good they were getting back in line to get another one.

Sometimes a meal is memorable like that, even if it's eaten standing up in a converted parking lot with seagulls and pigeons swooping around, hoping for a bite. We were happy when Merenda opened. It was hugely ambitious, and all the buzz about how it could sustain itself seemed to dissipate when year after year, it just kept succeeding.

Until the financial crash. I really liked going there, and maybe this post is more about post-mortem support than anything else, but some of the blog posts I've read bothered me in their analysis of why they went down.

Truth is, everyone has a different experience at different restaurants, and some of it depends on the day, time of day, mood of the servers, who's cooking, and who's sitting next to you. There are lots of good restaurants here, and you'll get a different critique of them from everyone you talk to. And no observer will really know the details of why a restaurant – or any business – falls apart.

All I know is the restaurant business has to be a crazy scary venture: more intense and problematic and potentially disastrous than anything you can do in retail.
I'm glad another group is giving it a go: the space is fabulous and, I think, the anchor of downtown. It's good that some of the Merenda employees are going to get their jobs back.

And I'm glad that Jody has another job lined up in Sydney. But I'm very sad that they had to go bankrupt in the process. No one wants to see that for a young family. Or anybody.
We were there on their last night, and I shed a few tears as we left (oh yeah, lots of raw emotion these last few months).

Jody and Michelle are sure to land on their feet again, and the restaurant will reincarnate itself (empty spaces downtown will get filled: it will just be different).

It just hit me as the end of a dream, a vision. Not just theirs, but ours as well (knowing we'd be soon closing our downtown location), and soon, others.
This is what I crave right now: that lemon rotisserie chicken. Maybe with an indulgent side of tempura green beans, followed up with an order of insanely delicious beignets. Call the medics.

I mean, this gal sounds like she's very nice. But, if you read this post closely, and in the context of someone who has just Closed Down A Failed Luxury Handbag Shop, you just have to wonder What The Fuck Is She Thinking?

She even has the barest self-awareness to know that Cali-Bangers are the most LOATHED species on Earth. But even so, she almost defines Happiness by the Quality of Her Consumption. I almost feel bad for this person. How many authentic moments has she had in her life? I mean she describes herself as a "Shopping Monkey" on her blog.

It's actually just sad. And still, she is probably almost broke, and all she can do is reminisce about consuming. And you see this as a common thread in almost everything listed on BendBlogs.com. 95% of all posts are of an almost completely selfish nature: "Why I like/eat/do/dislike/buy/avoid/think about 'X'".

Well, I better wrap this up, so hbm can take a nappy pie.
I love deflation! My back is killing me!

595 comments:

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IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Geez, I hate when Blogger just gloms a news piece into one long string of text! Geez... I have to go back & insert like a billion carriage returns.

Anyway, here is a good piece in The Oregonian this morning about how they fixed stuff, Old Skhool:

In this recession, ex-Gov. Atiyeh speaks from experience

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The deep recession of the early 1980s was different and less complex than the one that now confronts Oregon and the nation. Oregon was also a different state then, less ideologically polarized and more trusting of its political leadership.

But as interviews with Atiyeh and three of his successors show, his leadership during those trying years offers some lessons that reverberate to the present:

Stay calm and give voters a clear picture of what is happening. Build a sense that everyone has to share in the sacrifice of hard times. And, if you're in elected office, stop thinking about your political future. Assume you won't run for re-election and instead do what it takes to solve the problem.
...

When Atiyeh took office in 1979, the state had enjoyed several years of rapid economic growth -- with the exception of a short but steep recession in the mid-1970s -- and he felt "there was no shadow out there on the horizon."

But the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to wring inflation out of the economy, throwing housing into a tailspin. Oregon began losing jobs, and the 1981 Legislature made its first round of cuts. Four special sessions followed, including a record-length 37-day session in early 1982. Altogether, lawmakers had to deal with about a $700 million hole in the budget. That might not sound like much in this day of trillion-dollar federal bailouts, but back then it was about 20 percent of the state's budget.

"I think everybody kind of pulled together," Atiyeh said. "That doesn't mean we didn't have controversy. We did. It doesn't mean we didn't get tired and angry. ... (But) we knew people were hurting."
...
Legislators didn't refer the tax hikes to voters, as is common now. They just did it. And no private group even tried to collect signatures to force the tax increase onto the ballot.
...
"There was no doctrine or ideology you could hold onto," Kerans said. "It was triage, and he rose to the challenge."

"Vic was very brave to do that" tax increase, added former Gov. Barbara Roberts, then a Democratic state representative. "When I think about him serving during that time, I think of the calmness, the lack of hysteria ... the lack of combativeness on his part."

Another former governor, Democrat John Kitzhaber, also served in the Senate during the recession of the 1980s. He said Atiyeh, with his 20 years of legislative experience, was steeped in the pragmatism of making things work.

"There was a good old boys club, no question about it," Kitzhaber said. "And there were a lot of negative things you could say about that, but they were really interested in getting the job done. There were certain functions the state had to perform, and they made sure it happened."

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

A note on the CONFUSED STATE OF BEND.

Here is an excerpt from David Fosters recent crystal balls!

Most every economic expert predicts that things are going to get worse before they get better. I expect the Bend economy and real estate market to also get a bit worse before it gets better.

In the short term, I expect the number of sales to continue to be low or drop as compared to years past. Excess supply will continue to exert downward pressure on prices. Builders will continue to dump their inventory, and won't start new construction except at a much lower price-point. Short sales and foreclosures are likely to increase at least as a percent of sales and active listings, as sellers who do not have to sell withdraw from the market. Many buyers are likely to continue to hold back for more signs of the economy improving, prices bottoming out or generally until their confidence in the future is restored.

I also see more buyers coming back into the market, especially investors. Interest rates are at near historic lows and despite perceptions to the contrary there are a variety of good mortgage options. I also expect there to be an increase in the incentives and actions by the Government that will not only help in tempting more buyers back into the market, but also may provide some relief to those facing foreclosure, which could lower the number of distressed properties on the market.


So... he sees demand dropping... and also increasing.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

A cautionary tale on rural renting

Central Oregon renters, in general, have fewer resources when compared with their more urban populations because there are fewer tenant resources, Baker said.

Uhhhhhhh. I'm confused.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Former owner of Merenda and Deep leaves country — and unpaid debts

By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: February 15. 2009 4:00AM PST

In summer 2002, chef Jody Denton opened Merenda Restaurant and Wine Bar in downtown Bend. The restaurant quickly became a favorite, helping to rejuvenate a recession-struck downtown and spark a surge in fine dining that gained national attention for Bend.

Five years later, Denton opened Deep, which served sushi and Japanese fusion dishes downtown.

Last month, Denton closed both, citing the economy. A few days later, on Jan. 9, Denton and his wife, Michelle, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which calls for the sale of a debtor’s assets to pay creditors.

On Monday, just hours before they were to catch a flight for Australia to start anew in Sydney, the Dentons sat before a U.S. bankruptcy trustee in a classroom-turned-hearing room at the Bend Armory and affirmed they did not have the assets to pay back $2.4 million in unsecured creditor claims.

Like opening the bill after a resplendent feast, it was a sober end to Denton’s dream. It was a dream centered on downtown Bend’s most visible corner and representative of the city’s rise in reputation, real estate value and restaurant life during the middle of the decade.

But the dream came with a cost. Many investors, banks and local vendors who did business with Denton aren’t likely to receive the money they claim is due them, as the trustee overseeing the case is likely to find the Dentons have no assets to divvy up.

Some creditors are taking the loss in stride, while others — including many local businesses — are upset and plan to change the way they charge for goods and services.

“I’m sorry it went the way it did,” Denton told The Bulletin after Monday’s bankruptcy hearing. “I certainly never wanted to go through bankruptcy, close (and) injure people financially. There’s nothing that feels good about having a business closure forced on you (because of the economy). I really believed things were going to turn out OK.”

Origins

Denton, whose legal name is Jett Olen and who originally hails from Dallas, Texas, first came to Bend in 1994, invited by Gary Fish, the owner of the Deschutes Brewery, to cook at the Sagebrush Classic benefit golf tournament Fish founded in 1989. Denton returned each year, said Fish, before finally moving to Bend in 2002.

Before the move, Denton had worked for noted chef Wolfgang Puck at his Los Angeles restaurant Eureka and at a Chicago restaurant owned by Oprah Winfrey. He had also opened a trio of restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

According to The Bulletin’s archives, Denton wasn’t immediately looking to start a restaurant when he moved to Bend, but upon hearing the building at the corner of Wall Street and Minnesota Avenue was available, he felt compelled to act.

“I just saw opportunity screaming,” Denton said then.

The result was Merenda, a restaurant focused on the marriage of food and wine, said former manager Mike Millette. The restaurant featured Mediterranean cuisine and enough seating for 200, making it the largest restaurant in downtown Bend.

“(Denton) wanted a special center of dining, food and drink that brought people in during the day, and made people feel comfortable and gave them a place to enjoy themselves,” Millette said. “It was basically very European in its social aspect, and it was his vision to bring that flair and comfort to a town like Bend.”

Millette is planning to open a new restaurant in the now-vacant Merenda space. Tentatively called 900 Wall — after the building’s address — the restaurant is slated to open this spring.

Fish said Denton’s impact on Bend’s dining scene was appreciable.

“It’s clear he elevated the restaurant scene in Bend tremendously and really was at the front of a whole new wave of high-quality dining experience in Bend,” Fish said.

Downtown Bend had some fine-dining establishments before Merenda’s arrival, including The Pine Tavern and Cork. But many more followed after Merenda, including The Blacksmith, Staccato at the Firehall, Typhoon!, Bluefish Bistro, Volo and Denton’s own Deep.

Matt Mulder, who opened Bluefish Bistro, said he had been looking for a spot to open a restaurant in downtown Bend before Merenda arrived, but that its opening confirmed his sense that the city desired new restaurants.

“When Merenda opened, it was a huge force to move things forward because it had such a great response and was getting lots of write-ups,” Mulder said.

Downturn

Merenda performed well its first six years, Denton said. Buoyed by its success, Denton opened Deep in the summer of 2007. It also did well in its first six months.

But the restaurants’ prosperity ran into the recession last fall, and sales started to slide, Denton said.

“The slide was pretty dramatic, 60 percent in both restaurants,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, I probably would have been able to come up with the capital, but raising money became horribly difficult.”

Fewer diners were coming into the restaurants, and bills began to go unpaid, according to some of the restaurant’s vendors. But Denton still held out hope.

“Up until the last three weeks of business at Deep and the last days at Merenda, we had things to satisfy our (financial) obligations, and it all came crashing down like a house of cards,” Denton said.

The result was closure of Deep on Jan. 1 and Merenda on Jan. 4, putting roughly 70 employees out of work.

“There was not much alternative if the money’s not there,” Denton said.

Though necessary to prevent further losses, the restaurant’s closure caught many vendors off-guard. Denton’s bankruptcy filing a few days later meant they might also lose whatever they were owed, as goods and services were provided to Denton on credit.

“We had a great relationship, and it started with him from day one,” said Stann Dmytryk, the owner of Oregon Beef Co. in Madras. “Once he started dragging behind around Thanksgiving, I visited him three times, and he looked me in the eye three times and said he’d have the account paid up by the end of year. After a five-year relationship, you take their word for it. To receive the (bankruptcy) papers was very disturbing.”

According to the Dentons’ bankruptcy filing, Oregon Beef claims it’s owed $7,000. Other claims include: Carlson Sign, in Bend, for $1,500; Columbia Distributing, in Bend, for $200; Combined Communications, in Bend, for $4,000; and Eberhard’s Dairy, in Redmond, for $1,000.

The Village Baker in Bend claims it’s owed $2,500.

“We sat down and talked with him, so we weren’t entirely surprised,” bakery owner Bill Kurzman said. “But nonetheless, we’re screwed. It’s disappointing ... but as I’ve been told in the past, chefs aren’t necessarily good businessmen.”

A total of 36 Oregon vendors, mostly located in Bend, have filed claims against the Dentons.

Many more have been filed by investors, including Dave and Wendy Wilsey-Magers, a Bend couple who say they’re owed $789,000 for a personal loan. Other investors who’ve filed claims include: Martha Merrill, of Bend, for $150,000; Bob and Carolyn Dietz, of Bend, for $25,000; and the Susan U. Hollern Revocable Trust, of Bend, for an amount not stated but listed as disputed.

There are also plenty of financial institutions that filed claims, including: American Express, for $56,000; Chase Card Services, for $62,000; and Bank of the Cascades, for $541,000.

Bank of the Cascades’ Chief Financial Officer Greg Newton said the bank couldn’t comment to protect the confidentiality of its client relationship but did later call the matter “unfortunate.”

Also in the bankruptcy filing, the Internal Revenue Service claims it’s due $45,000.

In total, there are 134 unsecured creditors, including the IRS, who have filed claims against the Dentons.

Mulder, who sold Bluefish Bistro last fall, said Denton is still a great chef. But restaurants, he said, can be risky and frequently go out of business. Because of that, many banks don’t fund them, leaving restaurateurs to turn to the private sector, he said.

“Lots of people invest because of the romantic vision,” Mulder said. “It is romance, but you can’t go into it like that. It’s more of a business.”

Bankruptcy

At last Monday’s bankruptcy hearing — known as the first creditors meeting — in front of bankruptcy trustee Michael Batlan, the Dentons affirmed they have no assets other than the allowable exemptions that can’t be seized, such as engagement and wedding rings, household goods, a primary residence and vehicles. Their exempted assets, including a 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser, a scooter and $708 in an Umpqua Bank checking account, totaled $13,400, according to the filing.

The couple’s 2007 BMW 328xi was leased and surrendered to the dealer last Monday, Denton said.

He said the couple’s Shevlin Crest home in west Bend is for sale, but proceeds would go to the mortgage holder. The home is listed for $750,000. A bankruptcy document claims the Dentons owe $732,000 on the home but intend to surrender it to the bank holding the note. The home, which the Dentons paid $898,000 for in November 2006, went on the market Dec. 5, according to the Central Oregon Multiple Listing Service.

Denton also said the cash generated during the final week of restaurant operations was used to pay employees and that the family’s plane tickets to Sydney for the couple and their two daughters were purchased by Michelle’s parents.

Representatives from Bank of the Cascades, Oregon Beef, Oregon Equipment Services and The Village Baker attended the hearing, and questioned Denton about his personal finances as well as the final days of operation of Merenda.

Denton explained that Merenda’s wine collection was returned to the wine dealer and that Merenda’s final week of sales were not as robust as he had hoped — primarily due to gift card redemptions — and that as a result, he was unable to pay off some vendors, as he had wanted.

Dawn Mitchell, the office manager for Oregon Equipment Services in Bend, asked Batlan, the trustee, if her company could receive any money, but Batlan said the Dentons appeared to have no assets that could be sold to satisfy creditor claims and that Mitchell should seek legal counsel if she wished to pursue the matter.

After the hearing, Mitchell said her company repaired kitchen equipment at Merenda and Deep, providing service as late as Dec. 20 for Deep that was never paid for.

The company filed a claim that it’s owed $1,200 by the Dentons.

“We worked with them for a long time, and toward the end, I kept calling and saying we weren’t getting paid, and he said we’ll send you a check, and no checks showed up,” Mitchell said. “It was getting to the point where we were getting real leery.”

Mitchell, along with The Village Baker’s Kurzman, said both companies plan to change long-standing credit policies as a result of their dealings with Denton and will now demand new customers pay cash on delivery for their services.

“That’s why everyone is so furious,” Mitchell said. “(The Dentons) knew what they were doing. They were trying to get all the money out of there they could.”

Attempts to reach Denton by e-mail in Australia for a response to Mitchell’s comments were unsuccessful.

An era ends

Other creditors are sympathetic, however.

Bend resident Cal Cannon, who founded Edge Wireless before selling it to AT&T Wireless last year, is listed as a creditor on the Dentons’ bankruptcy filing for a disputed amount. Cannon did not attend the hearing nor specify by phone how much he had invested with Denton.

However, Cannon said he doesn’t believe Denton moved to Australia to escape his financial obligations.

“I had lots of respect for Jody and what he tried to do, and it was just a tough time for him and the investors,” Cannon said. “Today’s economy is affecting lots of businesses, and I feel it was bad timing. He has a family to support and that’s the business he knows, and it would make no sense for him to stay in Bend.”

The Deschutes Brewery’s Fish, who also was an investor, said he’ll miss Denton.

“It was great having him here, as a businessman, a friend and a member of the community,” Fish said.

Denton said he will go to work for the Wildfire restaurant in Sydney — which is located across the water from Sydney’s iconic Opera House — and potentially help the restaurant open a new location in Singapore. According to his Jan. 9 bankruptcy filing, Denton is slated to start work today.

Denton said he previously had an opportunity to work with the restaurant in 2002 but chose to come to Bend. Asked about the timing of his departure to Australia and the impression it leaves, Denton said he was headed to Australia to pursue a “great opportunity with someone I’ve known a long time.”

“I’m excited about a new chapter,” Denton said. “(Australia) is a great place to raise kids.”

Denton’s Bend attorney, Brian Hemphill, said in an e-mail to The Bulletin that his client’s move to Australia was “exotic, but not suspicious.”

“Mr. Denton is in the restaurant business,” Hemphill wrote. “After Merenda and Deep closed, he was going to have to find other gainful employment to support his family. Given his training as a chef and the current struggles in the local restaurant business, it was practically inevitable that he would have to leave the area to find a new job. That Mr. Denton was offered another job in such a short time frame was a stroke of good luck for him and his family. The fact that the job is in Australia, rather than Portland or San Francisco, makes his move more exotic, but not suspicious.”

University of Oregon assistant law professor Andrea Coles-Bjerre said that once a bankruptcy filer has shown up for the creditor’s meeting, he or she is free to leave the country.

Coles-Bjerre said creditors can legally challenge a bankruptcy if they believe fraud has been perpetrated, but otherwise a debtor’s debts are wiped clean when the bankruptcy is discharged, which usually takes a few months from the date of the filing.

“That’s what they mean by a fresh start; the debt is discharged,” Coles-Bjerre said. “There’s no law to prevent (the debtor) from getting on with his life, even in a foreign country. (The) bankruptcy can go on without (the debtor) even here, and (the debtor) doesn’t even have to be present the day the discharge is granted.”

Denton did not answer a follow-up question sent by e-mail asking whether he plans to return to the United States or repay his creditors.


Andrew Moore can be reached at 541-617-7820 or at amoore@bendbulletin.com.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Denton, whose legal name is Jett Olen...

Oh Jeebus H Christ, that is classic. CLASSIC.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Matt Mulder, who opened Bluefish Bistro, said he had been looking for a spot to open a restaurant in downtown Bend before Merenda arrived, but that its opening confirmed his sense that the city desired new restaurants.

“When Merenda opened, it was a huge force to move things forward because it had such a great response and was getting lots of write-ups,” Mulder said.


Translation: The ONLY Business Plan in Bend is "ME TOO!"

Anonymous said...

Interesting response to the Sawyer case on the KTVZ site, obviously from someone affescted by the Sawyers actions:

The last several months, listening to the news, reading the papers, talking with some of the victims, their families and friends, and yes reading numerous comments. The thing that stands out in my mind, is how money became more important than human beings. I for one know they are guilty, as I have seen the proof. This is a really sad and fearful thing to happen to so many people! Their homes, children, loved ones, have all lost their futures, their dreams and their hopes. When something like this touches you, you finally have to look at the reality . This isn't something we saw on tv or read in a book, this is real! You wake up one morning and to your horror, see it for what it is. Two people who got together and planned to take your lifes work away from you, to take your childrens inheritance, while you blame yourself and wonder why you didn't see it coming. It is hard for people to come to a truth that there are people like Tami and Kevin Sawyer in our world. To plot and plan and sneak and lie . And look you right in the eye. The family whose father died and they took all of his money, intended for his children. How do you justify this to yourself? How do regular folks come to terms with something like this? It is even more frightening knowing a police capt was behind all of it. If I didn't have love in my heart for Our heavenly Father, I don't know how I would get through this. I want to find it in myself to forgive, to allow the courts to do their jobs because I cannot survive on anger and hate . I am very sad, to see all that is unfolding , to find more truths and layer upon layer of deciet . How does this type of criminal have a sense of accomplishment? A feeling of a life well earned and to feel peace with themselves? I sometimes wonder how Tami and Kevin feel, knowing the town has put a scarlet letter upon their backs? You really thought you would get away with it didn't you? I find no gratification with your impending demise, but I surely find that the strength that people have shown , the courage they gathered among themselves to stop you is truely a remarkable thing. What more can they lose? To maintain their dignity and believe in the justice system to put these criminals away is all that they have left. In fighting the good fight in our courts of law, it's really not to regain the lost fortunes, lost homes, lost hope, it is to stop you from ever again , for the rest of your lives , being able to do this to anyone again. May God have mercy on their souls. To the families and all victims of the insedious acts of Tami and Kevin Sawyer, I pray you find peace, most of all , I pray for healing in your hearts. Someday this will be over. Tami and Kevin, this will be over. Your life as you know it, will never again, be the same.








SP

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

According to The Bulletin’s archives, Denton wasn’t immediately looking to start a restaurant when he moved to Bend, but upon hearing the building at the corner of Wall Street and Minnesota Avenue was available, he felt compelled to act.

“I just saw opportunity screaming,” Denton said then.


OK, I'm going to cry this is so CLASSIC!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

“We sat down and talked with him, so we weren’t entirely surprised,” bakery owner Bill Kurzman said. “But nonetheless, we’re screwed. It’s disappointing ... but as I’ve been told in the past, chefs aren’t necessarily good businessmen.”

Funny comment, coming from a chef.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

99.99999% of all downtown businessesstarted in the last 10 years:

“Lots of people invest because of the romantic vision,”...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Oh fuck me, this just gets richer by the second:

He said the couple’s Shevlin Crest home in west Bend is for sale, but proceeds would go to the mortgage holder. The home is listed for $750,000. A bankruptcy document claims the Dentons owe $732,000 on the home but intend to surrender it to the bank holding the note. The home, which the Dentons paid $898,000 for in November 2006, went on the market Dec. 5, according to the Central Oregon Multiple Listing Service.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

“That’s why everyone is so furious,” Mitchell said. “(The Dentons) knew what they were doing. They were trying to get all the money out of there they could.”

WHAT! No, no! No! That would put them into a long list of BEND SHYSTERS. LYying their asses off to screw everyone in sight! NO!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Denton’s Bend attorney, Brian Hemphill, said in an e-mail to The Bulletin that his client’s move to Australia was “exotic, but not suspicious.”

Ummmm... I can tell you from experience that Brian Hemphill actually LIVES ON A HEMP HILL, and is a motherfucking retard.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

DENTON,JETT O
DENTON,MICHELLE A
2946 NW CELILO LN
BEND OR 97701

THRU: Indymac Bank Home Loan Servicing
AGENT: FAT (P)

Assessor Property Description
SHEVLIN CREST PHASE 2 Lot: 46 Block:

Vol Page 2006-73919 Sales Date 11/03/06 Adjusted Sales Price $897,602

Sales Code 30 UNCONFIRMED SALE

Grantor: Grantee:

VIKING BUILDERS INC
DENTON, JETT O & MICHELLE A
15 COLORADO AVE STE 280 2946 NW CELILO LN
BEND OR 97702 BEND OR 97701

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

McCartney & Wings tribute to Bend:

Jet! I can almost remember their funny faces
That time you told me that
You were going to be marrying soon.
And jet, I thought the only
Lonely place was on the moon.
Jet! jet!
Jet! was your father as bold as a sergeant major?
How come he told you that
You were hardly old enough yet?
And jet, I thought the major
Was a lady suffragette.
Jet! jet!

Ah, matter, want jet to always love me?
Ah, matter, want jet to always love me?
Ah, matter, much later.

Jet! with the wind in your hair of a thousand laces.
Climb on the back and well
Go for a ride in the sky.
And jet, I thought the major
Was a lady suffragette.
Jet! jet!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This piece in the Bully is simply CLASSIC:

Jaded hero COMPLETELY FUCKS OVER THE NATIVES and then leaves town, leaving a wide, WIDE swath of destruction.

And the fucking Bully, once an ARDENT SUPPORTER of said Rogue Bastard Deadbeat, turns a 180, and actually does some investigative reporting (HOLY SHIT!) to dig up as much dirt as is humanly possible.

CLASSIC. Classic Bulletin.

We might actually get some real news out of COSTA'S LAZY FUCKING ASS for once, since 99.99999% of this town is ON THE FUCKING GRIFT, ready to ABANDON SHIP TO MEXICO, AUSTRALIA, or some other fucking place, while we sort out the mess.

Duncan McGeary said...

Yeah, compare the Atiyeh story with the Costa editorial in the Bulletin.

He interviews Hollern, Neil Bryant, and Bill Smith.

Smith is still angling on trying to pry more cheap land out of the city.

Hollern blames the rapid growth.

"We were overwhelmed by the amount of money pouring in...."

Right. I've always found that to be a problem.

But actually, I know what he means. We took the money and forgot to plan for the longterm.

Both Bryant and Hollern focused on the four year college. But that always looked like a pipe-dream to me, even when the money was flowing, much less now.

We should have been focusing on making the Oregon State Branch stronger, than thinking we'd build a brand new University at Juniper Ridge.

I love that the subtext is that we'll be ready for the next boom cycle...as if it's just around the corner.

I don't know that we'll ever even HAVE A BOOM CYCLE AGAIN!

Best we could hope for is strong growth, in about 5 or 6 years, if we're lucky. By then, all these jokers will probably be retired.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Man, that is the best Bully piece I've seen in MANY MOONS.

Golden Boy Goes Bad & RUTHLESSLY Fucks The Locals, INCLUDING HOLLERN. Awesome.

And then he washes his hands of the fucking place, and skips town, 100% clean, ready to start overm, change his name & do it again.

Un-fucking-believably AWESOME.

And this will happen OVER & OVER again, in the years to come. NO ONE inbound to Bend over the past decade was not a grifting, lying, conniving motherfucking bastard. Well, maybe one or two weren't, but most were.

This piece is just GREAT for exposing The Bully for The GOB-cock-sucking rag piece of shit it really is. HOLLERN got spanked for 50 cents, and the Bully Complex went into SCAPEGOAT MODE, roasting JETT to the fullest extent possible.

And I love that all these screwed over locals are NOW going to change their credit policies, now that THE BULLY has impugned someone they have FOR 5 YEARS TOLD US ALL WAS ABOVE REPROACH.

CLASSIC!

Anonymous said...

Are the Dentons entering Australia as illegal immigrants or what?

Surely the Aussies do not take recently bankrupted Americans (or any other nationalinty) unless they at least have a 100% sure job offer lined up or have substantial savings to deposit in Australia.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

OK, I am changing my name to COMMANDER KICKASS, and I need investors for my latest business idea:

It's a restaurant!

And it's AWESOME cuz there's an EMPTY STOREFRONT ON WALL ST!

That's it! GET EXCITED YOU FUCKERS!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

BULLY PRAISE OF DENTON NEVER ENDED:

Out of this world

Deep (A). Chef Jody Denton’s new Japanese-influenced restaurant ranks at or near the top of Bend’s fine-dining list. Try the Nine Bites, a chef’s selection sampler of nine hot and cold dishes. Service is well-informed, courteous and uniformly excellent; ambience is creative and welcome, with a suspended wave pool as a centerpiece.

At home with... Jody Denton

Denton's remarkable career in food, working with some of the top chefs in the country, like Wolfgang Puck, came from a surprising beginning.

He was born in Texas, and raised mostly in the Dallas area. His dad, James, was a commercial airline pilot. Jody had no idea what he wanted to be when he grew up.

"Dad would have loved it if I would have followed in his footsteps, but I wasn't that kid. My brother became a pilot, but I didn't have the pilot thing, and I didn't know what my thing was," he said. "I had no focus, I was your average confused youth," he added.

But from the time he was a teenager, Denton liked to make breakfast, and he says his omelets evolved into little masterpieces that the whole family enjoyed.

James Denton, a lover of good food and fine wine, recognized that his son enjoyed cooking, so he quietly researched culinary careers.

"One afternoon in my senior year of high school, dad just very casually said, 'You got a minute?' and I said 'Sure,' and he said 'Come upstairs to my bedroom.' He had set out this presentation like he was pitching an ad campaign to a board of directors, and he said, 'How about chef?'"

Denton says it was the first time anyone had suggested something for his future that sounded right. "It sounded cool, it sounded fun, it sounded interesting, and like something I could get into," he said. Sadly, James Denton died 20 years ago from leukemia, so he didn't get to see his son's career unfold, but Jody is grateful for his father who helped him figure it all out.

This year is a busy one for the Dentons, who are opening a new Japanese-inspired restaurant called Deep at 821 N.W. Wall St. in early April.

And they've been enjoying the new home they built in northwest Bend. We stopped by recently to visit with Jody, his wife, Michelle, (who acted as interior designer and decorated their strikingly beautiful contemporary house), and daughters Ana, 8, and Olivia, 4. They share their home with an adorable fluff ball named P.J., who is a teacup Maltese.

The conversation often turned to food, of course, but we also discovered what this busy chef and restaurateur would do on a precious day off, and found out the words he lives by. Denton also revealed what he can't resist at the Vic when the family goes out for breakfast.

What I love about my house is ... We had the house built and just moved in four months ago, and I love everything about it, especially the combination of comfortable indoor and outdoor spaces. We're looking forward to summer when we can actually use the outdoor spaces. It's the first house Michelle and I have ever lived in where we got to design every detail and we love it.

My favorite room is ... The kitchen because it's where everybody wants to be, whether we are entertaining friends or just hanging out with the family, everybody always gravitates to the kitchen.

My favorite possession is ... I really don't have a favorite possession. I don't get attached to things too much. If I lost everything in a fire, I would get over losing furniture and art and things, but what I would be sad about losing would be all the family photos. Both those of my wife and girls since we've been together, and those of my parents and brothers growing up. Those are my memories and they aren't replaceable.

What I'd change about my house is ... Nothing about the house itself, but if I could, I would move it either right near downtown, or five miles out of town on 10 acres.

If I had a Monday off to do anything at home by myself ... This is a good question because it's a very rare and precious thing that I just don't get anymore.

In San Francisco, I worked between 80 and 85 hours a week with only Sundays off. We moved to Bend when we started a family and wanted a change of lifestyle. For the first few years I took Sunday and Monday off. I would ski or golf or go for a bike ride. Now, with a new restaurant on the horizon, I'm back to the six-day schedule for a while, with only Sundays off. If I had a Monday at home alone, I would sleep in to the luxurious hour of 8 a.m., watch the news with a few cups of coffee, maybe do a few things around the house in my jammies, then maybe by the afternoon I would crank the stereo with music that no one else in the family but me likes, and start leisurely preparing some dinner for the family.

What music would you play? I have a pretty wide range of musical taste, the '60s through the '90s. It's when you get past 2000 that I get a little lost! A lot of Beatles and rock and roll, and a little bit of jazz, a little bit of classical.

Favorite artwork in the house ... The island top in my kitchen. When I left the Bay Area, I was given a going away gift by the guy that used to make restaurant tabletops and wood furniture for me. He gave me a really beautiful cutting board made out of 10 different kinds of hardwood. I've used it and loved it for more than five years now, and when we decided to build the house in Bend, I asked him if he could make a large kitchen island top in the same style and he did. It's not just a kitchen butcher block island top, it's truly a work of art, and perhaps my favorite part of the whole house.

What do you usually have for breakfast? Coffee. I'm not much of a breakfast kind of guy. Although, I do enjoy taking the family for the occasional Saturday breakfast at the Vic (The Victorian Cafe)

What's your favorite thing there? The 18-wheeler. It's really insanely good biscuits and gravy. It'll stop a horse dead in its tracks. It's a formidable breakfast. I've never finished it yet.

How do you stay in such good shape? (Denton responds with a big laugh) Yeah, that's pretty funny. I guess I'm doing pretty well for a 46-year-old chef that's been in the business for 30 years, but I certainly carry my 20 pounds of chef fat that I'd love to get rid of. I work on it.

Michelle: I'm always on him. I've got the fish oil and the smoothies and the vitamins, trying to keep him young.

Favorite junk food? Chips and salsa.

Gardening is ... Something I really enjoy watching other people that I've paid do!

Three things you'll always find in the refrigerator ... Some good cheese, a couple of bottles of Champagne, and a bottle of El Yucateca Habanero sauce.

Who does most of the cooking at home? You might think this has an obvious answer, but Michelle cooks at home far more often than I do. When I get a chance to eat her cooking, which is not very often, it's really good. When I have an evening at home, I do sometimes cook, but we also enjoy eating out together.

When you do the home cooking, what do you like to make? I like to cook a wide variety of ethnic and American regional foods at home because I don't get to cook them at Merenda: Indian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, sushi, gumbo, clam chowder, etc. Being from Texas, I also make a mean chili and respectable barbecue.

What do you do as a family for fun? Jody: Ana and I ski, and Olivia's going to ski this year.

Michelle: We love to go canoeing on lakes.

Jody: We like to travel.

Michelle: We take little mini-trips.

Jody: We like to go camping, but we definitely enjoy getting our city fix, whether it's an overnighter to Portland, or three days in San Francisco or Seattle, or a week in New York.

Favorite get-together at home? A casual summer barbecue on the patio with a few good friends and a cold local beer.

Are you handy around the house? Not even a little bit. The measuring and level things get me every time. My father-in-law just bought me a great toolbox and set of tools for Christmas. I'm sure he'll enjoy using them when he comes to visit.

If I could have a second home anywhere in the world, it'd be ... Somewhere in the French countryside, not far from Paris.

Words I live by: "Don't' sweat the small stuff!" And it's almost all small stuff. I really don't worry too much about little things. Life is just too short.


I mean that last one is a fucking LOVE-FEST. Just search "Jody Denton" on The Bully, and you will find the NEVER QUESTIONED THIS GUY, beyond, "How awesome is it to be you?", or other such BULLSHIT.

Good Job Costa, you fucking MORON.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

That last load of shit is just a Cali-Banger Dream:

What's your favorite thing?

What do you love about your $900K house?

How are you going to spend every nickel of investor money on bullshit?

Do you have any fucking idea about living a life that doesn't revolve around CONSUMPTION?


CLASSIC CALI-BANGER BULLSHIT. Shows you that The Bully & it's staff are essentially CALI BANGER CONSUMPTION-FUELED ZOMBIES at heart.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Just so you know EXACTLY WHY this piece was written, it is buried in the story:

Many more have been filed by investors, including Dave and Wendy Wilsey-Magers, a Bend couple who say they’re owed $789,000 for a personal loan. Other investors who’ve filed claims include: Martha Merrill, of Bend, for $150,000; Bob and Carolyn Dietz, of Bend, for $25,000; and the Susan U. Hollern Revocable Trust, of Bend, for an amount not stated but listed as disputed.

Hollern's wife or Granny lost $1.25 to Jett, and began an ONSLAUGHT to crucify the bastard.

That is THE ONLY REASON this made the paper.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

We stopped by recently to visit with Jody, his wife, Michelle, (who acted as interior designer and decorated their strikingly beautiful contemporary house), and daughters Ana, 8, and Olivia, 4.

Remember that Bend Vendors: Next time you wanna give some lying ass shyster that has the Bully Stamp Of Approval, It's all 100% BULLSHIT in Bend Oregon.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Jody JETT Olen Denton said:

Words I live by: "Don't' sweat the small stuff!" And it's almost all small stuff. I really don't worry too much about little things. Life is just too short.

Yup, YOUR DEBTS ARE SMALL STUFF. I don't care about YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOUR DEBTS. I'm going half a World Away & leave you fuckers in the Dust.

This.

Is.

Bend.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Damn... now I sorta wish I had seen this Denton piece & revolved my whole post around it. It's PERFECT!

It's the PERFECT "FUCK YOU BEND OREGON!" piece by a classic GRIFTER. And there are SO MANY MORE TO COME. Jeff & Ray. Tami & Her 5.

My God, it's just classic karma. Everyone fucked everyone else over, and now it's all coming home to roost.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Bewert said...

Former owner of Merenda and Deep leaves country--and unpaid debts

...On Monday, just hours before they were to catch a flight for Australia to start anew in Sydney, the Dentons sat before a U.S. bankruptcy trustee in a classroom-turned-hearing room at the Bend Armory and affirmed they did not have the assets to pay back $2.4 million in unsecured creditor claims..."

###

And the circle is complete.


I know, it's this hilarious? The Karmic Boomerang Factor is just off the charts.

For the First Time Ever the Bulletin has printed a story that goes against their genetic code, PR & Marketing, and prints something inline with what this blog has been espousing for over 2 years, THE TRUTH.

See Costa, when you PR & MARKET SOmething, you can actually do good. But YOU PR & MARKET NOTHING. Denton was a nobody, a nothing. He was a straight up grifter, who shanked your dumbfuck friends. YOU DID PR & MARKET HIM SUCCESSFULLY. Now you see the result.

MARKETING NOTHING IS A LOSER. There's nothing there. Same with Bend. It was Marketed relentlessly... like Denton. There was lots of activity & good feelings... like Denton. There was even a product put out.. like Denton.

But there was NEVER what was promised. Bend, like Denton, is a hollow shell. Took more in than it could ever put out in this place. LOSER.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

OK, here is a short history of JETT OLAF (aka Jody Denton):

Born in Uzbekistan.

Attended Comrade Grifters University in Moldovia.

Same to Greece via The Black Sea.

Took slave ship over to Mexico, found current wife.

Asked migrating illegals where the biggest bunch of dumbfucks the World has ever known are located.

Began migration to Madras, by swimming the Gulf of Mexico with a packpack full of nukes for extra cash from al Quada.

Made it to Tucson by turning the rotted corpses of illegals gunned down by The Minutemen into sushi.

Loaded self, wife, and 16 other meth cookers onto the back of a fellow illegal alien, who proceeded to walk to Madras.

Denton got off in Bend when he realized that the local paper would actually suck his cock through a hole in a public bathroom.

Changes name to Jody Denton, cuz he needs a way to mask the transfer of millions to Australia.


The rest is history.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

SWAM to Greece via The Black Sea.

Anonymous said...

Bend, like Denton, is a hollow shell.

Yep.

Jody Denton and the Sawyers epitomize the sickness that has spread in this country over the last 15-20 years -- the idea that "I gotta have it ALL and I gotta have it NOW!" Forget about working and waiting patiently for years or decades to build a solid career or business -- no, I gotta have the huge trophy house and the huge trophy car(s) and (maybe) the huge-titted trophy wife IMMEDIATELY, and if that means lying and cheating and stealing and stiffing my creditors -- well, everybody does it. (Don't they?)

And those who don't have the talent (or maybe the balls) to be grifters try to emulate the grifters by running up debt on their credit cards and HELOCs.

You're right; the whole economy (not just Bend's) is a hollow shell filled with bullshit.

BTW Costa has an INCREDIBLE column in today's paper advancing the remarkable theory that the reason for the housing bust is that WE DIDN'T BUILD ENOUGH HOUSES. Yep. Check out my post on The Wandering Eye.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

OK, I might have to stop for a bit: The combination of karmic boomerang, schadenfreude, and I TOLD YOU SO-ITIS, is starting to overwhelm me.

COSTA/HOLLERN'S Golden Boy was a 100% FRAUD, and fucked them & everyone else to the 9's.

It don't get better than that.

Anonymous said...

The OREO & GEITHNER HAVE NO CLOTHES!! WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED? WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN??

The Worst Misstep: Geithner Added to the Doubt

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: February 14, 2009
NYT

TIMOTHY GEITHNER, the brand new Treasury secretary, was panned last week for how he unveiled the Obama administration’s plan to rescue the financial system from the bankers who broke it.


Mr. Geithner was not especially articulate, his critics said, and he provided only an outline of an outline, not the detailed blueprint people anticipated and wanted.

To a degree, one of Mr. Geithner’s biggest problems was not of his own making. His boss, President Obama, had fanned expectations for his debut as Mr. Fix-It, leaving the impression that it would be boffo. It wasn’t.

Why is anyone surprised that Mr. Geithner’s Financial Stability Plan lacked details? We are still in sugar-coating mode — yes, we have a problem, government officials contend. But they can handle it. Don’t you sweat the details, dear taxpayers.

To be sure, Mr. Geithner is in something of a box. If he were to lay out precisely how he plans to save the financial system, he might actually telegraph to the public that the problem is more dire than they suspect. Being vague might be less scary. Unfortunately, market participants have lost their patience with vague. Uncertainty, for investors anyway, can be worse than simply acknowledging genuinely grim circumstances.

Treasury’s fuzziness, of course, also provides an opening for corporate lobbyists to step into the vacuum and bend the program to suit their needs. Taxpayers, on the other hand, don’t have lobbyists arguing on their behalf.

Many of the questions arising from Mr. Geithner’s bailout haiku involve the matter of the so-called stress tests that he said the government would use to analyze the nation’s banks. The tests are to determine which banks have the best shot at survival and therefore merit taxpayer money. No sense throwing taxpayer funds at zombies.

But Mr. Geithner did not detail what his stress tests would measure. “We want their balance sheets cleaner and stronger,” he said. “And we are going to help this process by providing a new program of capital support for those institutions which need it.”

Any measurement of bank health would most likely require answering two questions: What is the equity that the bank has on hand and how much earnings power does the institution have to make it through the economic downturn?

Measuring equity positions at banks today is easy, if unsettling. During the credit boom, banks used excessive amounts of debt to juice their returns. This was especially so at the largest institutions, and it has left many banks in a very deep hole now that they may not have the cash or the earnings power to pay down all that debt.

Identifying banks that have the wherewithal to earn their way out of that hole is far more complex because it involves knowing where the economy will be in six months or a year. If you assume that we will emerge from the recession soon, the stress test might generate one result; a graver economic outlook would produce an entirely different projection of a bank’s potential for survival.

(And let’s face it, do you think the economy is going to rebound anytime soon?)

Let’s consider a hypothetical stress test. Say a bank has $120 in assets of which $100 are loans. That means its tangible equity to assets ratio is 1.2 — a very weak position. If those loans had to be marked down because the market was troubled, reducing their value to $85, the bank would have a negative equity-to-assets position (homeowners who have mortgages that are greater than the market value of their homes know exactly how this feels).

Faced with that situation, anyone trying to determine whether a bank should be saved would then have to assess whether the firm has enough earnings mojo — or an ability to raise more money — in order to wait out the current economic malaise. The longer the malaise lasts, the more earnings potential or extra capital a bank would need to survive.

Private investors are not going to be willing to put money into an institution whose business model is broken and whose profit power is limited. Investors in the stock market have already run their own stress tests on the banks and have found many of them lacking — hence the free fall in the share prices of many banks.

On the bright side, lots of small banks that focused on good, old-fashioned lending are considerably better off than their big and formerly powerful brethren created in the merger mania of the last decade.

So here’s a strong first step: the Treasury Department needs to hire out-of-work bankers to conduct what investors call a “burndown analysis” of banks’ financial positions. This is what private investors do as they go foraging for gems hidden amid the wreckage in the banking system.

A burndown analysis, because it is a worst-case exercise, typically requires very pessimistic estimates for loan performance early on and higher-than-average loss estimates for loans in later years. A bank’s prospects also derive primarily from its deposits, not its loan book, in such an assessment. To reiterate: Any examination of a troubled financial institution needs to determine what its assets are truly worth, how much can it earn and how much capital it needs to operate at a profit.

THERE is no silver bullet to end this crisis, and Mr. Geithner was correct when he said it was going to take time to work our way out of it.

But it will also require transparent, rigorous analysis; candor with the public and investors; and a recognition that lots of debt heaped upon a pile of dubious assets has created a financial nightmare — it’s no more complicated than that.

Worst of all, none of this had to happen. Regulators should have been more vigilant.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

So much for the sensible ideas. Now comes the crazy one.

Old Mill District developer Bill Smith tells Costa the reason for the real estate bubble and subsequent bust was … are you ready for it? … we didn’t build enough houses.

“Essentially, [Smith] said we were lulled into our own sense of superiority and did not address land use problems,” Costa writes.

“We ended up, he said, critically short of residential and industrial land.

“Because the city government was so slow to bring more land into the urban growth boundary, the real estate bubble was magnified here.


Well... if Smith is saying that in 4-5 the years PRIOR to 2005, we had a "land shortage"... I can see his point.

I DO remember there being a FRANTIC land grab back then. And I mean FRANTIC. The argument was we were running out of land inside the UGB, which at the PREVIOUS LOT SIZES, was true.

But they solved that. POSTAGE STAMP LOTS. SHORTAGE RELIEVED. The 800 or so acres that were inside Bend were quickly snapped up & subdiv'd at an incredible rate.

Remember the 15+/-ac at 15th & Wilson? $14mill or something, and there were going to be 800 RESIDENCES PUT ON IT.

So... if Smith is saying a S/T land shortage CAUSED the Bubble here locally... I can kinda see that. If he's saying that land shortages that led to housing shortages caused a disporportionate S/T increase in home prices were a cause of the local bubble... well, I can see that too.

If that is indeed what he's saying. If he's saying a flood of new homes would have solved our problem back in 2004... hmmmm, dunno about that.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Developer Mike Hollern blames the Doctrine of Bend Exceptionalism – the peculiar notion that Bend is so special that it’s immune to outside economic forces.

“We were overwhelmed by the amount of money pouring in,” Hollern told Costa. “We thought that we were different from the rest of the country. It turned out that we are not so much [different].”


Then why the fuck do you insist that it be done 24/7 HOLLERN?

Tell Costa to stop the PR/Marketing of every Uzbekistani illegal immigrant with a changed name who wants to start a sushi bar!

YOU ARE THE ONES WHO HAVE BROUGHT ON BEND EXCEPTIONALISM. I have said it 1,000,000,000,000,000 times: BEND AIN'T DIFFERENT. Bend is a shithole out in the desert. OK?

Acting like it's anything else dupes local dumbfucks into lining the pockets of GYPSY GRIFTERS.

DENTON IS YOUR FAULT.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Hollern and attorney Neil Bryant said Bend didn’t do enough to provide roads, sewers and other essential public services as growth rampaged ahead of their capacity. “There was overwhelming growth for sure, [but] city leadership didn’t react forcefully enough on [things like] roads, transportation and sewer capacity,” Bryant said.

(It would have been easier for City Hall to provide adequate infrastructure, of course, if builders and developers hadn’t so stubbornly resisted any attempt to increase Systems Development Charges to a realistic level.)


AGREED. Hollern, you fucking SKEEZEY PIECE OF SHIT. You and your COBA ilk are the one's who DEMANDED that SDC's BE DEFERRED FOREVER on all new houses.

You fucking skeeze: THAT IS WHY THERE IS NO MONEY FOR INFRASTRUCTURE. You COBA fucks have bought City Council FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR, and will defer ALL spending that doesn't line your pockets FOREVER.

Fucking HOLLERN. Lost $1,25 to some Uzbekistanin al Quada nuke-mule, and suddenly finds religion. Nice.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

hbm said...

He just had an entry on Pegasus that there were only 200+ comments over here. I guess I think that's a little funny; I don't know of any local blogs that get that many.

Yeah, but 80% of your comments come from you and Buster.


Hmmmmmm...

Anonymous said...

WE DIDN'T BUILD ENOUGH HOUSES

*

I'm sure after the SF earthquake, folks were suggesting that if only the city were bigger, and they had built more,...

Well one thing is for certain, and that is if MOSS,HOLLERN,SMITH,... are going to SURVIVE this depression, that a BEND building BOOM MUST begin ASAP.

The only viable choice is for the city to BUY 1,000's of STD's and make them 'affordable housing' with the option to BUY.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but 80% of your comments come from you and Buster.

Hmmmmmm...

*

Its much worse than that, there are only six real users of this site, and hbm is one of them.

Sick! Eh!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Let’s consider a hypothetical stress test. Say a bank has $120 in assets of which $100 are loans. That means its tangible equity to assets ratio is 1.2 — a very weak position.

Actually this implies $20 in equity. And since Assets = Liab's + Equity. So it's equity to asset ratio is 20/120, or 17%.

This is actually a ludicrously well-capitalized bank.

CABC has 2,404 mill in assets, and 272 mill in equity, or 11.3% equity to assets.

Wells Fargo has 1,310 bill in assets, 99 bill in equity, or 7.5%

Bank America has $1,818 bill assets, $177 bill equity, or 9.7%.

You can see from this list, that even this measure can be misleading. WFC looks the worst, when it is in fact the best capitalized of the bunch. All you have to do is NOT acknowledge losses (ie BAC & CACB).

But banks are usually leveraged 10:1. Pretty standard. Your example is 5.88:1. That's actually almost too risk averse for a bank. Never make money at that rate.

Anonymous said...

Hollern and attorney Neil Bryant said Bend didn’t do enough to provide roads, sewers and other essential public services as growth rampaged ahead of their capacity.

*

I wonder if HOLLERN said this or his lawyer???

Remember in court or in public anything I said is record, but a lawyer can say anything and it is not record.

For instance at a trial at open the defense lawyer can say "I will prove that the plaintiff is crook and rapist", that's it he has implanted those images in the jury at the beginning of the trial, and he never has to revisit the issue. He didn't say the plaintiff was a 'rapist', only that we was going to prove so, but he didn't thus legally it means nothing.


What HOLLERN's lawyer is saying here is "My client always was opposed to SDC deferral", but nobody on the street of course cares, but what the BULL is doing since they're OWNED by HOLLERN, is trying to re-invent HOLLERN as a voice of sanity during the BIG-BUILD, and a voice of recovery.

WHY the fuck NOT?? Geithner caused the MESS and gets to fix the mess.

Why shouldn't HOLLERN get to create the mess, get richer from the mess, and get richer fixing the mess, and keep the BULL alive with CITY MONEY so he can make even more money!! Why not?

Duncan McGeary said...

"The combination of karmic boomerang, schadenfreude, and I TOLD YOU SO-ITIS, is starting to overwhelm me."

There is some KILLER karma going on behind the scenes. Some SCREAMIN' schadenfreude.

I'm fighting I TOLD SO-ITIS, with all my might...

(especially since a few of these guys I felt dissed me over the years....)

MUST....NOT.....SAY....ANYTHING!...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Olen Name Meaning and History

1. Dutch: patronymic from Oele, Oole, a short form of any of the Germanic compound names with the first element odal ‘wealth’, e.g. Odelbert (with second element berht ‘bright’, ‘famous’).


Oh fuck, I'm going to squirt my drawers.

Anonymous said...

Bend, like Denton, is a hollow shell.

Yep.

*

Slow down folks, everyone in BEND loves the sagebrush classic @BT for $300/person, to eat finger food and drink bad wine for a day of golf.

The thing largely paid for by Gary Fish of Deschutes, but catered by Merenda and Restarant@BT, I think DENTON brought FUN to BEND in 2003, that's when they start calling BEND the "NEXT CULINARY ASPEN". DENTON brought a lot to BEND, and days before he left he said he was going to FLORIDA ( boca to open a deep ), now the BULL says he said Florida, or Australia, ... now it turns out he's already left the country, ... goes to show the truth is still a long ways off.

I have spent a lot of time in Australia, somebody asked the procedure, basically you can get a month or six month visa easily, if you wish to 'live' there you must BOND $500k for the family, DENTION certainly wired that much money there long ago, other than the $500k being in an Australian bank, so that you can start a NEW business anew, basically anything goes down under, ...

Anonymous said...

attorney Neil Bryant said Bend didn’t do enough to provide roads, sewers and other essential public services as growth rampaged ahead of their capacity.

*

How could they HOLLERN wouldn't allow them to collect the $60k/home actual cost, and forced them to hold the collection to under $12k/home, and thus city had to subsidize NWXC, Awbrey, ... MT-B Village, and the 100's of other's of the HOLLERN HOTELS ( sounds like hooverville ).

The $2 Billion shortfall that the city didn't get, is exactly the profit that HOLLERN did get, who would have guessed??

Anonymous said...

The MOST funny thing about today, is that HOLLERN now wants "INFRASTRUCTURE" for all his new projects, but the CITY can't borrow anymore money cuz they're capped, cuz they borrowed $200M via MOSS so that KNIFE-RIVER(MDU) could be kept in Business.

There is NO possible way today for BEND to fund infrastructure HOLLERN/COSTA would like to see a building boom this week on ZERO deferral SDC, but that money would have to be borrowed but from whom? On what terms? By State law BEND has capped its debt, it simply can't borrow anymore than the $200M debt it has incurred since 2005, on the BULL/KR boondoggles.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

OK, I hope no one forgets the following Fundamental Truth:

COSTA & HOLLERN ARE LYING REVISIONIST FUCKERS

These fucking scumbag liars mhave been GROWTH AT ALL COSTS & FUCK THE REST douche's from Day 1.

NOW, they are RE-POSITIONING themselves as being ANTI-ECONOMIC IMPLSOION from Day 1.

"Geez, I wish we'd spent less on real estate and more on schools, infrastructure, and helping little old ladies cross the street, and helping little baby deers and bunnies survive the Winter."

Uh huh. These 2, COBA, and the rest did all in their power to WRECK THIS FUCKING TOWN, and they're STILL DOING IT. They bought City Council for PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR, and they have no intentions to HELP ANYONE BUY THEMSELVES.

This is all a HILTER-WORTHY LOAD OF PR BULLSHIT.

WE ARE SMITH-HOLLERN, WE ARE HERE AS LIBERATORS!"

Right. Hollern playing the responsible statesman, when that fucker has been responsible for wrecking a huge chunk of this town with his GROWTH AT ALL COSTS AGENDA.

HOLLERN: STOP THE BULLSHIT. No one is buying it.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

they have no intentions to HELP ANYONE BUT THEMSELVES....

Anonymous said...

WE ARE SMITH-HOLLERN, WE ARE HERE AS LIBERATORS!"

*

SO let's see SMITH/HOLLERN OWN THE BULL, and COSTA/BULL protects SMITH/HOLLERN and promotes the myth that they're here to protect Bend from its past!!

Who would have guessed?

HOMER do you honestly expect anybody to fall on their sword?

Given that Smith's rescue (winterfest) has been a fucking flop. That it was paid for by MDU, of which MOSS gets $200k/yr for fucking the BEND taxpayer, ... in effect Because KNIFE-RIVER(MDU) got ten's if not 100's of millions of BEND dollars, why not little go back to 'winterfest' owned by the SORE, but instead of downtown held at the fucking DYING old-mill.

Then courtesy of HOLLERN who gives COSTA $10M worth of land for free, sweetly COSTA manages to sell $5M of that free land to the city for $5M, why didn't HOLLERN just give COSTA the money?? Why the fucking game of chinese real estate dollars?? Why is it ALWAYS the taxpayer that gets fucked every fucking time in this cheap little town??

Today we're told to BLAME DENTON for all, cuz he took off down-under. But remember WE brought DENTON here, MOSS needed DENTON, MOSS invented and supported DENTON, MOSS gave him money as long as DENTON asked for it all the way to xmas2008.

No MORE MOSS money for DENTON, and he left, the smartest guy in TOWN.

SO COSTA, HOLLERN, SMITH, TAYLOR, they're 70+ yr old (avg) one-trick pony's, and you would think they would have passed all this SHEEEEEET off, but NO, ... the same game is kept played over, and over, and over, ...

SO Bend will BK its debt ( $200M ), and then go find new money with new clean books, why the fuck not? and then HOLLERN will see that all the new debt is used in lieu of HIM paying STD's for his dozens of new fucking projects he's got on the fucking BURNER, like 100's of new apartment complexes for the NEW BEND all over town, cuz nobody needs single family homes anymore, the NEW BEND is apartment dwelling.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

From a Bend Blog:

United States: What is the Cure for an Economic Influenza?

By now, everybody knows that our economy is sailing through rough waters. Our economic woes have rippled through our homes, businesses, Wall Street, and all levels of government. Many of us are suffering financially and are worried about the plight of our families, friends, and neighbors. President Obama has gotten his initial economic stimulus package through Congress and will soon sign it into law. Naturally, opinions regarding the positive or negative impact that this stimulus will provide to our economy are all over the map. Nobody knows for certain whether it will work or not. So, we must all be patient and see what happens. That said, it is my belief that now, more than ever, all of us must assume a personal civic responsibility to track our government's implementation of this stimulus package.

Actually it seems pretty clear IT WILL NOT WORK.

WHY would it work? HOW?

We're in a deflationary spiral downward, and circulation of green paper will not help.

We're actually doing all the things that are required for this economic implsion to last as long as possible.

** Stimulate demand by indebting the entire country FOREVER? **

This is insane.

** Build unneeded INFRASTRUCTURE for the job side-effects? **

This ARTIFICIAL DEMAND is the root cause of the problem.

**BAILOUT banks & our essentially FAILED financial infrastructure? **

Again, this is keeping open & supporting unneeded "capacity".

The stimulus/bailout is 100% DOOMED TO FAILURE.

The simple fact is that wealth is horizontally & temporally being re-allocated.

HORIZONTALLY by taking from Responsible Peter to pay STUPID Paul.

TEMPORALLY, by taking money from our kids, and building bridges to nowhere.

Obama is attempting to support a collapsing economic artifice. None of this is REAL, and throwing money at it ensures the complete collapse of our economy, eg ICELAND.

Iceland Collapse: Riots, Suicide, and Soup Kitchens in Churches

Anonymous said...

NO PLACE IS MORE FUCKED THAN BEND-ORYGUN ...

Housing’s fate is anybody’s guess The local real estate market is at the mercy of many outside variables

By Diane Dietz

The Register-Guard

Posted to Web: Saturday, Feb 14, 2009 05:00PM
Appeared in print: Sunday, Feb 15, 2009, page D5
Business: Home: Story

The fate of home sales in Lane County this year has little to do with curb appeal, granite counter tops, home theaters — or the sales dance between pairs of agents and the families they represent.

The global economy is calling the shots, economists say, and so 2009 defies ready predictions.

“Nobody knows how it will manifest itself, how it will unfold,” said Ed Whitelaw, of the Eugene-based ECONorthwest consulting firm. “We have a substantially large range of possible outcomes and all of them are plausible — from really bad to moderately good.”

Unemployment, foreclosures and credit availability all will make their mark on Lane County’s housing market in the coming year.

Nationally, house prices are seeing the sharpest declines in nearly two decades. Lane County’s median price fell only 6 percent last year, but the drop at the end of the year was sharper: December was down 9 percent, compared with the previous December.

The overall volume of Lane County sales fell 33 percent in the past year to $740 million — after several years of billion-dollar volume.

“This is a serious recession,” Whitelaw said. “At the moment we have not reached — or gone as low — as we did in 1982, but all the signals are we’ll get there, or worse than that.”

The state’s unemployment rate reached a two-decade high of 9 percent at the end of 2008.

Nationally, home foreclosure filings jumped 81 percent in 2008, according to California-based RealtyTrac Inc. Lane County’s rate climbed a smaller 56 percent — but the failure rate may gain speed in 2009.

“I would expect more (foreclosures) because of the rapidly deteriorating employment situation we’re seeing in Oregon,” said Oregon State University economist Patrick Emerson.

By early 2009, more Lane County houses were falling into legal default each month compared with the number of houses in closed sales, said Erick Harpole, a broker with Keller Williams Realty in Eugene.

That means more short sales — homeowners selling for less than they owe to get out of a loan — and also more foreclosures.

More short sales and more foreclosures in Lane County mean more drops in home values, said Lorena Teer, president of the Eugene Association of Realtors. “Any time properties are in a duress situation — and they’re going to sell for less than what they were bought for — it’s going to influence the neighboring properties.”

At the end of last year, there was more than a 10-month inventory of unsold homes in Lane County.

“Foreclosures are flooding the market with more and more supply exactly when we don’t want it — as we’re trying to stop the erosion of home prices,” Emerson said.

The best hope, Emerson said, is for the Obama administration to figure out a way to keep home­owners in their houses and, thereby, put a floor under the sagging house prices.

At the same time that supply has increased, demand has fallen.

Through the housing boom years, people began to think of housing as a ready source of cash, Emerson said. Homeowners tapped into the equity; speculators bought and sold in order to build their wealth.

“The bursting of the housing bubble has done away with the perception of a house as a can’t-miss short-term investment,” he said. “That explains part of the slowdown. There used to be a lot of short-term investors looking for a gain. With the bursting of the bubble, those people are gone.”

The restricted availability of home loans also continues to suppress demand, Harpole said. Out of 10 homebuyers who got loans in 2005, only two can borrow now because of the banks’ tighter lending standards, he said.

A kind of reality lag may also suppress sales, Whitelaw said. Sellers in Eugene seem to be holding on to the idea that their house is worth much more than the market will deliver, he and others said.

“People are saying, ‘It can’t be that bad. I’m not going to accept $50,000 less than I paid.’ And a year later, they’re saying, ‘Gosh, I wish I would have taken $50,000 less.’ ”

Eugene-Springfield faces a moderate 30.3 percent chance of a significant drop in housing prices in the next two years, according to a statistical analysis by the national PMI Mortgage Insurance Co., which factors in area income, past appreciation, unemployment and federal housing statistics. By comparison, Portland’s odds of a drop in prices are low, with a 22.2 percent chance, the PMI analysis found, while Bend has a high 78.2 percent chance of sharp declines.

Emerson said he doesn’t expect to see “any sort of a robust or even a modest gain until 2010.”

Teer sees a shorter run of declines: “The first half of the year, there’s going to be more of the same. We’re still going to see some softening. After that, my prediction is we’re going to see an improvement. It’s going to be very modest. It depends on how strong the stimulus package is.”

Even while demand has shriveled, the indicators show that this is a good time for people with good credit and cash savings to buy a house, Teer said. Long-term interest rates are about as low as they can go. And prices are coming down.

Potential buyers who are well-set and ready are overly cautious right now, Emerson said.

“It’s a fantastic time to buy,” he said. “That would normally make me a little bit more optimistic (about housing).

“It’s just that we’re seeing pretty shocking unemployment numbers and a pretty shocking rate of job loss. That’s the bigger countervailing influence right now.”

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Denton Investors ALRET:

Solid Investment Opportunity (Cent. Or.)
Reply to: sale-1035120743@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-02-14, 5:46PM PST


Small, established IT consulting business is seeking venture capital to expand into a market that is poised for explosive growth. The new administration's stimulus package will provide the surge in several Information Technology and Information Systems markets. Much of the funding approved for technology and broadband infrastructure growth is committed to rural development in particular.

There is going to be a window-of-opportunity open right here in Central Oregon that could provide capital asset and market share acquisition that might otherwise be out of reach for most of us small businesses.

We are seeking $15,000 to $20,000 to finance a feasibility and planning team. There are 3 or 4 realistic and inter-related concepts to be explored. This is not to say that the concepts are vague. They are not. There is actually so much opportunity here that several models could overlap and/or be pursued simultaneously.

Time is of the essence. Six months ago, few people could have confidently foreseen that billions of dollars would this quickly become accessable for technology, healthcare information systems and broadband access. The stimulus package has been approved and various funding channels will soon be available.

As I stated above, a large portion of the stimulus package is dedicated for rural areas in particular. Central Oregon fits like a hand in a glove most of the demographical definitions of "rural" outlined in the stimulus package. Also, the package has done a fair job of creating provisions that are supposed to insure that all this funding does not simply get gobbled up by mega-corporations. Preferences are provided to more regional and/or collaborative projects.

This is not a make-money-and-get-out proposition. This is a solid, realistic investment opportunity for someone who is willing to work for it. Yes, we will be making a profit. But, we will be part of an overall plan that will improve the quality of life, education and healthcare here in Central Oregon. We will be creating jobs and be part of an economic turn-around.

Potential capital investors do not have to necessarily be extremely tech-savvy but it would help to appreciate the opportunity. More important will be the ability to get things done- correctly, efficiently and professionally.

Please respond if you would care to explore a detailed overview.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

RETARD ALERT:

“I would expect more (foreclosures) because of the rapidly deteriorating employment situation we’re seeing in Oregon,” said Oregon State University economist Patrick Emerson.

The best hope, Emerson said, is for the Obama administration to figure out a way to keep home­owners in their houses and, thereby, put a floor under the sagging house prices.


Ohhhhh right.

Keep home prices artificially high, that's the ticket.

Why are Oregon Economists fucking retarded? Really? WHY?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

A kind of reality lag may also suppress sales, Whitelaw said. Sellers in Eugene seem to be holding on to the idea that their house is worth much more than the market will deliver, he and others said.

“People are saying, ‘It can’t be that bad. I’m not going to accept $50,000 less than I paid.’ And a year later, they’re saying, ‘Gosh, I wish I would have taken $50,000 less.’ ”


Where have I heard that before... hmmm? Where?

Oh right, it was me, on about 6 quadrillion occasions on this very blog.

Anonymous said...

Acting like it's anything else dupes local dumbfucks into lining the pockets of GYPSY GRIFTERS.

DENTON IS YOUR FAULT.

*

I would go one step further. DENTON was USED by TEAM MOSS/HOLLERN aka Bend's Jeebus Church of Ch$$$st

MOSS was MORE than glad to FUND MERENDA & DEEP, AND SAGEBRUSH CLASSIC, AND ANYTHING THAT WOULD BRING TOURISTS HERE TO SELL WORTHLESS FUCKING CONDO'S.

DENTON was kept alive on BEND EASY MONEY, and when it was CUT-OFF he was out of here in 24 hours.

Imagine that? Who would have guessed?

The real fucking question is given that DENTON was used, and MERENDA/DEEP were ICON's of the BankOFBend, just perhaps maybe, CACB could have put a retirement fund down in Australia in the name of DENTON?? Why the fuck not? Anything is possible in this fucking town.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The restricted availability of home loans also continues to suppress demand, Harpole said. Out of 10 homebuyers who got loans in 2005, only two can borrow now because of the banks’ tighter lending standards, he said.

Ahhhhhhhh... I see now!

So lending to Joe Six Pack, who made no documentable income since 1988, was part the problem?

So the solution is.... get money to banks... so they can lend.... to... Joe.... Six.... Pack?

Uh huh. STIMULUS DOOMED.

Anonymous said...

Oh right, it was me, on about 6 quadrillion occasions on this very blog.

*

But you notice that everybody is saying "IT could be worse, you could be in BEND-ORYGUN".

What do you tell people in Bend??

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

OBJECT LESSON LEARNED ON CRAIGSLIST:


DONT give your llamas to people in christmas valley,they'l end up dead - $1 (Madras)
Reply to: sale-1035923854@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-02-15, 1:04PM PST


People out there are scum.


That's it.

Anonymous said...

Uh huh. STIMULUS DOOMED.

*

Of course its doomed.

But don't worry COSTA/HOLLERN/MOSS/SMITH have a plan.

To build 100's of high density apartment complexes all over the fringe areas of BEND for the ten's of thousands of refuges from Cali.

They might pull it off, the STD's be snapped up by well-off retirees and they do exist, and then the fill up the fringe with low-income apartments, and build a BAT-BUS system to haul their ass to homes to change bed pans, and then market BEND as a retirement paradise.

What's the fucking other option??

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

We are seeking $15,000 to $20,000 to finance a feasibility and planning team.

Wow! Are you sure you don't need more?

Absconding with the money to Australia, or where ever, should probably take $200,000 min.

Shoot for the stars Boyz!

Ahhhhh.... The Olde FEASIBILITY & PLANNING COMMITTEE Grift.... that takes me back. It's been awhile since I heard that one.

Anonymous said...

I was just talking to a guy the other night at the bar, ( and you guys say bars are no good ), ...

The guy told me he tried to give away his Llamas, but couldn't as everyone wanted HIM to deliver them, ... yeh to places like xmas valley, well he gave up trying to give them to a 'good home', as they were his pets.

So he called a butcher, and they came out and show them hauled them away, and cut them up into steaks, @ fifty-cents a pound, good meat, like elk, and he turned around and sold the meat at the bar for $3.50/LB, and it sold quick!!! Good meat, lean, ..

You have to wonder WTF the Llama folks in xmas-valley were doing, nothing grows there, they must have just starved, this guy told me his Llamas had been costing him $50/wk for pellets each!!! He had a dozen, and now just has two, and the all the meat is gone. Bend Gone.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


DONT give your llamas to people in christmas valley,they'l end up dead - $1 (Madras)


No joke. It' a little known fact that Llama's will kill your fucking ass in heartbeat, and EAT YOU WHOLE!

I've heard of the vast murdering hordes of Llama's out in Christmas Valley, which is why I avoid that place like the plague.

It's like Jurassic Park. With llamas.

Anonymous said...

Central Oregon fits like a hand in a glove most of the demographical definitions of "rural" outlined in the stimulus package

*

Why does this language make my dick hard?? Is there something different about me??

The 'stimulus package' specifically exempts places out in rural eastern orygun, its funny that you can snag money on expectations for money that ain't coming.

Anonymous said...

Long before you homer, but about 20+ year ago out towards what they call HORSE-BUTT out east of 27th, near the dump, in STD country, there were so many EMU's that they were running wild, just like you say, folks paid $5k for them, to lay eggs, and idea was that everyone was going get an egg a month back... Well the EMU's can hop 6ft fences, the fuckers were running everywhere all the time.

Nothing new in BEND, when the economy goes south, all these fucking wacko emu's, ostriches, llamams, ... alpacos, ... they just are turned fucking loose.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The Circle is Complete:

looking for a llama (christmas valley,or)
Reply to: sale-1035756860@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2009-02-15, 11:01AM PST


looking for a pet llama for our female llama whos very lonely ,we would take very good care of it .and be spoiled ,want it halter broke .we take our llama for walks ,please e-mail phone number and pic ,looking for one free or low price .thanks

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

looking for a pet llama for our female llama whos very lonely

I believe "female llama" is code for teenage son. And occasionally, the father.

Anonymous said...

looking for a pet llama for our female llama whos very lonely

Reply to: sale-1035756860@craigslist.org [?]

Looking for llama stud, going to make xmas-valley llama porn, need hell hung llama, or llama strap-on, prefer free, low budget operation, very near Bend Oregon.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Hollern & Smith will be opening a Llama live sex theater soon near the oldMill site.

...

Through the Looking Glass With John and Bill E-mail
User Rating: / 0
PoorBest
Written by H. Bruce Miller
Sunday, 15 February 2009

In his Sunday column, Bulletin Editor John Costa talks to three of Bend’s biggest movers and shakers to find out why the Bend real estate market went belly-up and how to keep it from happening again. They offer a number of ideas. Some of them make sense; one is just crazy.

Developer Mike Hollern blames the Doctrine of Bend Exceptionalism – the peculiar notion that Bend is so special that it’s immune to outside economic forces.

“We were overwhelmed by the amount of money pouring in,” Hollern told Costa. “We thought that we were different from the rest of the country. It turned out that we are not so much [different].”

Hollern and attorney Neil Bryant said Bend didn’t do enough to provide roads, sewers and other essential public services as growth rampaged ahead of their capacity. “There was overwhelming growth for sure, [but] city leadership didn’t react forcefully enough on [things like] roads, transportation and sewer capacity,” Bryant said.

(It would have been easier for City Hall to provide adequate infrastructure, of course, if builders and developers hadn’t so stubbornly resisted any attempt to increase Systems Development Charges to a realistic level.)

Hollern and Bryant agreed Bend needs to spend more money to develop a first-rate education system, especially higher ed. They’re right – good schools are a more important “quality of life” factor for most folks than bike trails and trout streams.

So much for the sensible ideas. Now comes the crazy one.

Old Mill District developer Bill Smith tells Costa the reason for the real estate bubble and subsequent bust was … are you ready for it? … we didn’t build enough houses.

“Essentially, [Smith] said we were lulled into our own sense of superiority and did not address land use problems,” Costa writes.

“We ended up, he said, critically short of residential and industrial land.

“Because the city government was so slow to bring more land into the urban growth boundary, the real estate bubble was magnified here.

“That makes sense.

“Lots of people want to move here.

“The land laws restrict access, thus creating exclusivity with home prices spiraling upward.”

Unless Bill and John spent the last five years in a cave out near John Day, they should understand that what drove Bend home prices to insane levels was not that there weren’t enough houses for the millions who were desperate to live in our precious “paradise”; it was a speculative frenzy, pure and simple.

People (from Bend, Portland, California and all over the map) were frantically buying properties in the hope of flipping them to make an overnight killing, aided and abetted by dishonest appraisers who were willing to inflate home values and banks that were eager to lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to anybody who had a pulse. It was a classic speculation-driven bubble, no different in its essentials from the Dutch tulip craze of the 1630s, the South Sea Bubble of 1720 or the dot.com mania of the 1990s.

If Smith’s and Costa’s Alice-in-Wonderland logic was correct, we would still have people flocking to Bend and snapping up houses at inflated prices instead of having thousands of unsold homes on the market despite plunging prices.

And if Oregon’s and Bend’s land use restrictions are to blame, how come the bubble-and-bust cycle was even worse in areas – such as South Florida – that have virtually no land use restrictions?

At the end of his column, Costa has a bullet-point list of things Bend needs to do to avoid another bubble and bust. Here’s our list:

* Invest in things that really protect and improve Bend’s quality of life – schools, parks, police and fire protection, libraries, good public transit, good roads – instead of continuing to market this town on the basis of blue skies and bullshit.
* Don’t let growth outpace our ability to pay for the infrastructure that growth demands. (Raising SDCs would help.)
* Take some of the buckets of money we spend to attract tourists and use it to attract businesses and industries that bring living-wage jobs.
* Encourage developers and builders (maybe through some kind of SDC credit or deferral) to build realistically sized houses that ordinary people can afford, instead of 5,000-square-foot McMansions designed to sell for half a million dollars.

Anonymous said...

In his Sunday column, Bulletin Editor John Costa talks to three of Bend’s biggest movers and shakers to find out why the Bend real estate market went belly-up and how to keep it from happening again. They offer a number of ideas. Some of them make sense; one is just crazy.


*

COSTA talked with his three OWNERS and said "MASSA how we get out of da BEND like DENTON, down to Australia before the BEND niggers lynch our white ass"???

Duncan McGeary said...

""looking for a pet llama for our female llama whos very lonely""

"I believe "female llama" is code for teenage son. And occasionally, the father."

Belly laugh of the day.

Anonymous said...

Developer Mike Hollern blames the Doctrine of Bend Exceptionalism – the peculiar notion that Bend is so special that it’s immune to outside economic forces.

*

That's FUNNY. Hollern is the person who marketed the Bend Brand, he owns "Brooks Resources", the very company that paid for 'Smart Growth' back in 1998, and created what became the Great Bend BOOM.

1.) COVA PR&MARKETING of Bend paid by the Bend taxpayer
2.) BUSH easy money for RE post 911
3.) Deferred SDC's, lobbied by Hollern's army
4.) 1031 exchange in Bend was NW epicenter

The best PR&MARKETING that money could buy, all managed by the team that inherited the company town, e.g. Shevlin-Hixson, aka Mike Hollern, Cali MBA who came to Bend in the 1960's to turn an old washed up logging town into the next Aspen, CO.

How could their be any 'blame' the program worked to the everyones greatest expectations. Everyone knew the Bubble would eventually implode. Hollern Made Billions of dollars off SDC deferral. Today the City of Bend is bankrupt, and HOLLERN is still one of the richest men in oregon. Why the self pity??

Anonymous said...

Hollern and attorney Neil Bryant said Bend didn’t do enough to provide roads, sewers and other essential public services as growth rampaged ahead of their capacity. “There was overwhelming growth for sure, [but] city leadership didn’t react forcefully enough on [things like] roads, transportation and sewer capacity,” Bryant said.

*

This is a dead horse, but has been addressed by Bend groups like "Bend Infrastructure First" for years.

By 2004 it cost $60k/home in Bend, to cover the schools, toilet, water, power, police, ... infrastructure to cover Bend. Team-Hollern who controlled COVA,CORA,COBA, and virtually anything in Bend related to Real Estate refused to ever pay more than $12k/home. For builder's it was there only really up front cost to city, as all other costs (easy-money) were no-money down, the city required real money up front.

Billions of dollars weren't paid into the system, which were translated into pure profit for Brooks Resources, and competition.

All the while that Bend's lobbyist's and the BULL played down investing, towns like Wilsonville, OR paid the $60k/home, and today they're sitting great, and Bend is Bankrupt. Who could have guessed??

Anonymous said...

SO COSTA, HOLLERN, SMITH, TAYLOR, they're 70+ yr old (avg)

I believe Hap Taylor is the only one of them who's over 70, so by the laws of mathematics you're full of shit.

But that's no surprise.

Anonymous said...

This (infrastructure) is a dead horse, but has been addressed by Bend groups like "Bend Infrastructure First" for years.

Yes, and The Bulletin's editorial page has been attacking and ridiculing Infrastructure First for years. Now it looks like Costa is tacitly agreeing with them. Hmm, maybe it isn't such a great idea to build thousands of new houses and worry about the roads and other shit when we get around to it ...

Anonymous said...

Hollern Made Billions of dollars off SDC deferral.

C'mon, Hollern isn't anywhere near that rich. Nobody in Bend is. We don't have anybody in the Bill Gates / Warren Buffett league.

Les Schwab was worth only about $70 mil when he died, and was the richest man in Central Oregon -- only one who made the Forbes 500 Richest Americans list.

Duncan McGeary said...

Paul-doh, you're getting good at this two boobs at the end, and one boob in the middle, thing.

Anonymous said...

Les Schwab was worth only about $70 mil when he died, and was the richest man in Central Oregon -- only one who made the Forbes 500 Richest Americans list.

*

Yeh, HBM, tell us about et-all 100's of LLC's, like HOLLERN aka brook-resources has is it all under the GAYDAR by design.

So, you do agree that BEND was short-changed of over $2 billion in SDC, even though YOU the FUCKING 'gate-keeper' who is on the SORE ( switzer ) winterfest Smith/Hollern payroll has 'everything' to protect that nobody made any real money???

Hell even team-sawyer is said to have have funneled "MILLIONS" I repeat MILLIONS to Mexico, and they be fucking BEND tad-poles compared to MOSS, HOLLERN, Smith, or other major fucking boss-hoggs.

Lastly, YOUR so FUCKING fuLL of SHEEEEEEET as HOMER-WILLIAM's ( Broken-Top ) of PDX is worth over $500M, so where in the fucking HELL are you getting your numbers from KUNT??

You play a lot of shieeeeeeet being devils adovacate, but what you fail to realize is some of us were here 20+ years studying this sheeeeeeet before YOU arrived to suck&cover boss-hogg arse.

Bewert said...

The minutes of the emergency meeting to elect Oran, held behind locked doors with three media outlets and one developer lobbyist present, and at least one more media, Tristan Reisfar from KPOV, outside beating on the door.

###

Bend City Council
Emergency Meeting
February 6, 2009

The Bend City Council called an emergency meeting on Friday, February 6, 2009. The meeting was called to order at 6:05 PM. Present were Bend City Councilors Jeff Eager, Mark Capell, Tom Greene, Jodie Barram Jim Clinton, and Mayor Kathie Eckman.

City Manager Eric King was present by conference phone. City Attorney Mary
Winters was present.

Mayor Eckman advised that the emergency was dictated by event and not by convenience. City Attorney Mary Winters explained the emergency meeting allows dispensing with the requirement for 24 hours notice to the media. The media was contacted and are present. The meeting was called because the period to fill the Council vacancy by appointment ends on this date at midnight.

The process to fill the vacancy was established at the January 7th meeting and conducted and did not result in filling the vacancy. Mayor Eckman spoke to a former Council member, Oran Teater, and then called the emergency meeting to provide the Council with an opportunity to fill vacant Council Position #7.

Mayor Eckman explained Mr. Teater’s background on the Commission and that
he had served on the Council for eight years, with two years service as mayor.

Ms Winters noted that the emergency is the ending of the 30 days time period
provided to the Council to appoint a replacement to fill the vacancy. Councilor Clinton stated that he did not feel this action constituted an emergency, and stated he felt this was the result of a back room deal.

Councilor Capell indicated that he had sent an email to all councilor suggesting an emergency meeting was in order to avoid the cost of an election and community feedback he had received indicated a community desire to have the Council fill the vacancy. He indicated that it is important to a have a full council as the City moves toward the budget process. He also noted that filling the vacancy will improve morale.

Councilor Clinton asked Councilor Capell why he was interested in appointing another individual rather than changing his support of one of the two candidates, Don Leonard and Cliff Walkey, who had previously been identified as finalists. Councilor Capell stated that Mr. Teater is knowledgeable about city activities and would provide balance on the Council.

Councilor Green state that the emergency is warranted. He feels that Mr. Teater is someone that all Councilors could agree upon to fill the vacancy. Councilor Capell stated that the appointment of Mr. Teater is outside the process, but the original process was completed, but was not successful. Councilor Barram disagreed. She indicated that she felt that another process was conducted outside a public meeting. Councilor Capell stated he did not agree
with that assessment. He said that he spoke with Mayor Eckman encouraging
her to call a meeting and spoke with Councilor Eager to express his frustration. During his conversation with Councilor Eager, Oran Teater was suggested as an
alternative.

Mayor Eckman stated that she felt that the established process had been
completed. After speaking with Councilor Eager, she called Mr. Teater and asked if we would be willing to be considered to fill the vacancy.

Councilor Eager stated that he was sensitive to this alternative came up late in the course of events. He also felt the process agreed upon on January 7th had been completed, and that Mr. Teater was a well established alternative due to his previous service to the city of Bend.

Councilor Clinton indicated that he feels this is inappropriate and feels it was a back room deal. He felt it is insulting to all those who applied for the vacancy and to the citizens and that he was disappointed.

Councilor Barram stated that she would rather change her vote to one on her
preferred candidate than appoint someone who was not originally considered.

Councilor Greene stated he would support the appointment of Mr. Teater
because of Mr. Teater’s experience and this would save the City from going out to a special election.

Councilor Capell moved to appoint Oran Teater to fill the 7th position on City Council for the next two years. Councilor Eager seconded the motion, with Councilors Eager, Capell, Green and Mayor Eckman in favor. Councilors Clinton and Barram voted in opposition to the motion.

The Council adjourned the meeting at 6:32 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Patricia Stell
City Recorder

###

And thus the empty City Council position was filled with someone amenable to four of the councilors, someone who will "provide balance".

We'll see.

I'm curious what Costa, Hollern, Smith, Teater, etc. were saying about the SDC's back in the day...

Anonymous said...

"Forbes 500 list, ..." Goes to show you that the media ain't worth shit when it comes to reporting whose got da pork and who don't.

This is where the BP&HBM are conjoined fucking twins of SPIN for the fucking STATUS-QUO, I talk of Irish-PUBS, and BP goes RURAL, I speak of RICHE in ORYGUN and HBM speaks of NET-WORTH on PRIVATE/PUBLIC NET worth BUSINESS holding's.

JEEBUS XMAS HBM DUMB FUCKING KUNT the McMennamin Brothers own Billions of dollars of NW real-estate, and they ain't on NO fucking FORBES list.

HBM GO BACK TO CALI AND ROT IN HELL.

Anonymous said...

The minutes of the emergency meeting to elect Oran, held behind locked doors with three media outlets and one developer lobbyist present, and at least one more media, Tristan Reisfar from KPOV, outside beating on the door.

*

The BP has now affixed his lips to the exhaust pipe of the Propane Engine of Boss Hogg Propane Leonard, who would have guessed??

Anonymous said...

SO COSTA, HOLLERN, SMITH, TAYLOR, they're 70+ yr old (avg)

I believe Hap Taylor is the only one of them who's over 70, so by the laws of mathematics you're full of shit.

*

What are you saying dumb fucking HBM PUG KUNT??

Hollern, Smith, ... are all over 70+, you said you majored in ENGLISH @ PRINCETON, I SAID I MAJORED IN MATH/PHYSICS @CAL-TECH.

Anonymous said...

So what HBM is saying is that now he's a lawyer "I believe that HBM fuck's llamas when he's not writing for the SORE".

It's a stupid fucking statement, but worth its weight in Bend gold.

Anonymous said...

...honor is a harder master than the law.

It cannot compromise for less than 100 cents on the dollar and its debts never outlaw. - Mark Twain


So what does the 'code of homer' mean?? Is Obama without law, or neither nor debts a debtor be? The code of homer is profound but the oracle of dumc will prevail.

Bewert said...

Re: lips to Leonard.

###

You, my friend, are truly a fucking idiot.

I've talked to Leonard once in my life, for a total of ten minutes. I consider him the last of the developer-funded candidates. Personally I would have liked to have seen the non-developer funded candidate, Cliff Walkey, fill the postion.

Anonymous said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/feb/11/zimbabwe-gold-panning-starvation-food

Bewert said...

January 09 Financials

Couple of highlights:

1) I can't seem to find any contingency funds left, but that may be because this is more like a P/L statement than a balance sheet. I'll ask Sonia about that Tuesday.

2)Page 24, the Juniper Ridge Construction Fund, $1.7M in the hole and counting.

3) Page 25, Accessibility Construction Fund--only $60K in the hole, and soon to gain $5M from bonding from one of the agenda items for Wednesday.

4) Page 33, the Internal Service Fund. Here you can see some serious cutting in both revenues and expenditures, plus that $50K future construction reserve that always makes me laugh.

5) Page 34, the Overall Revenue Line Summary. This shows some serious holes, like SDC Revenues, LID Construction Fund, JR Construction Fund, etc. Comm Dev Block Grants are down but IIRC correctly they will come in a big chunk this spring.

Overall Revenues are at 58% of budget after seven months, not terrible--although this is after several rounds of budget cutting.

Overall Expenditures is only 35% of budget. Here SDC Revenue spending really sticks out like a sore thumb at under 1% of the budgeted amount.

What may really hurt down the road is if the costs of debt service go up. We have over $8M reserved for debt service right now, with another $22M in debt scheduled to be added this fiscal year, meaning by June 30. I asked Sonia for a summary of total debt to date, but she hasn't gotten back to me yet so I'll remind her.

Anonymous said...

"Most of the jobs created in the 5-10 years prior to The Boom, are artificial. They really are not meant to be."


This is an excellent point that does not seem to be coming out in the mainstream media.

-- The vast U.S. military budget since WWII is essentially a "stimulous". It seems that we spend far more than necessary to actually protect the country. I remember hearing a statistic that we spend more on military than all other countries combined.

-- Interest rate policies since 9/11 have been monetary stimulous. There are thousands of homes that should never have been bit. Millions of jobs across the country should never have been filled, and tens of thousands of businesses across the country should never have opened. We were living beyond our means on fake/borrowed money.

*

Obama's stimulous will help, but at $800 billion, it's just a drop in the bucket.

Actual GDP is falling short of potential GDP something like $2,600 billion (2.6 trillion).

So even with an $800 billion stimulous (never mind how it's paid), aggregate demand is still going to be $1,800 billion less than it would take to keep the economy at full employment.

*

Someone please tell me I'm wrong. I hope I am.

Anonymous said...

Re: lips to Leonard.

###

Propane is not pollution free. Even sucking the exhaust of a propane engine is not clean burn of water and carbon-dioxide. There are many off products such as carbon-monoxide that can cause brain damage.

BP please don't suck the Leonard Propane Exhaust, I know you have only talked 'with him once', I think we should now call BP 'blagovich', like Burris or anybody else that only talked once. BP you went out of your way telling us how Leonard, embraced you, made eye contact, and unlike Teater, or Eckman actually gave you the time of day and treated you like other than a gad-fly.

Now like Jeebus at the last summer no longer is Leonard the 'man'.

Anonymous said...

Rich people in the PNW.

HBM newbie like BP thinks he knows Orygun, today he says that a dead-man is the richest person in ORYGUN by $75M les-schwab. Deceased.

Sorry HBM, but just a few years ago Homer-Williams sold just ONE of his fucking propertys downtown, the so called 'brewery-blocks' where the new Deschutes nearly now sits and Homer Williams got $300M for that single purchase.

There are many billionaires in Orygun.

Go check your source, what was it
'Bloomberg' or some media source, where does Stewart Resnick ( Suterra ) owner showup?? Richest man in Cali by far? Is he even on that list??

Lot's of these people like HOLLERN that own Orygun aren't on a fucking list, that's why they have 100's of LLC's to keep them off the GAYDAR.

LavaBear said...

>>>where does Stewart Resnick ( Suterra ) owner showup?? Richest man in Cali by far? Is he even on that list??


I wanna see your secret list. Please? Forbes doesn't list Resnick as being in the top 400 in the US let alone tops in Cali. Must be because you haven't shown them the list.

The Forbes 400

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Developer Mike Hollern blames the Doctrine of Bend Exceptionalism – the peculiar notion that Bend is so special that it’s immune to outside economic forces.

Again, I can only think of William Wallace at this apropos moment:

Lower your flags and march straight back to England, stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for a hundred years of theft, rape, and murder. Do that and your men shall live. Do it not, and every one of you will die today.

Because Hollern, Smith, and Costa are the Instigators of Bend's Exceptionalism Doctrine. Hell, they demanded it!

Who the fuck else in this town could have INITIATED A "DOCTRINE"? I mean, really?

The Doctrine of Bend Exceptionalism. Good One Hollern.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

But what is TRULY INCREDIBLE about this moment, is that Hollern, Smith, and Costa have all RECOGNIZED something I said TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO:

That it was the Bend Kool-Aid, the Superiority Complex, the Exceptionalisn Doctrine... whatever you wanna call it, IS GOING TO BE THE THING THAT TAKES DOWN THIS TOWN.

Remember that? Said it many times, to much confusion & hard-core derision.

FINALLY, The Bend Doctrine Three are finally realizing that this ATTITUDE of SUPERIORITY is DEATH TO THEIR BUSINESSES.

Nothing sells in an ordinary town, when EVERY SINGLE SOUL believes that THEIR SHIT DON'T STINK.

"My house is worth WAY THE FUCK MORE than my neighbors house. WAY MORE! And I will not let it go for a single cent less than 300% more than what I paid for it 18 months ago. FUCK YOU! Yeah! FUCK YOU COMPS!

This is the DEATH KNELL for Bend. Everyone & Everything is 6 std dev's above average. So everything is 6 STD DEV's higher in prices. An since Incomes are 1.5 STD DEV'S BELOW average & there is no more credit, BEND IS DEAD.

Good Job Boyz. YOU KILLED BEND WITH YOUR STUPID FUCKING DOCTRINE.

But no one here believe their BULLSHIT. YOU ARE BETTER. YOU DESERVE TO GET triple what you paid just 18 months ago. NEVER LOWER YOUR PRICE.

WE ARE ALL GODS CHOSEN PEOPLE!

Anonymous said...

There are many billionaires in Orygun.

Yep, you can't throw a rock down Wall Street without hitting one. Hollern, Smith, Hap Taylor, John Costa, Gordon Black, Aaron Switzer, me ... all billionaires.

Your are fucking certifiable, Buster. But I've said that before.

tim said...

>>I believe Hap Taylor is the only one of them who's over 70, so by the laws of mathematics you're full of shit.

What "laws" of mathematics are you talking about? If Hap were 210 years old, the others could be babies and the average age would be 70.

Do you know what an average is?

Bewert said...

Re: BP please don't suck the Leonard Propane Exhaust, I know you have only talked 'with him once', I think we should now call BP 'blagovich', like Burris or anybody else that only talked once.

###

FUCK OFF, ASSHOLE.

You are somebody sent here to stop actual discussion with your wild assertions that make absolutely no fucking sense. This is the pushback we get here. This is how scared your handlers are.

You would fucking know I have not supported any developer-funded candidates if you had paid any attention before you came here to fuck up this discussion. A discussion that needs to be open and public.

Go back to sucking Costa's dick. Or bring something useful to the discussion. Your fucking choice. You are that fucking obvious.

Your paycheck is dependent on an unsustainable paradigm. You might want to think about that.

Before you end up like Sawyer or Denton. Like Palisch or Palmer. Or Pete Wilkenson (a guy who was crying like a baby on the phone to his creditors last week). Or Ted Himmler. Or....the fucking list is endless of dumbfucks like you.

Grow up and make something of your town.

Anonymous said...

What "laws" of mathematics are you talking about? If Hap were 210 years old, the others could be babies and the average age would be 70.

Uh, yeah. But he ain't.

Anonymous said...

HBM GO BACK TO CALI AND ROT IN HELL.

Beats staying in Bend and rotting in a shithole.

Anonymous said...

What about bend 1900 yes we are are mad and now we know how the idians felt they were forced out by the white man.chief paulina fought hard and lost. And now we are being oppressed by the actions or the results of the government and their decisions. The old timers knew they had to take of themselves and now we need to get the mindset of the oldtimers and take care of ourselves cause the government is not going to.

Anonymous said...

HBM newbie like BP thinks he knows Orygun, today he says that a dead-man is the richest person in ORYGUN by $75M les-schwab. Deceased.

Learn to fucking read, you functionally illiterate alcohol-sodden assclown. I said he was the richest person in CENTRAL Oregon when he died -- as everybody knows. Not Oregon. Who's the richest person in Central Oregon today? I don't know. Maybe Schwab's widow.

Anonymous said...

Ever notice that the later it gets, the more obscene and crazier Buster gets as the alcohol takes its toll?

Outta here -- hasta manana.

Bewert said...

hb, Buster's rant to me was at 5:48. I fear the alcohol is getting earlier and earlier...

Bewert said...

Defending Tim Geithner
Wall Street loved the new Treasury secretary but hated his bank-rescue plan. I see it just the other way around.


* By James J. Cramer
* Published Feb 12, 2009


For months, the ménage à quatre among Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the press, politicians, and the powers on Wall Street mystified me. Geithner’s a man with practically no business experience who has served mainly as a public servant, yet he’s been hailed by all three of those constituencies as a cross between Alexander Hamilton and J. P. Morgan. If anyone could solve the country’s myriad financial crises, the acolytes assured you, it would be Geithner. It didn’t matter that, as New York Federal Reserve president, the chief regulator of Wall Street, he gave a free pass to just about every single kind of reckless behavior that has brought this nation to its financial knees. Or that he had a major hand in letting a bank that was too big to let fail, Lehman Brothers, go under, a multitrillion-dollar mistake that the world economy has yet to recover from. Not even an outrageous series of admittedly accidental tax evasions, ones that my lawyer told me would most likely lead to an indictment had I committed them, could shake the backers of a man who makes Teflon look sticky.

I know the wrath of those who have deified the Great Geithner. I’ve railed against him for months, saying that he would be a huge liability for President Obama, having been integrally involved with all of the cataclysmic decisions of the Bush economic team. Yet every time I spoke out against Geithner, one of the recently testifying dons of Wall Street would call me in for background and tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about—¬Geithner “got it.” Didn’t I know he had the brains, the savvy, the charisma to save the Obama presidency from presiding over the Great Depression II?

But in just weeks, it’s all unraveled. Geithner is famous for currying journalistic favor through background interviews that erase his fingerprints from every major financial crime scene. He could take credit for the good and shunt the bad to others, and the Lassies in the press would be good to their master. Not this time. This time Geithner spoke, not through his journalistic minions or Wall Street acolytes, but on national television, telling people the sobering reality of what has yet to be done to save the system. The verdict? A near 5 percent decline in the averages, the worst bludgeoning of the year.

And you know what’s ironic? I think that with this plan, he’s actually got it right. The press, the pols, the Wall Streeters—they are all dumping their golden boy just when he’s figured out how to solve the most intractable set of financial woes since the ones that landed on FDR’s desk 76 years ago.

Let’s take a moment to review the mess Geithner inherited. Having been gut-shot by the mortgage-backed-securities disaster, the nation’s banks desperately need to be recapitalized in order to help money flow the way they’re supposed to. The banks also need someone to buy up the bad paper that’s still on their books so that any infusion of new capital doesn’t go up in smoke. Accomplishing those goals will cost trillions, and someone, of course, has to pay for it. That someone is either private investors or the federal government—taxpayers. Of course, you could also let banks fail. Geithner’s plan is a deft mix of all three ideas that allows the worst banks to go under while distributing the cost of saving the rest among taxpayers and private investors.

Geithner knows there are only really two viable options left to us. In the first, the U.S. basically forces every bank to write down its bad loans and creates a so-called bad bank to buy up those loans on the cheap, causing mass bank failures and a nationalization of the banking system. Allowing Lehman to crater demonstrated the wisdom of allowing major failures. Deep-sixing toxic paper into a bad bank would cost taxpayers 5, 6, maybe 7 trillion dollars, as we eat (and overpay for) every bank’s rotten loans. And never mind the philosophical questions about nationalizing banks in a capitalist society; the government—the same people who manage Amtrak and the Postal ¬Service—would be left to manage the banks. I know others see nationalization as an inevitability. I see it as a catastrophe.

In the second option, the Geithner plan, we try to figure out which banks are worth saving, we tide them over by giving them capital, and we forbear—we look the other way for a time—regarding their capitalization problems until the nation finds its financial footing and those banks are solid again. The taxpayer pays some of the bill up front—hundreds of billions, actually—but the cost is much lower to each of us than it would be if we nationalized the major banks and crafted a toxic bank for their crummy loans. Meanwhile, we place restrictions on how banks use taxpayer dollars (limit excessive executive pay, encourage lending over hoarding), and eventually, when the economy and the banks recover, they’ll be able to repay the government. Yes, the details remain to be worked out, but the principles are sound.

Geithner will institute a stress test to see who is solvent enough to get government money and who should be shut or be forced to sell to better-run institutions. By figuring out who is and isn’t worth saving, he can rally the system around a few well-capitalized institutions and shutter the rest. No more throwing good money after bad. No more fears of shaky banks choking credit.

Geithner then wants to give up to a trillion dollars to a new government entity that will encourage the private sector to get involved by providing financing to vulture investors who want to buy toxic assets but lack the credit. Geithner knows that no traditional lender, no Goldman or Citigroup, will offer big money to anyone willing to take a risk that some of these so-called toxic assets might be worth something if they can just finance them, hold on to them, and clean them up until some come back to life. But lending money to such folks is a good idea, and that’s why Geithner wants the government to do it. Think of the toxic loans as land contaminated by toxic waste. Right now, no bank will give anybody credit to rehabilitate the land and sell it profitably down the road; Geithner’s Treasury wants to lend you a trillion to do so. I’ve heard the skeptics, but my bet is there’s trillions in private money waiting to jump on this option if there’s government financing. And again, this is an idea that allows taxpayers to get paid back, when many of these seemingly worthless bad loans get revived.

Of course, no one knows what the lousy loans are currently worth. I think Geithner should establish a government-run fixed-income trading desk to make a market in these instruments. The big brokerage houses aren’t willing to risk working these orders, but without a real two-way market, a price to buy and a price to sell, no one can meet in the middle. All the government has to do is make such a market and provide financing to the buyers. God knows there are plenty of laid-off bond specialists out there to run a government trading desk. The banks have been loath to sell these assets at any discount from where they carry them on their books because they have to raise capital after incurring big losses to stay in compliance with the regulators. But if Geithner is willing to let the banks take the hits without regulatory jackboots coming down on them, which is what is happening now, the banks would be willing to sell.

Despite what the markets said, Geithner got a lot of things right last week: His plan is big and bold, economically sound and politically viable (no nationalization, no more cost to taxpayers than absolutely necessary). If he’s as great a man as those who criticized me for knocking him say he is, then he’ll flesh out the details in the next few weeks and marshal the forces to get it through Congress. I hope that Geithner’s still got enough Teflon to see him through this brutal moment. If he does, he could wind up worthy of the Hamilton-Morgan mantle. If not, there’s a whole lot more pain in store before we’re in the clear.


###

Cramer is a blowhard. But I thought this is a view worth posting. Not least for Cramer's change in view.

Anonymous said...

Did the Zionists fail again?
14 Feb 2009

Judging by Congressman Paul Kanjorski's remarks, the Zionists tried but failed to create worldwide economic chaos on September 11, 2008!

The Zionists achieved incredible success during the 20th century, but their ship is sinking now that the Internet has removed the secrecy that they require for their diabolical operations.


So, what did Kanjorski say?
In response to a complaint about the banking "bailout", Kanjorski defended the bailout by saying that it was not to help the banks; rather, it was to stop an "Electronic Run On the Banks".
An excerpt of the video is here. CSPAN has the complete video here.

If that video is deleted, I made an excerpt of the important section:
Paul-Kanjorski-bank-run.wmv 900 k bytes


Don't underestimate the significance of his remark!
Congressman Kanjorski, a member of the House Financial Services Subcommittee, released some information that everybody else was keeping secret; namely, that a group of people were trying to cause worldwide economic chaos. However, their attack failed because people in the banking system and the Bush administration stopped it.

This adds more evidence to my speculation that there is a fight going on among the Jews for control of the world, and that Madoff was part of that fight (I mentioned this possibility in December 2008). This would also explain why the government is refusing to provide details about where the bailout money is going.


Which day was the economic attack?
Kanjorski describes the attack occurring on Thursday at 11 AM in the morning, but which Thursday?
Note: the "transcript" at liveleak is incorrect, and so are many other websites, possibly on purpose. Here is my transcript of the important section:

“Look, I was there when the secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked with members of Congress about what was going on. It was about September 15. Here's the facts, and we don't even talk about these things.
“On Thursday, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion; was being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.

“The treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks.

“They decided to close the operation - close down the money accounts - and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there. That's what actually happened.

“If they had not done that, their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, 5½ trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States... would've collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours, the world economy would've collapsed.”



We could interpret his remarks this way: since September 15 was the day he and and other members of Congress were told of the attack, the attack occurred on the previous Thursday, which was September 11.
If the attack occurred on September 11, that would explain why many sites are claiming that the attack occurred on September 18, or September 15; ie, they don't want you to notice the connection to the 9/11 attack.

Have you noticed how often the Zionists arrange for their diabolical operations to occur on certain days? They seem to have a fascination with the number 11, and with the combination of 9 and 11. For a few examples:

• Crystal Night in Germany occurred during the night of November 9, 1938 (ie, on 9-11 as they write dates in Europe).
• The train bombings in Madrid occurred on March 11, 2004

• On July 11, 2006, seven bombs exploded over a period of 11 minutes in India.

• The USS Cole was attacked at 11:18 am on October 12, 2000 local time, but it was still October 11 in Hawaii.

• My last phone conversation with Christopher Bollyn while he was in America was June 10, 2007 and my impression was that the next day, June 11, was when the people he foolishly trusted were going to fly him out of America, and he ended up...? who knows where.


When I was a young child I thought it was exciting when the odometer in my father's car turned over from 49,999 to 50,000 miles. As I grew up, I lost interest in such silly events, but the Zionist crime network seems to be dominated by adults who have the mind of a child. Of course, it's hardly surprising that the Zionist crime network is full of freaks, drug addicts, and psychos; who else would be attracted to such a disgusting crime network?


The media investigates the accusations!

If you are aware that the Zionist Jews dominate our media and routinely lie to us, then it shouldn't surprise you that some of them have investigated Kanjorski's accusations and are doing "damage control". Two examples:
• In this article, Alice Cherbonnier uses a common Zionist trick of shifting attention away from Jews. For example, she mentions the idiotic possibility that the attack may have been "a maneuver by the "Saudis" to force the Bush administration to do something to shore up the U.S. dollar."
• In this vague article, Felix Salmon proudly announces that he is finally able to "squash" the "Kanjorski Meme". He is using the common Zionist trick of trying to fool us into thinking that he's an all-knowing expert who has resolved the issue, and that we have no reason to investigate any further.



Will the police and military figure out who their real enemy is?

During the first half of the 20th century, many nations were tricked by Zionist Jews into destroying each other in two world wars. America was later tricked into a war in Korea and Vietnam. Today, the Zionist Jews are tricking the military and police of many nations into helping them stage false flag operations (such as 9/11), and the Zionist Jews also use the military and police as attack dogs to kill Arabs and arrest whoever the Jews label as a "terrorist", an "anti-Semite", or a "Holocaust Denier".



Why are so many of the supposedly brave and courageous men in the military and police allowing themselves and their nation to be abused by Jewish criminals?
I suppose that many of them are simply honest people who trust their leadership, but it's very likely that most of them are just like the ordinary people; ie, incapable of facing the harsh aspects of reality. Just like ordinary people, they are so traumatized by reality that they cannot have a serious discussion about the 9/11 attack, or the Holocaust hoax, or Israel. Their inability to face reality makes it easy for the Jews to manipulate them. The police and military need to replace their leaders with men who have the ability to stand up to Israel, Zionists, and Jews.
Don't be fooled by the Posse Comitatus law
I just looked over my status report for July 2008, and everything still applies as far as I can see. Specifically, the Zionist Jews realize that they're being exposed and losing the battle. They are becoming very worried!

It seems that their biggest fear right now is that the military will figure out that our enemy is not the Arabs or the Nazis; rather, our enemy is Israel and Zionism.

As a result of this fear, Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, and many other truth seekers, anti-war activists, liberals, and patriots are often reminding us that the Posse Comitatus Act is a federal law that prohibits the military from being used for law-enforcement.

Daryl Smith has gone even farther than Alex Jones. On January 18, 2009, he was talking with the mysterious "Noel" from TheInfoUnderground, and Smith said that soldiers should be killed if they are deployed within America

Don't be fooled by this silly trick! The US military is supposed to protect America from attack by foreigners, and it doesn't matter whether the foreigners are attacking us from outside our borders or from within America. The military shouldn't ignore an enemy simply because they crossed the border, acquired American citizenship, and are living among us.


We are under attack! Our military should help us!
For many centuries, America, Europe, and other nations have been under a serious and violent attack by various groups of Jews. However, unlike conventional battles, our Jewish enemies have gotten inside our nations and have been attacking us from within our own neighborhoods, government agencies, and police departments.
These Jews did not come to our nations to become our friends. They came here to take what we have and conquer our nation. They don't like us, and we are fools to treat such selfish and abusive people with respect. Our military should treat them as enemies.

We are being attacked by Zionist Jews, and if our military had proper leadership, they would pull their troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers throughout America to clean our cities of the Zionist army and protect the nation from further destruction.

Our military should also send thousands of troops into the FBI offices, police departments, schools, media companies, corporate headquarters, and other government agencies, and cleanse all of them of these Jewish enemies.

Congressman Ron Paul, Alex Jones, Daryl Smith, and the others are not trying to protect us when they tell us about the Posse Comitatus law; rather, they are terrified that the military is going to figure out that our enemy are the Zionist Jews, and that the only way to get rid of these criminals is to send troops throughout American cities. No other agency has the manpower to fight such a large enemy force. We need our military to wise up and get involved in destroying the Zionist network.


How many of our police and military are psychos?
Kay Griggs claims that Zionist Jews within our government have been controlling the military by promoting the emotionally disturbed men who can be controlled through blackmail and bribery.

Alex Jones and other so-called "truth seekers" make similar accusations, but they blame it on the mysterious "New World Order" rather than on Zionist Jews. Jones frequently tells us that the New World order has filled the police departments with criminals, idiots, and psychos so that the "New World Order" can control the police departments with bribery, blackmail, and deception.

If these accusations are accurate – and they certainly seem to be – then our military and police departments are going to be useless until they first clean their own organizations of both Jewish criminals and the thousands of pedophiles, drug addicts, and freaks that the Jewish criminals have promoted to leadership positions.


Don't be manipulated by praise!
Politicians, salesmen, and crime gangs frequently take advantage of people by praising them and giving them awards. All male animals have an intense craving to be the dominant male. This makes it's very easy to manipulate men with praise.

The Zionist crime network frequently uses this trick to attract people to their propaganda. For example, listen to John Stadtmiller and Alan Stang praise the audience of the Republic Broadcasting Network

Men are suckers for praise and compliments. Don't assume that you are somehow better than the rest of us. We all have this craving to be important. You must be aware of this emotion so that you can keep it under control and prevent people from manipulating you with compliments or awards.


The enemy has infiltrated our nations
Israel is their primary base of operation, and the Zionist army is getting control of America, Europe, and other nations. Every nation should consider themselves to be under attack by Israel and other Zionist Jews.

Everybody, especially those in the police and military, should become aware of who among us is a Jew, and who is a potential blackmail or bribery victim. Ignoring this issue is allowing the Jewish criminals to get control of all aspects of society.

Did you see this video in which the actor Dirk Benedict said that there are hundreds of murders in Hollywood? He doesn't provide any details, but it should be obvious that the Jewish network has conquered our media companies. The Jews may be keeping everybody in the media under control by murdering those who stand up to them. Our military and police should not ignore this. By allowing these Jewish freaks to control our media, we are allowing them to ruin television, magazines, newspapers, scientific publications, and school textbooks.


We're under attack, but most people don't care
Most of the human population ignores corruption and crime networks, and that has allowed the criminals to kill and kidnap the few brave individuals who stood up to them, and it has allowed the networks to grow and thrive.
Today the Zionist network is a gigantic, international organization, and they've established a nation for themselves; namely, Israel.

The ordinary citizens could easily help us defeat the Jewish crime network simply by helping us to spread information about 9/11, the HoloHoax, the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946, and the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.

Furthermore, it is very easy for ordinary citizens to help us put financial pressure on the crime networks; all they have to do is reduce the money that they spend on newspapers, magazines, pornography, strip clubs, and gambling casinos. The ordinary citizens could easily drive their propaganda businesses to bankruptcy.



Unfortunately, the majority of people don't merely ignore the crimes; rather, they actually try to stop us from exposing the crimes. The majority of people behave like stupid, selfish animals who want nothing more from life than to titillate their emotional cravings for food, sex, status, and babies. They stop us from talking about 9/11 because the issue upsets them. They don't want to be upset. They want to entertain themselves all day, every day.
Their disgusting, selfish, irresponsible behavior is allowing the crime networks to thrive and ruin life for everybody – including themselves!


Most people are not "innocent"

The military considers a soldier to be a traitor if he helps the enemy, or if he runs away from a fight and leaves the other soldiers alone.
As I mentioned in my video, Silence of the Sheeple, (at this page) we should consider the "innocent" civilians who help the enemy as traitors, not as innocent people. Tens of millions of people have already died or suffered because of the Jewish crime network, and now our economy is starting to deteriorate. This network would have been destroyed long ago if it wasn't for the millions of "innocent" people who have been suppressing attempts to expose and destroy it.

If soldiers were to behave in this same, disgusting manner, they would be shot as traitors. Why not treat civilians in the same manner? Why should civilians have the privilege of assisting a crime network?




There are no "civilians"
Most people follow the philosophy that the majority of people are "civilians", and that a small number of people are "soldiers". Most people believe that the civilians have no responsibility to protect society.
A more useful attitude is that there is no such thing as a civilian. There is only one battle raging in the world, and every human is involved in it. We could say that every adult man has a responsibility to contribute to and protect the society he lives in.

Everybody wants the benefits of modern society, such as electricity, abundant sources of food, and plumbing, but only a few people are willing to contribute to society, and even fewer are willing to help protect society. Most people are like selfish children who want other people to serve them while they entertain themselves.

Why did I get involved in this battle with Zionist Jews? And why are you reading this article of mine? Unless you're a Zionist Jew who is monitoring me, you are reading this because you have an interest in the world you live in. So what's wrong with the rest of the population? Why should we regard them as innocent civilians? There's nothing "innocent" about them. They are "selfish" and "irresponsible", not "innocent".

I have been struggling for years to expose 9/11, the HoloHoax, and other crimes, and some people have been struggling for decades, but millions of sheeple continue to fight with us, thereby allowing the crimes, wars, murders, and suffering to continue year after year. Why should we allow the sheeple to ruin the world?


Don't feel sorry for your relatives

As I described in my audio file for 19 May 2008, some of us are better behaved than our relatives. We have to turn our back on our relatives, get together with the better behaved people, and make a better world. We shouldn't feel sorry for somebody simply because he's closely related to us. We shouldn't allow our world to be destroyed simply because we don't want to hurt the feelings of our relatives.
Don't be fooled by people who help the "underdogs"
A lot of politicians, con artists, and Zionist agents try to fool people into thinking that they are loving, caring people because they occasionally help the "disadvantaged" and the "underdogs".

Vice-president Joe Biden served meals to the homeless on Christmas eve. This type of activity does nothing to reduce hunger, or improve life for anybody, but it fools millions of people into thinking Biden is a wonderful person.

On December 23, 2008, Alex Jones boasted that he might not do his radio show on the following day because he was going to help feed the homeless

The following week he boasted that he is so dedicated to helping people that he would jump into a meat grinder if he knew it would save a million children

However, on that same December 31 radio show, Jones showed what he is really interested in; that he wants us to fear and hate the police and military. Listen to Jones encourage us to picket the homes of policemen and harrass them at restaurants:
Jones-blaming-police-31Dec2008.mp3 only 83 kbytes

I agree that many of the laws that the police enforce are ridiculous, such as the law that prohibits Stevia from being used as a replacement for sugar (if you don't know what Stevia is, I wrote this a few years ago). However, the police don't make the laws, so society will not improve by harassing police at restaurants or by picketing their houses.

The American police and military are desperately in need of an education about Zionism, but Jones and the others never encourage us to educate the police about Zionism. Rather, we are encouraged to harrass, fear, and hate the police and military.

Michael Moore makes movies in which he encourages us to ridicule and laugh at the police. Are you aware of this? If not, I wrote this a couple years ago.


The military and police should remove weeds; not feel sorry for them

The police and military should protect the respectable people, and whenever parasitic and destructive people appear, the police should remove them from society, just as gardeners remove weeds.

Unfortunately, many of the weeds are in leadership positions, and so it's difficult for the ordinary police and ordinary soldiers to do anything about them. We must all support and work with the police and military, not fight with them. We need to work together to get rid of the destructive people.


Don't be disillusioned; we can make a better world
The so-called truth seekers frequently try to ruin our morale by telling us that the New World Order is too powerful to defeat, Or that the human race is hopelessly corrupt and selfish, or that Israel will implement the Samson Option if we dare stand up to them.

Don't be disillusioned by their frightening propaganda. It is much better to assume that there are enough high quality humans to make a better world. So instead of living in fear or disillusionment, imagine a world in which you can trust government officials, school teachers, scientists, and policemen. Imagine a world in which businessmen compete in a productive manner rather than fight and cheat.

Improving the world only requires a change in attitude and a change in leadership. We simply have to stop feeling sorry for the "Underdogs" and start raising standards for behavior, especially among people in leadership positions. How difficult is that?

With better people in control of the world, we could easily create cities that are reasonably free of crime and pollution, and that have attractive architecture, parks, gardens, and farms. And with better leadership, we can design an economic system that we enjoy working in and a school system that provides a useful education. Humans have the intelligence to do better; all we have to do is remove the freaks and criminals from leadership positions and put better people in control.


Our world is whatever the people make it
One concept that I stress repeatedly is that our problems are not coming from the devil, or from ignorance, or from poverty. Rather, every problem the human race is suffering from is due to the destructive and selfish behavior of people.
Most people are not "innocent". Rather, they have a mind like a primitive savage. They would have been well adapted to life in 50,000 BC, but they cannot cope with life today.

Millions of them have joined organized crime gangs. An even larger number of them have so little control over their cravings for money and status that they waste their lives fantasizing about and/or struggling to become rich or famous. And most of them have little ability to control their cravings for food, alcohol, drugs, sex, or jewelry. The majority of people are "talking monkeys" who are overwhelmed with the complexities of modern life.

We can improve the situation as soon as we find enough people who are capable of dealing with this complex era, and who are ready to work together to create a better world.

Bewert said...

Re: Rather, every problem the human race is suffering from is due to the destructive and selfish behavior of people.

###
RE: selfish behavior of...

You ignore the transfer of wealth to the top elite level. Very few can deal with such complexity. Which is the reason for unions for workers.

Anonymous said...

Jody Denton's creative new dish...putting your meat on a white hot lava rock...then leaving town!

Anonymous said...

"Most of the jobs created in the 5-10 years prior to The Boom, are artificial. They really are not meant to be."

These are the wisest words anyone has said here today.

These are the words not being said in the mainstream media.

*




















Not SP

Anonymous said...

Bend Bulletin announces anti-corruption campaign
Bend Bulletin - 2 hours ago

AP Bend, Oregon - The Bend Bulletin, on the front page of its Monda newspaper, announced it would use its news and editorial pages to launch a "campaign against the Oregon culture of political sleaze and Real Estate control of our city.

Anonymous said...

I wanna see your secret list. Please? Forbes doesn't list Resnick as being in the top 400 in the US let alone tops in Cali. Must be because you haven't shown them the list.

The Forbes 400

*

Imagine That!!! and Forbes doesn't list Michael Hollern of Bend, or Homer Williams?? How about Schnitzer of Schitzer steel in PDX, does your 'list' mention him?? He controls the worlds scrap-steel, and is the '#1 financier' of Netanyahu, in Israel.

Anonymous said...

Lower your flags and march straight back to England, stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for a hundred years of theft, rape, and murder. Do that and your men shall live. Do it not, and every one of you will die today.

*

Homer, I mean that is SOME HEAVY SHIT. I think that this metaphore should be tattoed on Bruces Major-Labia, so that LB can read it ever fucking day.

So, what would be the equivalent??

Hollern: "Good people of Bend. I stand before you humbled during my end times ( being over 70 ). I live in Terrible Times. Our 'Exceptional' seems to stand out. Well I'll get to the point, cuz I'm a real town talking to a 'non-real' people. We're broke, we're finished the town is Kaput. Now we all made a lot of money in the last ten years, tons of money, and we all supported the Bulletin. We all got rich flipping Real Estate. You wouldn't be dumb, fat, and rich today sitting on your fucking internet if not for me. Go to every home in BEND tonight, and tell your neighbors that your town is a fraud, that you are a fraud and your church is a fraud. Do that and the Republican Party will bless thee for 1,000 years. Do it not, and you shall all inherit the wrath of the entire USA, where all heads turn to Bend, Oregon as the sleaziest parasitic town in the USA."

Anonymous said...

Amazing statements from a life long douchbag....

Central Oregon Builders Association Vice President Tim Knopp — and homebuilders — argue that the housing market has to turn around for the larger economy to recover.

“If you’re looking to create and or save jobs, the construction industry is the key to that, because there’s been a disproportionate amount of layoffs in the construction sector,” Knopp said.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Help on the way for the housing market?

Central Oregon has been hit particularly hard but seen little aid from federal programs

By Keith Chu / The Bulletin
Published: February 16. 2009 4:00AM PST

WASHINGTON — Each month, more than 100 people call the mortgage counselors at Redmond nonprofit NeighborImpact, seeking a way to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

There are a handful of federal programs designed to do just that, but not many people have been able to take advantage of them, said Kenny LaPoint, a NeighborImpact housing center specialist. How many, exactly?

“Do you want a percentage?” LaPoint asked. “Zero.”

Since the start of this year, Congress has been hammering out an economic stimulus package and the White House has rolled out skeletal details of its bank rescue plan. But the federal government hasn’t acted to revive the U.S. housing market, even as home sales continued to stagnate and foreclosures escalated. And as LaPoint indicated, existing federal programs have been little help to Central Oregon’s beleaguered homeowners.

Central Oregon’s housing market troubles have been well-documented. In January, 65 single-family homes sold in Bend, according to the Bratton Report, a 13 percent drop from January 2008. The Bulletin reported two weeks ago that 60 notices of default, which initiate foreclosure proceedings, were filed in Deschutes County in January, an increase of more than 185 percent over January 2008.

Central Oregon Builders Association Vice President Tim Knopp — and homebuilders — argue that the housing market has to turn around for the larger economy to recover.

“If you’re looking to create and or save jobs, the construction industry is the key to that, because there’s been a disproportionate amount of layoffs in the construction sector,” Knopp said.

So why hasn’t President Barack Obama’s administration taken on the housing market?

White House plan

Last week, White House officials said it would be a few weeks until they released their plan to stem foreclosures. But on Friday afternoon, the administration sped up the rollout to this week. The nation’s largest banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc., as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance companies now controlled by the government — agreed to stop foreclosures until March 6, to allow the government plan to go into effect.

In a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the housing problems are a top concern for the administration, in response to questioning from Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat.

“How urgent is addressing the issue of mortgages as compared to the lending issues and consuming?” Merkley asked.

“Urgent,” Geithner said. “We need to move together on all of those fronts.”

But the administration decided to tackle the larger economic downturn and instability of banks first, because the credit market problems are hampering the entire economy, Geithner said.

“I think the dominant risk you see today, senator, is you’re not seeing enough lending, you’re not seeing enough risk-taking, you’re not seeing enough credit to provide the flow to the viable, creditworthy parts of the economy,” Geithner said.

In October, the Federal Housing Administration kicked off the Hope for Homeowners program, which then-President George W. Bush predicted would prevent 400,000 foreclosures. The program was supposed to help homeowners refinance their mortgages into more affordable payments. But the program’s administrator testified to the U.S. House Financial Services Committee this month that only 25 mortgages had been modified nationwide.

That’s not surprising, said LaPoint, of NeighborImpact.

The program requires home-owners to have equity in their homes, which isn’t the case for most Central Oregonians who can’t make their payments.

“The way the programs are written, it kind of disqualifies anybody who would need that assistance from being able to qualify for those programs,” he said.

The Hope for Homeowners program is voluntary for lenders and loan service companies, which have to accept a lower mortgage value.

NeighborImpact Housing Center specialist Selef Spragg said that wasn’t an attractive deal for loan service firms.

“Generally, most servicers aren’t willing to lose that amount of money,” Spragg said.

Spragg and LaPoint said they’ve had better luck simply asking loan service companies to give homeowners lower payments or better terms on their mortgage.

More Central Oregonians have taken advantage of another federal program, called FHASecure.

Run by the Federal Housing Authority, FHASecure lets homeowners with good credit, payment and employment histories, and sufficient income refinance their mortgages with the FHA’s backing.

Final 2008 FHASecure statistics for Central Oregon weren’t immediately available, said Lee Jones, a spokesman for the Housing and Urban Development Department, which oversees the Federal Housing Authority.

Through October, the agency refinanced 179 mortgages worth $34.9 million in Deschutes County, 51 mortgages worth $8.3 million in Jefferson County and 44 mortgages worth $7 million in Crook County.

But the FHA guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans in Central Or- egon in 2008, about half of which were refinances of existing mortgages, including FHASecure loans, Jones said.

The program requires participants to pay at least 10 percent of the new loan amount as a down payment, he said. The agency also offers mortgages on new purchases that require only a 3 percent down payment for people with a good credit and work history. The FHA insures lenders against mortgage defaults.

For all FHA programs in Deschutes County, the agency guaranteed 633 mortgages worth $137.9 million in 2008. In Jefferson County, it guaranteed 108 mortgages worth $17.6 million, and in Crook County, it guaranteed 112 mortgages worth $18.9 million, Jones said.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. instituted its own program to renegotiate mortgage terms for homeowners who obtained loans through IndyMac Bank, which the FDIC has controlled since the bank failed last summer. The FDIC did not respond to three messages requesting information about how many loans were modified in Oregon.

Federal efforts to boost home sales also haven’t done much, according to Oregon economists and people plugged in to the local real estate market. Last summer, the federal government created a $7,500 tax credit for new homebuyers, which had to be repaid over 15 years.

Tax credit shifts

Redmond real estate agent Tom Greene said it provided little help for the Central Oregon home market.

“The $7,500 (tax credit) they put in last year didn’t really have much of an effect because it was a loan,” Greene said.

A $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers that was included in the Senate version of the federal stimulus bill seemed to entice buyers, Greene said on Tuesday.

“I personally know I have two buyers waiting right now for that $15,000,” Greene said. “If that comes through, they’re going to buy a home the next day.”

After the provision was cut to $8,000 in the final bill approved Friday by Congress, one of those homeowners told Greene that he’ll still probably buy that house. But he has to do the math to make sure he can still afford it. The buyer was planning to use the tax credit to offset a tax penalty for withdrawing money from his retirement account to pay for the down payment.

“He’s going to sit down with his calculator over the weekend and figure out what is the ramification,” Greene said.

The housing market implosion has affected Greene’s family, too, he said. Greene’s son already owes more than his house is worth, just two years after he bought it.

“His home’s worth $70,000 less than what he paid for it two years ago,” Greene said. “He’s continued to make his payments and be an upstanding citizen.”

Ultimately, Central Oregon’s economy has to pick up before the real estate market fully recovers, Greene said.

“People have to feel more secure in their jobs and that their paycheck’s going to come in,” he said. “We need strengthening in that area, and hopefully a rebound will occur.”


Keith Chu can be reached at 202-662-7456 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

In October, the Federal Housing Administration kicked off the Hope for Homeowners program, which then-President George W. Bush predicted would prevent 400,000 foreclosures. The program was supposed to help homeowners refinance their mortgages into more affordable payments. But the program’s administrator testified to the U.S. House Financial Services Committee this month that only 25 mortgages had been modified nationwide.

That there folks, is a resounding success for Bush, succeeding far beyond anything else he's ever done.

0.0062500% SUCCESS RATE

That's 6.25 ONE THOUSANDTH'S OF ONE PERCENT, or one success per 16,000 attempts.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

KNOPP SAID: *Central Oregon Builders Association Vice President Tim Knopp — and homebuilders — argue that the housing market has to turn around for the larger economy to recover.

GREENE SAID: *Ultimately, Central Oregon’s economy has to pick up before the real estate market fully recovers, Greene said.


Funny that even these Siamese Twins cannot figure out their ass from a hole in the ground.

Here's what has to happen boyz: Housing has to hit ROCK BOTTOM, first. THEN the economy can FLATLINE for a decade. Housing will drag along at between -2% and +2% for 15-20 years, actually LOSING real value.

This is the OPTIMISTIC SCENARIO.

Worst case, is catastrophic deflation where we undergo a Jap-style implosion for decades, and prices fall 70+%.

And there's precedent for this: Prime Jap Ginza RE is down 99%. Standard homes in Japan are down 90%. They've been pushing on a string for 2 decades. Can't start it up.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

“I personally know I have two buyers waiting right now for that $15,000,” Greene said. “If that comes through, they’re going to buy a home the next day.”

After the provision was cut to $8,000 in the final bill approved Friday by Congress, one of those homeowners told Greene that he’ll still probably buy that house. But he has to do the math to make sure he can still afford it. The buyer was planning to use the tax credit to offset a tax penalty for withdrawing money from his retirement account to pay for the down payment.

“He’s going to sit down with his calculator over the weekend and figure out what is the ramification,” Greene said.


You can SMELL the desperation in this statement. Greene probably hasn't had a square meal in months. You can tell he's grasping at straws, believing that Obama-Jeebus will save us all.

Drop that tax credit by half, and all of a sudden NO DEAL. One of his "prospects" will now have to SIT DOWN WITH A CALCULATOR to figure out if he can buy a house? Really? $7,500 is the difference between Go & No Go?

I can tell you right now Greene, that's a a NO GO. Your prospect is trying to let you down easy. These 2 "buyers" were BARELY ALIVE as prospects, and actually saw your exposed ribs & were trying to throw you a bone.

GRASPING AT STRAWS.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Help on the way for the housing market?

Yet Another Headline that has nothing to do with the content body. There's absolutely no "Help" outlined in the piece.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The Bulletin reported two weeks ago that 60 notices of default, which initiate foreclosure proceedings, were filed in Deschutes County in January, an increase of more than 185 percent over January 2008.

I thought it was more than 60...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

What Cooked the World's Economy?
It wasn't your overdue mortgage.
By James Lieber

It's 2009. You're laid off, furloughed, foreclosed on, or you know someone who is. You wonder where you'll fit into the grim new semi-socialistic post-post-industrial economy colloquially known as "this mess."

You're astonished and possibly ashamed that mutant financial instruments dreamed up in your great country have spawned worldwide misery. You can't comprehend, much less trim, the amount of bailout money parachuting into the laps of incompetents, hoarders, and miscreants. It's been a tough century so far: 9/11, Iraq, and now this. At least we have a bright new president. He'll give you a job painting a bridge. You may need it to keep body and soul together.

The basic story line so far is that we are all to blame, including homeowners who bit off more than they could chew, lenders who wrote absurd adjustable-rate mortgages, and greedy investment bankers.

Credit derivatives also figure heavily in the plot. Apologists say that these became so complicated that even Wall Street couldn't understand them and that they created "an unacceptable level of risk." Then these blowhards tell us that the bailout will pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the credit arteries and save the patient, which is the world's financial system. It will take time—maybe a year or so—but if everyone hangs in there, we'll be all right. No structural damage has been done, and all's well that ends well.

Sorry, but that's drivel. In fact, what we are living through is the worst financial scandal in history. It dwarfs 1929, Ponzi's scheme, Teapot Dome, the South Sea Bubble, tulip bulbs, you name it. Bernie Madoff? He's peanuts.

Credit derivatives—those securities that few have ever seen—are one reason why this crisis is so different from 1929.

Derivatives weren't initially evil. They began as insurance policies on large loans. A bank that wished to lend money to a big, but shaky, venture, like what Ford or GM have become, could hedge its bet by buying a credit derivative to cover losses if the debtor defaulted. Derivatives weren't cheap, but in the era of globalization and declining American competitiveness, they were prudent. Interestingly, the company that put the basic hardware and software together for pricing and clearing derivatives was Bloomberg. It was quite expensive for a financial institution—say, a bank—to get a Bloomberg machine and receive the specialized training required to certify analysts who would figure out the terms of the insurance. These Bloomberg terminals, originally called Market Masters, were first installed at Merrill Lynch in the late 1980s.

Subsequently, thousands of units have been placed in trading and financial institutions; they became the cornerstone of Michael Bloomberg's wealth, marrying his skills as a securities trader and an electrical engineer.

It's an open question when or if he or his company knew how they would be misused over time to devastate the world's economy.

Fast-forward to the early years of the Clinton administration. After an initial surge of regulatory behavior in favor of fair markets, especially in antitrust, that sort of behavior was abandoned, and free markets triumphed. The result was a morass of white-collar sociopathy at Archer Daniels Midland, Enron, and WorldCom, and in a host of markets ranging from oil to vitamins.

This was the beginning of the heyday of hedge funds. Unregulated investment houses were originally based on the questionable but legal practice of short-selling—selling a financial instrument you don't own in hopes of buying it back later at a lower price. That way, you hedge your bets: You cover your investment in a company in case a company's stock price falls.

But hedge funds later diversified their practices beyond that easy definition. These funds acquired a good deal of popular mystique. They made scads of money. Their notoriously high entry fees—up to 5 percent of the investment, plus as much as 36 percent of profits—served as barriers to all but the richest investors, who gave fortunes to the funds to play with. The funds boasted of having genius analysts and fabulous proprietary algorithms. Few could discern what they really did, but the returns, for those who could buy in, often seemed magical.

But it wasn't magic. It amounted to the return of the age-old scam called "bucket shops." Also sometimes known as "boiler rooms," bucket shops emerged after the Civil War. Usually, they were storefronts where people came to bet on stocks without owning them. Unlike their customers, the shops actually owned blocks of stock. If customers were betting that a stock would go up, the shops would sell it and the price would plunge; if bettors were bearish, the shops would buy. In this way, they cleaned out their customers. Frenetic bucket-shop activity caused the Panic of 1907. By 1909, New York had banned bucket shops, and every other state soon followed.

In the mid-'90s, though, the credit-derivatives industry was hitting its stride and argued vehemently for exclusion from all state and federal anti-bucket-shop regulations. On the side of the industry were Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and his deputy, Lawrence Summers. Holding the fort for the regulators was Brooksley Born, who headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The three financial titans ridiculed the virtually unknown and cloutless, but brilliant and prophetic Born, who warned that unrestricted derivatives trading would "threaten our regulated markets, or indeed, our economy, without any federal agency knowing about it." Warren Buffett also weighed in against deregulation.

But Congress loved Greenspan—a/k/a "the Maestro" and "the Oracle"—and Clinton loved Rubin. The sleepy hearings received almost no public attention. The upshot was that Congress removed oversight of derivatives from the CFTC and preempted all state anti-bucket-shop laws. Born resigned shortly afterward.

Soon, something odd started to happen. Legitimate big investors, often with millions of dollars to place, found that they couldn't get into certain hedge funds, despite the fact that they were willing to pay steep fees. In retrospect, it seems as if these funds did not want fussy outsiders looking into what they were doing with derivatives.

Imagine that a person is terminally ill. He or she would not be able to buy a life insurance policy with a huge death benefit. Obviously, third parties could not purchase policies on the soon-to-be-dead person's life. Yet something like that occurred in the financial world.

This was not caused by imprudent mortgage lending, though that was a piece of the puzzle. Yes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put on steroids during the '90s, and some people got into mortgages who shouldn't have. But the vast majority of homeowners paid their mortgages. Only about 5 to 10 percent of these loans failed—not enough to cause systemic financial failure. (The dollar amount of defaulted mortgages in the U.S. is about $1.2 trillion, which seems like a princely sum, but it's not nearly enough to drag down the entire civilized world.)

Much more dangerous was the notorious bundling of mortgages. Investment banks gathered these loans into batches and turned them into securities called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Many included high-risk loans. These securities were then rated by Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings, or Moody's Investors Services, who were paid at premium rates and gave investment grades. This was like putting lipstick on pigs with the plague. Banks like Wachovia, National City, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Brothers loaded up on this financial trash, which soon proved to be practically worthless. Today, those banks are extinct. But even that was not enough to cause a worldwide financial crisis.

What did cause the crisis was the writing of credit derivatives. In theory, they were insurance policies for investors; in practice, they became a guarantee of global financial collapse.

As insurance, they were poised to pay off fabulously when these weak bundled securities failed. And who was waiting to collect? Well, every gambler is looking for a sure bet. Most never find it. But the hedge funds and their ilk did.

The mantra of entrepreneurial culture is that high risk goes with high reward. But unregulated and opaque derivatives trading was countercultural in the sense that low or no risk led to quick, astronomically high rewards. By plunking down millions of dollars, a hedge fund could reap billions once these fatally constructed securities plunged. Again, the funds did not need to own the securities; they just needed to pay for the derivatives—the insurance policies for the securities. And they could pay for them again and again. This was known as replicating. It became an addiction.

About $2 trillion in credit derivatives in 1989 jumped to $8 trillion in 1994 and skyrocketed to $100 trillion in 2002. Last year, the Bank for International Settlements, a consortium of the world's central banks based in Basel (the Fed chair, Ben Bernanke, sits on its board), reported the gross value of these commitments at $596 trillion. Some are due, and some will mature soon. Typically, they involve contracts of five years or less.

Credit derivatives are breaking and will continue to break the world's financial system and cause an unending crisis of liquidity and gummed-up credit. Warren Buffett branded derivatives the "financial weapons of mass destruction." Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who organized the bailout of New York a generation ago, called them "financial hydrogen bombs."

Both are right. At almost $600 trillion, over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives dwarf the value of publicly traded equities on world exchanges, which totaled $62.5 trillion in the fall of 2007 and fell to $36.6 trillion a year later.

The nice thing about public markets is that they act as canaries that give warnings as they did in 1929, 1987 (the program trading debacle), and 2001 (the dot-com bubble), so we can scramble out with our economic lives. But completely private and unregulated, the OTC derivatives trade is justly known as the "dark market."

The heart of darkness was the AIG Financial Products (AIGFP) office in London, where a large proportion of the derivatives were written. AIG had placed this unit outside American borders, which meant that it would not have to abide by American insurance reserve requirements. In other words, the derivatives clerks in London could sell as many products as they could write—even if it would bankrupt the company.

The president of AIGFP, a tyrannical super-salesman named Joseph Cassano, certainly had the experience. In the 1980s, he was an executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the now-defunct brokerage that became the pivot of the junk-bond scandal that led to the jailing of Michael Milken, David Levine, and Ivan Boesky.

During the peak years of derivatives trading, the 400 or so employees of the London unit reportedly averaged earnings in excess of a million dollars a year. They sold "protection"—this Runyonesque term was favored—worth more than three times the value of parent company AIG. How could they have not known that they were putting at risk the largest insurer in the world and all the businesses and individuals that it covered?

This scheme that smacks of securities fraud facilitated the dreams of buyers called "counterparties" willing to ante up. Hedge fund offices sprouted in Kensington and Mayfair like mushrooms after a summer shower. Revenue from premiums for derivatives at AIGFP rose from $737 million in 1999 to $3.26 billion in 2005. Cassano reportedly hectored ever-willing counterparties to "play the power game"—in other words, gobble up all the credit derivatives backing CDOs that they could grab. As the bundled adjustable-rate mortgages ballooned, stretched home buyers defaulted, and the exciting power game became about as risky as blasting sitting ducks with a Glock.

People still seem surprised to read that hedge principals have raked in billions of dollars in a single year. They shouldn't be. These subprime-time players knew how to score. The scam bled AIG white. In mid-September, when it was on the ropes, AIG received an astonishing $85 billion emergency line of credit from the Fed. Soon, that was supplemented by another $67 billion. Much of that money, to use the government's euphemism, has already been "drawn down." Shamefully, neither Washington nor AIG will explain where the billions went. But the answer is increasingly clear: It went to counterparties who bought derivatives from Cassano's shop in London.

Imagine if a ring of cashiers at a local bank made thousands of bad loans, aware that they could break the bank. They would be prosecuted for fraud and racketeering under the anti-gangster RICO Act. If their counterparties—the debtors—were in on the scam and understood that they didn't have to pay off the loans, they could be charged, too. In fact, this scenario played out at subprime-pushing outlets of a host of banks, including Washington Mutual (acquired last year by JP Morgan Chase, which itself received a $25 billion bailout); IndyMac (which was seized by FDIC regulators); and Lehman Brothers (which went belly-up). About 150 prosecutions of this type of fraud are going forward.

The top of the swamp's food chain, where the muck was derivatives rather than mortgages, must also be scrutinized. Apparently, that is the case. AIGFP's Cassano has hired top white-collar litigator and former prosecutor F. Joseph Warin (profiled in the 2004 Washingtonian piece, "Who to Call When You're Under Investigation!"). Neither Cassano nor his attorney responded to interview requests.

AIG's lavishly compensated counterparties were willing participants and likewise could be considered for prosecution, depending on what they knew. Who were they?

At a 2007 conference, Cassano defined them as a "global swath" that included "banks and investment banks, pension funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, hedge funds, money managers, high-net-worth individuals, municipalities, sovereigns, and supranationals." Abetting the scheme, ratings agencies like Standard & Poor's gave high grades to the shaky mortgage-backed securities bundled by investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.

After the relative worthlessness of these CDOs became clear, the raters rushed to downgrade them to junk status. This occurred suddenly with more than 4,000 CDOs in the first quarter of 2008—the financial community now regards them as "toxic waste." Of course, the sudden massive downgrading raises the question: Why had CDOs been artificially elevated in the first place, leading banks to buy them and giving them protective coloring just because the derivatives writers "insured" them?

After the raters got real (i.e., got scared), the gig was up. Hedge funds fled in droves from their luxe digs in London. The industry remains murky, but some observers feel that more than half of all hedges will fold this year. Not necessarily a good sign, it seems to show that the funds were one-trick ponies living mainly off the derivatives play.

We know that AIG was not the only firm that sold derivatives: Lehman and Bear Stearns both dealt them and died. About 20 years ago, JP Morgan, the now-defunct investment bank, had brought the idea to AIGFP in London, which ran with it. Seeing the Cassano group's success, Morgan jumped in with both feet. Specializing in credit default swaps—a type of derivative triggered to pay off by negative events in the lives of loans, like defaults, foreclosures, and restructurings—Morgan had a distinctive marketing spin. Its "quants" were classy young dealers who could really do the math, which of course gave them credibility with those who couldn't. They abjured street slang like "protection." They pitched their sophisticated swaps as "technologies." The market adored them. They, in turn, oversold the product, made huge commissions, and wounded Morgan, which had to sell itself to Chase, becoming JP Morgan Chase—now the country's biggest bank.

Today, the real question is whether the Morgan quants knew the swaps didn't work and actually were grenades with pulled pins. Like Joseph Cassano, such people should consult attorneys.

Secrecy shrouds the bailout. The 21 banks that each received more than $1 billion from the Fed won't disclose how, or even if, they're lending it, which hardly quells fears of hoarding. The Treasury says it can't force disclosure because it took only preferred (non-voting) stock in exchange for the money.

If anything, the Fed had been less candid. It stonewalls requests to reveal the winners (mainly banks and corporations) of $1.5 trillion in loans, as well as the securities it received as collateral. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit to obtain this information by Bloomberg News has been rebuffed by the Fed, which insists that a loophole in FOIA exempts it. Bloomberg will probably lose the case, but at least it's trying to probe the black hole of bailout money. Of course, Barack Obama could tell the Fed to release the information, plus generally open the bailout to public eyes. That would be change that we could believe in.

As for Bloomberg, its business side, Bloomberg L.P., has been less than forthcoming. Requests to interview someone from the company—and Michael Bloomberg, who retains a controlling interest—about the derivatives trade went unanswered.

In his economic address at Cooper Union last spring, Obama argued for new regulations, which he called "the rules of the road," and for a $30 billion stimulus package, that now seems quaint. In the OTC swaps trade, the Bloomberg L.P.'s computer terminals are the road, bridges, and tunnels for "real-time" transactions. The L.P.'s promotional materials declare: "You're either in front of a Bloomberg or behind it." In terms of electronic trading of certain securities, including credit default swaps: "Access to a dealer's inventory is based upon client relationships with Bloomberg as the only conduit." In short, the L.P. looks like a dominant player—possibly, a monopoly. If it has a true competitor, I can't find it. But then, this is a very dark market.

Did Bloomberg L.P. do anything illegal? Absolutely not. We prosecute hit-and-run drivers, not roads. But there are many questions—about the size of the derivatives market, the names of the counterparties, the amount of replication of derivatives, the role of securities ratings in Bloomberg calculations (in other words, could puffing up be detected and potentially stop a swap?), and how the OTC industry should be reported and regulated in order to prevent future catastrophes. Bloomberg is a privately held company—to the chagrin of would-be investors—and quite private about its business, so this information probably won't surface without subpoenas.

So what do we do now? In 2000, the 106th Congress as its final effort passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), and, disgracefully, President Clinton signed it. It opened up the bucket-shop loophole that capsized the world's economic system. With the stroke of a presidential pen, a century of valuable protection was lost.

Even with that, the dangerous swaps still almost found themselves subjected to state oversight. In 2000, AIG asked the New York State Insurance Department to decide if it wanted to regulate them, but the department's superintendent, Neil Levin, said no. The question was not posed by AIGFP, but by the company's main office through its general counsel, a reminder that not long ago, AIG was a blue chip with a triple-A rating that touted its integrity.

We can't know why Levin rejected the chance to regulate the tricky trade. He died in the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. A Pataki-appointed former Goldman Sachs vice president, Levin may have shared other Wall Streeters' love of derivatives as the last big-money sure thing as the IPO craze wound down. Or maybe he saw swaps as gambling rather than insurance, hence beyond his jurisdiction. Regardless, current Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo told me, "I don't agree with his answer." Maybe the economic crisis could have been averted if Levin had answered otherwise. "How close we came . . ." Dinallo mused.

Deeply occupied with keeping AIG, the parent company, afloat since the bailout, Dinallo saw the carnage that the swaps caused and, with the support of Governor Paterson, pushed anew for regulatory oversight, a position also adopted by the President's Working Group (PWG), which includes the Treasury, Fed, SEC, and CFTC.

But regulation isn't enough to stop a phenomenon called "de-supervision" that occurs when officials can't, or won't, oversee a market. For instance, the Fed under Greenspan had authority to regulate mortgage bankers and brokers, the industry's cowboys who kicked off this fiasco. Because Greenspan's libertarian sensibilities prevented him from invoking the Fed's control, the mortgage market careened corruptly until the wheels came off. Notoriously lax and understaffed, the SEC did nothing to limit investment banks that bundled, pitched, and puffed non-prime mortgages as the raters cheered. It's doubtful that any agency can be relied on to control lucrative default swaps, which should be made illegal again. The bucket-shop loophole must be closed. The evil genie should go back in the bottle.

Will Obama re-criminalize these financial weapons by pushing for repeal of the CFMA? This should be a no-brainer for Obama, who, before becoming a community organizer in Chicago, worked on Wall Street, studied derivatives, and by now undoubtedly knows their destructive power.

What about the $600 trillion in credit derivatives that are still out there, sucking vital liquidity and credit out of the system? It's the tyrannosaurus in the mall, the one that made Henry Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary who looks like Daddy Warbucks, get down on his knees and beg Nancy Pelosi for a bailout.

Even with the bailout, no one can get their arms around this monster. Obviously, the $600 trillion includes not only many unseemly replicated death bets, but also some benign derivatives that creditors bought to hedge risky loans. Instead of sorting them out, the Bush administration tried to protect them all, while keeping the counterparties happy and anonymous.

Paulson has taken flack for spending little to bring mortgages in line with falling home values. Sheila Bair, the FDIC chief who often scrapped with Paulson, said this would cost a measly $25 billion and that without it, 10 million Americans could lose their homes over the next five years. Paulson thought it would take three times as much and balked. Congress is bristling because the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) could provide mortgage relief—and some derivatives won't detonate if homeowners don't default. Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, could back such relief at his hearings.

The other key appointment is Attorney General. A century ago, when powerful trusts distorted the market system, we had AGs who relentlessly tracked and busted them. Today's crisis is missing, so far, an advocate as dynamic and energetic as the mortgage bankers, brokers, bundlers, raters, and quants who, in a few short years, littered the world with rotten loans, diseased CDOs, and lethal derivatives. During the Bush years, white-collar law enforcement actually dropped as FBI agents were transferred to antiterrorism. Even so, according to William Black, an effective federal litigator and regulator during the 1980s savings-and-loan scandal, by 2004, the FBI perceived an epidemic of fraud. Now a professor of law and finance at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, Black has testified to Congress about the current crisis and paints it as "control fraud" at every level. Such fraud flows from the top tiers of corporations—typically CEOs and CFOs, who control perverse compensation systems that reward cheating and volume rather than quality, and circumvent standard due diligence such as underwriting and accounting. For instance, AIGFP's Cassano reportedly rebuffed AIG's internal auditor.

The environment from the top of the chain—derivatives gang leaders—to the bottom of the chain—subprime, no-doc loan officers—became "criminogenic," Black says. The only real response? Aggressive prosecution of "elites" at all stages in this twisted mess. Black says sentences should not be the light, six-month slaps that white-collar criminals usually get, or the Madoff-style penthouse arrest.

As staggering as the Madoff meltdown was, it had a refreshing side—the funds were frozen. In the bailout, on the other hand, the government often seems to be completing the scam by quietly passing the proceeds to counterparties.

The advantage of treating these players like racketeers under federal law is that their ill-gotten gains could be forfeited. The government could recoup these odious gambling debts instead of simply paying them off. In finance, the bottom line is the bottom line. The bottom line in this scandal is that fantastically wealthy entities positioned themselves to make unfathomable fortunes by betting that average Americans—Joe Six-Packs and hockey moms—would fail.

Black suggests that derivatives should be "unwound" and that the payouts cease: "Close out the positions—most of them have no social utility." And where there has been fraud, he adds, "clawback makes perfect sense." That would include taking back the ludicrously large bonuses and other forms of compensation given to CEOs at bailed-out companies.

No one knows how much could be clawed back from the soiled derivatives reap. Clearly, it's not $600 trillion. William Bergman, formerly a market analyst at the Chicago Fed in "netting"—what's left after financial institutions pay each other off for ongoing deals and debts—makes a "guess" that perhaps only 5 percent could be recouped, which he concedes is unfortunately low. Still, that's $30 trillion, a huge number, more than 10 times what the Fed can deploy and over twice the U.S. gross domestic product. Such a sum, if recovered through the criminal justice process, could ease the liquidity crisis and actually get the credit arteries flowing. Not everyone would like it. What's left of Wall Street and hedge funds want their derivatives gains; so do foreign banks.

A tangle of secrecy, conflicts of interest, and favoritism plagues the process of recovery.

Lehman drowned, but Goldman Sachs, where Paulson was formerly CEO, was saved. The day before AIG reaped its initial $85 billion bonanza, Paulson met with his successor, Lloyd Blankfein, who reportedly argued that Goldman would lose $20 billion and fail unless AIG was rescued. AIG got the money.

Had Goldman bought from AIG credit derivatives that it needed to redeem? Like most other huge financial traders, Goldman has a secretive hedge fund, Global Alpha, that refuses to reveal its transactions. Regardless, Paulson's meeting with Blankfein was a low point. If Dick Cheney had met with his successor at Halliburton and, the very next day, written a check for billions that guaranteed its survival, the press would have screamed for his head.

The second most shifty bailout went to Citigroup, a money sewer that won last year's layoff super bowl with 73,000. Instead of being parceled to efficient operators, Citi received a $45 billion bailout and $300 billion loan package, at least in part because of Robert Rubin's juice. While Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Rubin led us into the derivatives maelstrom, deported jobs with NAFTA, and championed bank deregulation so that companies like Citi could mimic Wall Street speculators. After he joined Citi's leadership in 1999, the bank went long on mortgages and other risks du jour, enmeshed itself in Enron's web, tanked in value, and suffered haphazard management, while Rubin made more than $100 million.

Rubin remained a director and "senior counselor" at Citi until January 9, 2009, and is an economic adviser to Obama. In truth, he probably shouldn't be a senior counselor anywhere except possibly at Camp Granada. Like Greenspan, he should retire before he breaks something again, and we have to pay for it. (Incidentally, the British bailout, which is more open than ours and mandates mortgage relief, makes corporate welfare contingent on the removal of bad management.)

The third strangest rescue involved the Fed's announcement just before Christmas that hedge funds for the first time could borrow from it. Apparently, the new $200 billion credit line relates to recently revealed securitized debts including bundled credit card bills, student loans, and auto loans. Obviously, it's worrisome that the crisis may be morphing beyond its real estate roots.

To say the bailout hasn't worked so far is putting it mildly. Since the crisis broke, Washington's reaction has been chaotic, lenient to favorites, secretive, and staggeringly expensive. An estimated $7.36 trillion, more than double the total American outlay for World War II (even correcting for inflation), has been thrown at the problem, according to press reports. Along the way, banking, insurance, and car companies have been nationalized, and no one has been brought to justice.

Combined unemployment and underemployment (those who have stopped looking, and part-timers) runs at nearly 20 percent, the highest since 1945. Housing prices continue to hemorrhage—last fall's 18 percent drop could double. Holiday shopping fizzled: 160,000 stores closed last year, and 200,000 more are expected to shutter in '09. Some forecasts place eventual retail darkness at 25 percent. In 2008, the Dow dropped further—34 percent—than at any time since 1931. There is no sound sector in the economy; the only members of the 30 Dow Jones Industrials posting gains last year were Wal-Mart and McDonald's.

Does Obama's choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, have the tenacity and will to tackle the widest fraud in American history? Parts of his background don't necessarily augur well: He worked on a pardon for Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire tax evader once on the FBI's Most Wanted List whom Clinton cleared. After leaving the Clinton era's Justice Department, Holder went to work for Covington & Burling, a D.C. firm that represents corporate heavies including Big Tobacco. He defended Chiquita Brands in a notorious case, in which it paid a $25 million fine for using terrorists in Columbia as security. Holder fits well within the gaggle of elite D.C. lawyers who move back and forth between government and defending corporate criminals. He doesn't exactly have the sort of résumé that startles robber barons.

Can Holder design and orchestrate a muscular legal response, including prosecution and stern punishment of top executives, plus aggressive clawbacks of money? There seems little question that he has the skill, so the decision on how aggressive the Justice Department will be is up to Obama.

Holder could ask for and get well-organized FBI white-collar teams. The personnel hole caused by shifts to antiterrorism would have to be more than filled to their pre-9/ll staffing if the incoming administration decides to break this criminogenic cycle rather than merely address it symbolically.

Black contends that aggressive prosecution would be good for the economy because it may help prevent cheating and fraud that inevitably cause bubbles and destroy wealth. The Sarbanes-Oxley law passed in Enron's wake, for instance, is supposed to make corporations now keep the kinds of documents necessary to assess criminality. Whether the CEOs, CFOs, and others who controlled the current frauds will do so is another matter.

"Don't count on them keeping records for long," Black warns. "It's time to get out the subpoenas."

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

To say the bailout hasn't worked so far is putting it mildly. Since the crisis broke, Washington's reaction has been chaotic, lenient to favorites, secretive, and staggeringly expensive. An estimated $7.36 trillion, more than double the total American outlay for World War II (even correcting for inflation), has been thrown at the problem, according to press reports. Along the way, banking, insurance, and car companies have been nationalized, and no one has been brought to justice.

Combined unemployment and underemployment (those who have stopped looking, and part-timers) runs at nearly 20 percent, the highest since 1945. Housing prices continue to hemorrhage—last fall's 18 percent drop could double. Holiday shopping fizzled: 160,000 stores closed last year, and 200,000 more are expected to shutter in '09. Some forecasts place eventual retail darkness at 25 percent. In 2008, the Dow dropped further—34 percent—than at any time since 1931. There is no sound sector in the economy; the only members of the 30 Dow Jones Industrials posting gains last year were Wal-Mart and McDonald's.


We're screwed.

Bewert said...

Ms. Andrews explained that the City adopted new SDC methodology in 2000 as part of a settlement with Central Oregon Builders Association (COBA). The initial rate adopted was 80% with 5% annual increases, so the City is now at 100%. However, the fee charged today is $4,200, which is less than the $6,000 recommended by the City’s consultant. The 100% calculation was based on a project list of $190 million, but studies reveal the actual project list is running $200-$400 million, depending on right-of-way (ROW) and other costs. A second deficiency is that SDCs can only be used for capacity-enhancing or growth parts of a project. The existing deficiency part of a project is expected to be funded by “other sources” which are not yet identified.

Mr. Magee pointed out that the SDC rate from 2000 was calculated on a $3,500 base. The City agreed to modify the SDC formula based on the reduction on the project and increase in the number of trips that could be projected through growth. Even at 100%, the SDC rate today is generating considerably less than the $6,000 base recommended by the City’s consultant. The $191 million master project list in 2000 was actually created in 1999 (before the COBA settlement). It was based on the Bend TSP, which included County roads that would eventually become part of the City but no ODOT facilities. There are lots of projects not on the 1999 list that are getting improved today. Ms. Echeveste noted that SDC methodology was last updated in 2002-03...Mr. Helton asked for confirmation of his understanding of the SDC funding mechanism. Bend SDCs are funding 100% of capacity improvements only and not the existing deficiency. That is, the project list that current SDCs are based on does not fully include all of the projects that are needed to facilitate growth of the community. As part of “telling the story,” he’ll explain that it’s hard to tease out and tag every portion of every project to growth in order to charge an SDC for it, but that Bend is a growing community with a lot of
regional transportation needs. Not all of those transportation needs are included on your SDC list. As a consequence, there will be additional outstanding capital costs for which
some local funding will be needed. Mr. Russell pointed out that projects that are in the County are included in that list if they were expected to be incorporated within Bend in the
future.

###

Source-Bend MPO 8/28/06

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Just a reminder:

OY VEY !!!

I always check stats 1/2 way through the month. This is the first time the median price has fallen below 200k in a very long time. I doubt it will stay there by months end, but the only stuff selling are REO's and short sales.
So far 24 sold @ $195k median. We will see what the cheerleaders can do to turn this around.

February 14, 2009 7:00 PM


Thanks marge, you Goddess!

Bewert said...

Re: The Bulletin reported two weeks ago that 60 notices of default, which initiate foreclosure proceedings, were filed in Deschutes County in January, an increase of more than 185 percent over January 2008.

I thought it was more than 60...

###

Convenient typo. It's 260 in January. Somebody else do the math.

Really convenient typo. Someone should email Chu.

We are at 383 through Feb. 13 for the year so far.

60? That's like Buster claiming his dick gets hard three times a day.

LavaBear said...

>>>After the provision was cut to $8,000 in the final bill approved Friday by Congress, one of those homeowners told Greene that he’ll still probably buy that house. But he has to do the math to make sure he can still afford it

Fuck me....this is the exact same stupid shit that caused the problem. If it takes a $15k tax credit versus an $8k tax credit for a person to buy a house than someone should honestly let this them know YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT.

LavaBear said...

>>>Imagine That!!! and Forbes doesn't list Michael Hollern of Bend, or Homer Williams?? How about Schnitzer of Schitzer steel in PDX, does your 'list' mention him??

So you HAVE seen the secret list. Come on just between us can't you share it? Personally I wanna take it and go shove it in jackass Larry Ellison's big mug. He is constantly bragging HE is the richest Californian but I know better. You will slide me the list to prove it right?

Anonymous said...

Think Bend is hot, here are the to kgw.com storys from PDX this hour, ...

Body pulled from Willamette River identified

Prosecutor: Corbett husband was likely murdered weeks ago

Body found on Gorge trail ID'd as 20-year-old Portland man

Police release sketches in vicious beating of Gorge skier

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Northwest Crossing homes approach $100/sf. MLS: 2803206

Bend 4 Bedrooms, 3 Bathrooms
Northwest Crossing 2,776 square feet

Great Big Home in Northwest Crossing! This home offers a main floor master suite, with additional bedrooms on the lower floor. Two laundry rooms makes for added convenience. Entertain guests upstairs and on the covered patio, while the kids play downstairs in the big bonus room - pool table, arcade games, etc. The entrance from the garage offers separate acces to the lower floor without disturbing the main floor of the home. $115 PER SQUARE FOOT!! Walk to the shops and dining right out the back door.

Anonymous said...

Just like the 'great depression', nobody could 'afford' the make 'food' so the they dumped the food, in this case 'dairy farmers' are turning their milk-cows into mickyD's, just like our pet Llamas become steak's.

...

CharlotteObserver.com
Dairy cows head for slaughter as milk prices sour
The Associated Press - 5 hours ago
TURLOCK, Calif. (AP) - Hundreds of thousands of America's dairy cows are being turned into hamburgers because milk prices have dropped so low that farmers can no longer afford to feed the animals.
Dairy Prices to Trigger MILC Payments Wisconsin Ag Connection

Bewert said...

Re: Redmond real estate agent Tom Greene...

###

Are there two Tom Greene's that are realtors in central oregon? Because there is one that sits on the Bend City Council.

And no Tom Greene in the area listed in Qwestdex.

Anonymous said...

>>>Imagine That!!! and Forbes doesn't list Michael Hollern of Bend, or Homer Williams?? How about Schnitzer of Schitzer steel in PDX, does your 'list' mention him??

So you HAVE seen the secret list. Come on just between us can't you share it? Personally I wanna take it and go shove it in jackass Larry Ellison's big mug. He is constantly bragging HE is the richest Californian but I know better. You will slide me the list to prove it right?

*

Good point and Phil Knight of Nike is also the richest man in Oregon, yet boner, I mean PBM ( psychotic bowel movement ) says that dead-schwab is the richest man in Orygun.

Your 'lists' ain't worth shit, people lie to get on those lists, and quite often their based on known records of public stock holdings. The 'real rich' don't want to be on these list(s), only the fake rich, or the made-off's of the world.

There are lots of billionaires in Orygun, but few on any lists.

Schnitzer of PDX is very interesting, controlling the scrap-steel market of the world and funneling millions into the right-wing LIKUD party of Israel, this has been going on forever, ... on any list(s)? Hell no.

Anonymous said...

Lower your flags and march straight back to England, stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for a hundred years of theft, rape, and murder. Do that and your men shall live. Do it not, and every one of you will die today.

*

Homer, I mean that is SOME HEAVY SHIT. I think that this metaphore should be tattoed on Bruces Major-Labia, so that LB can read it ever fucking day.

So, what would be the equivalent??

Hollern: "Good people of Bend. I stand before you humbled during my end times ( being over 70 ). I live in Terrible Times. Our 'Exceptional' seems to stand out. Well I'll get to the point, cuz I'm a real town talking to a 'non-real' people. We're broke, we're finished the town is Kaput. Now we all made a lot of money in the last ten years, tons of money, and we all supported the Bulletin. We all got rich flipping Real Estate. You wouldn't be dumb, fat, and rich today sitting on your fucking internet if not for me. Go to every home in BEND tonight, and tell your neighbors that your town is a fraud, that you are a fraud and your church is a fraud. Do that and the Republican Party will bless thee for 1,000 years. Do it not, and you shall all inherit the wrath of the entire USA, where all heads turn to Bend, Oregon as the sleaziest parasitic town in the USA."

Bewert said...

My comment on that article, which is being "reviewed for acceptance":

Re: The Bulletin reported two weeks ago that 60 notices of default, which initiate foreclosure proceedings, were filed in Deschutes County in January, an increase of more than 185 percent over January 2008.

###

The number is actually 260 through Jan. 31. Keith, you can look it up yourself at http://recordings.deschutes.org/Search.asp

We are at 383 NODs through Feb. 13 for the year so far.

Anyone here for more than a few months does not believe much that the BULL reports because of this kind of sloppy reporting.

On a related note, a realtor friend of mine recently stated that of the 1800+ homes on the market in Bend a couple of weeks ago, 600+ were vacant.

COBA can whine all they want to, but the facts on the ground show that we already have far more housing units and commercial spaces than we have jobs that pay enough to buy them. Nothing is going to change that until we have a job base that is not dependent on construction and tourism.

BTW, is Tom Greene really a REDMOND realtor? Strange, as he sits on the BEND City Council.

Anonymous said...

Good point and Phil Knight of Nike is also the richest man in Oregon, yet boner, I mean PBM ( psychotic bowel movement ) says that dead-schwab is the richest man in Orygun.

Fuck, Buster, what color is the sky on your planet?

One mo' time: I said Schwab WAS the richest man in Central Oregon. WAS. Past tense. Know what that means? He WAS, but now he IS NOT because he IS DEAD.

And CENTRAL Oregon is not the same as OREGON. It is PART of Oregon. You get that?

No, I'm sure you don't. And I'm wasting time trying to explain things to a drunken psychotic imbecile. So fuck you.

Anonymous said...

Umpqua Bank stock.

Another 'oregon' name you'll never hear is 'Allyn Ford', the owner of Umqua Bank, the reason that the bank is golden, and has a 'texas ratio' of six, unlike near 40 of cacb, dead bank walking.

Chairman of the board Allyn Ford is also the sole owner of Roseburg Forest Products, the largest public lands old growth clearcutter in Oregon.



Umpqua Bank stock.

Anonymous said...

PBM, we were talking about $$$ in ORYGUN, and you pulled les-schwab out of you english-arse.

The man that owns most of central orygun is still alive, but PBM likes to talk about dead men cuz they can't affect his SORE career.

Richest men near Bend are Hollern, and Smith, that are alive. Richest man in 'eastern oregon' used to be mr-jen-weld, but who knows his status these days?

Your big money on dead schwab made me laugh, hell S1031 skipped with close to $30M which would be almost 1/2 of schwab's worth, it appears that team-sawyer may have cleared $5M, ... Today why don't we just say that Sawyer & Summit1031 are the richest folks in BEND, and never discuss HOLLERN, SMITH, Pape, ...


Hollerns has 100's of LLC's, and most aren't even in his name.

Why did a fucking attorney to speak on his behalf of why the city didn't spend $$$ on infrastucture? Hell they didn't have the money, so where was it supposed to come from?

Your the one who pulled dead 'les schwab' out of your ass with his 'miserly' $70M, which wouldn't even light Bledsoes humidor.

Anonymous said...

CENTRAL Oregon is not the same as OREGON. - hbm

*

Wow PBM, I think its you that have now blasted to another planet.

Bend is part of ORYGUN, like it or not, central Oregon is 'central' to Oregon.

LavaBear said...

>>>Schnitzer of PDX is very interesting, controlling the scrap-steel market of the world and funneling millions into the right-wing LIKUD party of Israel, this has been going on forever, ... on any list(s)? Hell no


So which Schnitzer is it? They only have one on the board of directors (Jill Edelson) The CEO and President are non family. They have a total market cap of 1.2b with 21% of that being Insider Ownership. And that 21% is broken out among many people. You do the math.

Can you just show me your secret list? It would be so much easier.

Anonymous said...

http://www.schnitzersteel.com/company_history.aspx

It's boring LB, we're talking about the richest people in ORYGUN.

The 'schnitzer family' does about $3B just in this one biz, but there are 100's of businesses and holdings. But you really can't talk about 'wealth' in ORYGUN, unless you mention folks like mr jen-weld of klammath, or schnitzer family of pdx, or homer-william of pdx, ...

I don't expect you or pbm to know who these people are, you don't know shit about stuff outside of bend, and hbm don't shit about stuff in orygun history.

Anonymous said...

There is no 'list' of the rich americans.

Most of these dumb fucking lists in money-mag, or ... the Bend Bull, or people who want to appear rich ... like a few year ago, that NYC real-estate guy that has a TV show, ... the dude was on the list of richest ameriKKKans but had no money.

The people who are really rich, don't want that fact known, just like 'anonymity' that most of you struggle with, most 'real rich' don't have an ego problem, they don't love their own name to be seen like 'BP', or 'pbm'.

The subject was RICH, like HOLLERN, who owns and controls and built MOST of the Bend Ahrea in the post 1960 years, who had made billions of dollars, but not on a single list, not even a major employer, cuz he keeps his 100's of LLC's small and low employee count which keeps everything off the GAYDAR.

Like Homer-Williams of PDX, the guy that built broken-top here in Bend. Richest guy in PDX, unless you integrate the wealth of the schnitzer family, for 40+ years homer-williams has been running PDX from the shadows, just like HOLLERN runs Bend from the shadows.

How fucking BIG $$$ hard to say, but on just one sale a few years ago, when Homer-Williams sold his brewery-block where the old henry-wiendhardt brewery was, he got $300M for just that property, and he owns 100's of propertys.

Sure you got mr-jen-weld with paper stock, and mr knight of nike with paper stock, just like ellison of cali with paper oracle stock.

But the REAL fucking OWNERS of ORYGUN are like MR-UMQUA (FORD) who owns SW-orygun, or pape (eugene logging family ),schnitzer ( pdx steel),williams ( pdx real estate ) who own the willy-valley, ... or east orygun which is owned by hollern and mr jen-weld, but paper can dissapear, the REAL land holdings of HOLLERN are real. Most of the SHIT isn't even in his name, long ago put into trusts.

So NONE of these people are on your fucking lists.

Then their is new wealth like McMenamin brothers, which own all their propertys all over the PNW many all paid for with short term notes using beer cash-flow since the early 1980's. Real fucking wealth, and on NOBODY's fucking LIST, cuz that's what CPA's and LAWYERS are for, to keep the REALLY RICH off the fucking lists.

Anonymous said...

So who has more money?? MOSS or SAWYER? Moss or team-1031??

It certainly appears that in BEND, that crime pays an BIG.

LavaBear said...

>>>The 'schnitzer family' does about $3B just in this one biz

I don't mean to bore you in the slightest. I'm just looking to figure out the math. The company has a market cap 1.2b but only 21% of that is insider owned. It's a publicly traded company with a very large institutional ownership.

Let me see...I don't know who these people are except I was roommates with a Schnitzer in college for a year and my father is lifelong friend with a recently retired CFO of Jeld Wen.

Once again I'm just trying to figure out your math here. You are saying billionaire's except when I run the numbers I see millionaires. Help me out here. Can't you just show me your secret list and this conversation is done?

Anonymous said...

Wow BP, lookey here CLINTON has started the fucking debate, ... just fucking how bad is it?? When the DEM's start fucking ADMITTING this shit came down on their watch!!!!! Just a few months ago BP&PBM were denying these claims, and now their GOD clinton, is admitting fault. Coulda, shoulda, closed the barn door before all the slaughter,...


Bill Clinton: I should have better regulated derivatives

CNN - 1 hour ago
AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) -- Former President Bill Clinton was in Austin, Texas, over the weekend to host the Clinton Global Initiative University, which encourages college students and administrators to come up with creative ways to address global issues.

Anonymous said...

I don't watch TV, but I vaguely remember a show being discussed called the 'apprentice', any way Donald Trump, this guy has been on the lists of Rich people for years, but actually has no money, but what he does is promote himself and his name, and tells all these rating's sheet's how rich he is, ...

The point is all these 'rich people' lists need to be viewed sceptically, cuz most of the people on them are attention whores.

LavaBear said...

>>>The point is all these 'rich people' lists need to be viewed sceptically, cuz most of the people on them are attention whores

Exactly my point and that's why I wanna see your secret list. Come on man...just a peak.

Anonymous said...

The company has a market cap 1.2b but only 21% of that is insider owned.

*

The stock market doesn't mean shit, schnizter steel does about $3B/yr in sales, steel is in the shit right now, perhaps 1-2 years ago when scrap was high your 'cap' would have been huge.

Like I said the schnitzer family is old and diversified, and they are the 500#LB gorilla of PDX, just a fucking point of record.

Big fucking shit if you shared a college dorm room with a schnitzer, that just means the kid will never have to get a job, ever. Or that you know a jen-weld CFO big fucking deal, the point is/was Mr-jen-weld used to be the RICHEST man in eastern-orygun on PAPER, but I doubt his REAL WORTH exceeds that of HOLLERN.

The point is to layout the people who OWN orygun, of course I too know people who own Washington, and Seattle, and to meet their spawn, many are boring little christian nitwits that have NO fucking idea how grandpa sewed up banking, shipping, and et-al bank in the early 1900's, they don't fucking care, cuz their trust-fund kids, but their all very nice people. So fucking what.

Just like SW orygun, watch umpqua watch ford, ... in the valley watch schnitzer, watch williams, in east watch hollern, ... with the jen-weld empire going into the toilet, today the boss-hogg may be nothing, I know their having to sell all their airplanes, I know that the jen-weld offices here in BEND ( they have 100's of llc's just like hollern ), that they're bend dead, jen-weld is BEND fucked.

Life goes on, ... in the meantime HOLLERN owns tons of land and real-estate in the area, and at the end of the day, he's our 500#LB gorilla.

LavaBear said...

>>>Life goes on, ... in the meantime HOLLERN owns tons of land and real-estate in the area, and at the end of the day, he's our 500#LB gorilla.

So are you saying you don't have a list and you've just been leading me on? You tease. I can't believe you'd just make shit up like that. I was counting on you.

Anonymous said...

Let me see...I don't know who these people are except I was roommates with a Schnitzer in college for a year and my father is lifelong friend with a recently retired CFO of Jeld Wen.

*

LB you seem to be a fucking retard, the other day when we were debating the health aspects of Suterra's Zyklon-B that was your same fucking argument. "There are good people, I know them, I used to butt fuck them in college, ..."

So fucking what, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

All that matters, is what is really going on, all the people who worked in the Bayer Nazi factorys during WWII were good people, and I'm sure at their trials there were many LB's saying "I was a college roomate, this is a good person". So fucking what?

The debate is who OWNS BEND, who is the boss-hogg, who runs the fucking town.

Who gives a fuck if you 'know them', or 'blow them', its fucking irrelevant.

LavaBear said...

>>>The debate is who OWNS BEND, who is the boss-hogg, who runs the fucking town.

Damn...I thought we were debating "the richest man in California" and the richest Oregonians. Sorry my bad. I totally misunderstood. I still ma really disappointed you lead me on that you had a secret list and in reality you just made it up. I expect more of you Buster.

Anonymous said...

What is it with your 'list'??

Can't you see that ALL lists are bullshit??

PBM pulled a list out of his ass and used a deadman to prove his point. WTF?

There are no lists, just like MADE-OFF where is the money? Just like Geightner where is the money?? They all know, they were involved in the scam.

Nobody knows WHO has the MONEY $$$, but you can have a good idea, by studying history, and knowing who has always had the money.

Then in PDX there is also PAMPLIN, I didn't even mention him, the king of PDX cement.

I know who the rich people in ORYGUN are because I have been here.

Lists are like TV, they're only for entertainment.

Anonymous said...

"the richest man in California" and the richest Oregonians. Sorry my bad.

*

Well it just happens that the one of the richest men in CALI ( Stewart Resnick ), just happens to be BUYING up Bend bio-chem and water-rights, I know move along, pay not attention.

Given that Resnick now owns most the water in Cali ( water-bank ), and owns the most the distribution rights of bottled-water, and is buying up our area water-rights, ... its pretty fucking difficult to put a 'real value' on wealth. But MOST 'informed' people have already predicted that in 20 years 'water' will be MORE valuable than oil.

SO what is the future expected value today of Stewart Resnicks holdings? Some say he could be in a few years the richest man in the world. Think about that, owning the california 'water-bank' that heavy fucking shit.

But it is BEND, cuz he is slowly BUYING up shit in BEND.

LavaBear said...

>>>I know who the rich people in ORYGUN are because I have been here.

We knew that Jody Denton was a savior to cuisine and that he was landing on his feet in Florida until we found out he's a fraud slinking off out of country. Careful what you think you "know" Buster. Things aren't close to what they appear these days. I prefer to use some real knowable numbers (stock holdings, real assets) as opposed to your preconceived thoughts.

LavaBear said...

>>>Some say he could be in a few years the richest man in the world.


Sorry Buster. "Some say" isn't good enough. Besides you quote me someone...anyone. "Some say" is even too weak for this pissing rock.

Anonymous said...

The people who are really rich, don't want that fact known

But somehow Buster, with his mysterious inside knowledge, knows who they are and how much they're worth.

The debate is who OWNS BEND, who is the boss-hogg, who runs the fucking town.

Damn...I thought we were debating "the richest man in California" and the richest Oregonians.


The "debate" is about whatever Buster wants the "debate" to be about at the moment. Whenever he's exposed as being full of shit (which happens about every 12 minutes) he wants to change the topic of the "debate."

Bear, why are we even talking to this drooling imbecile?

Bewert said...

Re: The people who are really rich, don't want that fact known, just like 'anonymity' that most of you struggle with, most 'real rich' don't have an ego problem, they don't love their own name to be seen like 'BP', or 'pbm'.

###

http://www.nrtoday.com/article/20060514/NEWS/60514002

Yeah, it sounds like he likes to stay anonymous by being a big fundraiser for U of O.

LavaBear said...

>>>Bear, why are we even talking to this drooling imbecile?

Sometimes between the drool and psycho rambling some salient points come out. Yet there are times where he has to be told that we know he just made shit up or else he runs with it for months and months and it becomes his reality.

Bewert said...

RE: Just a few months ago BP&PBM were denying these claims

###

No, dumb ass, I explained to your addled brain that Clinton's last act was to completely deregulate derivatives with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which led directly to the size of the giant fucking mess the world is in now. Read Butter's article above--you might actually learn a fact or two.

But I know your reality is far different than most of ours, so I'll agree with hb and ignore your ramblings from now on as well.

Bewert said...

Actually LB, I think Buster is the real plant sent here to drive people away.

At least his intelligence level is on par with a house plant.

Anonymous said...

>Actually LB, I think Buster is the real plant sent here to drive people away.

I've been saying that since he was on here almost two years ago saying that a 1200 sq ft crap-shack next to Drake Park was worth $250k. I mean $225k.. I mean $200k...

Anonymous said...

Butter, here's a good Jap story for ya,..

Job cuts swell ranks of homeless in Japan

By MARI YAMAGUCHI – 1 hour ago

TOKYO (AP) — In corporate Japan, losing your job can mean losing your home as well.

As major companies cut their work forces in the economic downturn, many Japanese workers are finding themselves out on the street because they have to move out of company-run dormitories.

Sadanori Suzuki was one of them.

The 26-year-old lost his job at a car factory in December, and by mid-January he was kicked out of the dorm run by his employer. He moved from Internet cafes — which often have private rooms and double as flop houses — to "capsule" hotels, which are coffin-like individual compartments just for sleeping. But within two weeks he was nearly broke and out on the street.

He found his way to a Shinto shrine in Kawagoe, a Tokyo suburb, where he planned to take temporary refuge. But the worship hall was locked. Exasperated, Suzuki set fire on the shrine, then called police from a nearby pay phone and turned himself in. When he was arrested, last week, he had only 10 yen (11 cents).

In a country where lifetime employment has long been held up as an idealized standard, Japanese are finding out fast that the unemployment safety net for part-time, temporary or contract workers has become painfully obsolete.

"In Japan, people quite often become homeless as soon as they lose their jobs," said Makoto Yuasa, head of Independent Life Support Center, a grass-roots activist group. "There is no protection for people who are able to work but are out of jobs."

On Monday, the government reported that the Japanese economy shrank at its fastest rate in 35 years in the fourth quarter — at an annual pace of 12.7 percent — and shows no signs of reversing course anytime soon. It is more than triple the 3.8 percent annualized contraction in the U.S. in the same quarter.

According to the latest government estimates, released last month, some 125,000 part-time workers will lose their jobs by March. Labor officials cannot follow what happens to all those who lose their employment, but of the 45,800 who have been tracked, the government found 2,700 became homeless.

Private estimates go much higher — to upward of 400,000 new jobless by the end of next month — and say more than 30,000 of them will become homeless, nearly double the country's nationwide homelessness figure. By the official count, the number of homeless is 16,000 and has been slightly decreasing for several years.

"This is just the beginning," said Hitoshi Ichikawa, a ministry official in charge of labor policies. "There will be many more in coming weeks and months."

The wide use of temps in manufacturing was only legalized in 2004, allowing corporate giants such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Canon Inc. to rely on seasonal workers. Using temporary workers allows companies to adjust production to gyrating overseas demand through hiring agencies that often provide dormitories.

Nearly one-third of the Japanese work force is made up of temporary workers, including 3.8 million bottom-tier workers who are sent countrywide to provide labor on demand.

A key to Japan's fragile economic recovery has been the explosion in temporary employment agencies, brokers who allow corporations to take on labor without having to pay benefits — and then unload workers at will. Another factor is "freeters" — a growing segment of young people who choose to move from one part-time job to the next.

Independent union organizer Makoto Kawazoe said temporary workers are given low-paying, tough factory jobs, with an average basic monthly salary of about 150,000 yen ($1,650), barely enough to make ends meet. When they are laid off and evicted from employer-provided housing, they often have no savings. Three-quarters of Japan's temporary workers earn less than 2 million yen ($21,740) a year.

"They have no choice but rely on their job agencies to find another job that comes with a dormitory," Kawazoe said. "Once you get trapped in the cycle, it's very difficult to get out."

The job-with-a-room package allows job agencies to supply workers who can start the job right away, without wasting time finding a place to live, Kawazoe said. "It's a scheme to attract the poor to take the low-paying, hard labor and keep them in the system."

Japan's unemployment rate jumped in December to 4.4 percent, up 0.5 points from a month earlier. That means 2.7 million people are out of jobs, up 390,000 from the previous year. The number of people on government welfare has risen by more than 46,000 since last year. In Tokyo and major cities across the country, welfare rolls rose 35 percent in January alone.

On the streets, the statistics are becoming a visible reality.

The government-run Hello Work job agencies are packed with young jobseekers, many carrying duffel or shopping bags with their belongings. They apply for a one-time 100,000 yen ($1,090) allowance and low-rent housing, which opposition lawmakers and advocacy groups say is far too little.

In a parliamentary debate last week, Economy Minister Kaoru Yosano urged companies to do more to protect their workers.

"Major companies have a social responsibility to sustain their work force," he said. "They are useless if they ignore that responsibility."

But Prime Minister Taro Aso — who has promised to create 1.6 million jobs over the next three years — said the government has put in place programs such as housing loans and subsidies to companies to maintain their work forces.

"We have provided support for those who have lost both jobs and homes, and we'll continue to take appropriate steps," he told a parliamentary session Monday.

Even so, the situation has gotten so bad that some Tokyo neighborhood offices have set up temporary showers for those who need to clean up before resuming their job search.

Over the New Year holidays, a tent village set up by a group of labor union members in Tokyo's Hibiya Park was almost instantly filled, prompting the Labor Ministry to open a nearby public gymnasium to accommodate the overflow. Hundreds came from out of town when word got around. The government later made available vacant public housing for 4,000 people in several locations in Tokyo through a relief package of financial aid and rent.

Companies say they are also working to respond. Toyota has announced it will slash its temporary workers by 1,700 through March — from 4,700 — by not extending their contracts. But it has promised to shift some to full-time positions or transfer them to subsidiaries or affiliates.

"We are doing the best we can," a Toyota spokesman said on condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the topic.

From December, Toyota has also started allowing temporary workers to stay at company-run dormitories for up to a month without charge.

Before that, a temp worker had only three days to pack up and leave.

Anonymous said...

Careful what you think you "know"

###

Like the boss-hogg says a town of non-real people, non-real jobs, and non-real children.

Anonymous said...

But somehow Buster, with his mysterious inside knowledge, knows who they are and how much they're worth.

*

All 'politics' are local, if you have been around ORYGUN for awhile, you would know who actually has 'assets' and who doesn't.

The list(s) that PBM uses as 'knowledge' are BULLshit. PBP is a 'portable-reporter', he says he has an english degree from princeton, but so what you could put him in any city in the USA, and he would be an expert journalist with his toolbox, of using the same source as every other legit reporter, and thus nobody ever says anything.

So if HOLLERN isn't the RICHEST boss-hogg of the Bend area, then who is smart asses??

Anonymous said...

The strangest new thing in the news was yesterday where rather than HOLLERN speaking to the BULL directly they now have his 'lawyer', speaking on his behalf.

You got to admit that be strange, where the HOGG has to have a layer of deny-ability between himself and the public. Note also the the focus on how the city SHOULD have spent more on INFRASTRUCTURE.

The 'Infrastructure First' people have documented very well that history, and there is no reason for anybody to recreate the past, not even this group.

LavaBear said...

>>>So if HOLLERN isn't the RICHEST boss-hogg of the Bend area, then who is smart asses??

As long as we're just making shit up as we go along then I'm gonna say...Benji Gilchrist.

Anonymous said...

Let's see we can't talk about Resnick who owns Suterra cuz he's Jewish. We can't talk about Schnitzer controlling world scrap steel, cuz they Jewish.

We can't talk about HOLLERN, cuz he's the boss-hogg, we can't talk about LesSchwab, cuz he's dead.

So we talk about the BP, the LB, the PsychoticBowelMovement,...

There were six maybe @bb2, now there are 4, buster,bp,hbm,and homer and his aliases.

Can't talk about Pape, can't talk about mr jen-weld can't talk about mr Ford (umqua), but we can bash MOSS forever. Why is MOSS ok to Bash? or Sawyer bash sawyer is good, and summit-1031, but never mention names, cuz they be Jews.

Anonymous said...

G7 accomplishes NOTHING ...

G7 Weekend Meeting Produces Little
Economic ministers got to meet new U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in Rome, but precious little came out of the weekend get-together

By Andrew Willis

Finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of Seven industrialised nations (G7) met over the weekend in Rome to discuss the ongoing financial crisis and economic slowdown.

Russia, which has increasingly attended such meetings in recent years (forming the G8), but is not considered a fully developed country, did not participate.

Few new concrete proposals to deal with the "severe global economic downturn and financial turmoil" appeared to come out of the meeting.

Instead the communiqué issued at the end of the gathering said: "The stabilisation of the global economy and financial markets remains our highest priority," before listing the government measures used to tackle the crisis so far.

Former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Simon Johnson, said the G7 was "asleep at the wheel." Rather than seizing a good opportunity to reassert its leadership he continued, the group had issued a bland communiqué of vague intentions.

The UK finance minister, Alistair Darling, said the talks had provided a useful "stepping stone" for the G20 summit in London on 2 April.

One concrete measure at the gathering was Japan's signing of an agreement on Saturday (14 February) to provide €78 billion ($100 billion) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Germany, which also runs a trade surplus and holds sizable foreign currency reserves, did not follow suit.

The IMF has recently provided emergency loans to Latvia, Hungry and the Ukraine and there had been fears that its holdings of $142 billion could run out before the end of the year.

The finance ministers and bank governors discussed the issue of protectionism but the final statement merely said: "The G7 remains committed to avoiding protectionist measures, which would only exacerbate the downturn."

The EU is currently struggling to contain a surge in protectionism as fears grow that support plans in certain member states could have negative repercussions on others in the union.

The group also discussed the need for new regulation of the global banking sector, a topic that EU leaders will turn to at their summit in Brussels on 19-20 March.

Italy's Giulio Tremonti called for a "new global order" in this area whereas Peer Steinbrueck, Germany's finance minister, stressed the need to prepare an "exit strategy" from the current high levels of government spending.

One purpose of the meeting was to provide finance ministers with an opportunity to meet the new US treasury secretary, Tim Geithner.

"We had a good impression [of Geithner]. He's a good debater, he's easy to speak to, he's frank and open," commented Jean-Claude Juncker, who also attended the meeting as chairman of the Eurogroup.

Mr Geithner surprised many last month by calling China a currency "manipulator," using strong language that had been avoided by his predecessor Hank Paulson.

The G7 appeared to adopt a softer approach with the statement saying: "We welcome China's fiscal measures and continued commitment to move to a more flexible exchange rate, which should lead to continued appreciation

Anonymous said...

Nationalization still seen as ONLY HOPE, perhaps this is the HOPE that OREO was talking about??

Anxiety high as US bank rescue plan in limbo

2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Financial market angst remains high over the lack of a clear strategy to rescue the US banking system under the plan unveiled by the administration of President Barack Obama, analysts say.

Fixing the banking system will be a critical element of any economic recovery by restoring health to the sector and getting credit flowing again.

But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner omitted key details in unveiling the plan last week, notably how a proposed public-private partnership would absorb the toxic assets on bank balance sheets, and how a so-called "stress test" for the major financial institutions would work.

"It remains unclear how banks with capital shortfalls will be treated and how much of the plan will be voluntary," said Alec Phillips, analyst at Goldman Sachs.

But Phillips added that "once these details are cleared up, the plan is likely to represent the most important step to date in strengthening the banking system."

Geithner's plan calls for a public-private fund aimed at soaking up toxic assets clogging the financial system, starting with at least 500 billion dollars. It also included new efforts to boost consumer lending, limit home foreclosures and provide new capital for banks.

Some analysts say the new plan aims to identify the weakest banks and either save them through additional capital injections or allow them to be taken over by regulators.

Gerard Cassidy, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said the plan needs to be tough in weeding out banks that are not viable.

"US regulators need to move in and close down insolvent banks, regardless of size," he said. "The banks are seized, the deposits are sold along with any good assets, and bad assets are transferred" to an authority, to be liquidated.

Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman said the stress test may help the administration intervene with big banks in the same manner it has been doing with smaller banks in trouble.

"The problem is not toxic assets," he said, referring to risky real estate-related assets being held by banks.

"The problem is that financial institutions have lost a lot of money and many of the big ones, if they are not actually insolvent, are very close."

Krugman said the "stress test" may reveal that "five or maybe seven of these institutions are actually not viable," and thus could be put into government receivership, noting that this is the same process used for smaller banks that fail.

Michael Jones, chief investment officer at Riverfront Investment Group, said the administration must choose between the "punitive" solution of taking over the troubled banks and bad assets or "generous" guarantees for the banks to allow time for beaten-down mortgage assets to recover.

Any effort to find a middle ground, Jones said, could delay a recovery by propping up "zombie banks" that "undermine the profitability of other firms."

Some analysts say the administration may be forced to nationalize key banks despite Geithner's insistence that the sector remain in private hands.

"The US banking system is close to being insolvent, and unless we want to become like Japan in the 1990s -- or the United States in the 1930s -- the only way to save it is to nationalize it," says Nouriel Roubini, a New York University economist who predicted a major crisis two years ago.

"Nationalization is the only option that would permit us to solve the problem of toxic assets in an orderly fashion and finally allow lending to resume. Of course, the economy would still stink, but the death spiral we are in would end."

Michael Gregory, economist at BMO Capital Markets, says the administration needs additional time to develop a credible plan.

"Given the enormity and complexity of the US banking crisis, it was probably unrealistic to expect too much detail at this early stage of the new administration," Gregory said.

"Geithner was giving a roadmap, but the market was impatiently asking 'Are we there yet?'

"And, there might be another reason for the disappointment -- the simple realization that time and options may be running out for the banking system to be saved -- last resort: nationalization -- and economic depression averted."

Anonymous said...

The TWO boss-hoggs controlling BEND today, ...


Suterra's Stewart Resnick (ROLL INTL CORP FRONT), and Boss-Hogg HOLLERN of Brooks, these two boyz, behind the scenes are the money man, the go-to boyz for Bend deal making.


HOLLERN will sell out most his good stuff to Resnick, Resnick wants the central oregon water-rights, resnick will peel that shit off, and then let the city flip the rotting std's off as 'affordable housing' with the taxpayer floating the package.

Anonymous said...

Timothy Geithner

*

Can't talk about Geithner, he's Jewish.

Anonymous said...

"The US banking system is close to being insolvent, and unless we want to become like Japan in the 1990s -- or the United States in the 1930s -- the only way to save it is to nationalize it," says Nouriel Roubini, a New York University economist who predicted a major crisis two years ago.

*

So any bets HOW LONG? Weeks months??

LavaBear said...

>>>Let's see we can't talk about Resnick who owns Suterra cuz he's Jewish. We can't talk about Schnitzer controlling world scrap steel, cuz they Jewish.

Wrong dude. We can talk about them all day long but I'm just asking for ANY...I mean it Buster
ANY facts I can get my hands on and analyze. Please gimme something. I looked into Schnitzer Steel's 2008 Annual report and your numbers don't add up. All I've gotten from you about Resnick is this horseshit of "some people say".

You bring up the fact they are Jewish. I'm bringin up the fact you gotta give me some real numbers. Anything. Pull it out of your ass but give me something more than "some people say". Weak.

Anonymous said...

LavaBear said...
>>>So if HOLLERN isn't the RICHEST boss-hogg of the Bend area, then who is smart asses??

As long as we're just making shit up as we go along then I'm gonna say...Benji Gilchrist.


Benji Gilchrist is definitely the richest man in Central Oregon in one regard; he has more ego than anyone else. Money-wise, not even close.

LavaBear said...

>>>Benji Gilchrist is definitely the richest man in Central Oregon in one regard; he has more ego than anyone else. Money-wise, not even close.

But if we are playing by Buster's rules then I say it's Benji and now it's a FACT!

>>>he has more ego than anyone else.

What you've never met Todd Taylor?

Anonymous said...

LavaBeer used to share a dorm room with Taylor and give him head, there's nobody in Bend that LB hasn't slept with.

Anonymous said...

So is Gilchrist on the PBM & LB list of richest people on the planet??

Anonymous said...

It's quite funny how our 'gatekeepers' of the Bend Blogo-sphere have to use the main-stream media ( PBM ) as their reference for truth.

So what about Ford of Umqua, or Hollern of Bend, or mr-Jen-Weld of KFalls, or schnitzer/homer-williams of pdx, where are they on these "lists" of riche? Most likely they're not even on the fucking list.

Anonymous said...

Fuck Gilchrist, Donald Trump is the richest man in the USA, and he say's so. In fact Donald Trump is said to be buying Bend RE at this moment, and this trumor was as true now as it was three years ago.

How do we know? Because the main stream media tells us so.

LavaBear said...

>>>LavaBeer used to share a dorm room with Taylor and give him head, there's nobody in Bend that LB hasn't slept with.

Dammit all to hell. I just wish you'd pay fucking attention now and again. I said I was roommates with a Schnitzer not a Taylor. How many times do I have to repeat myself to you. Children....And yes I'm easy. I'll sleep with anybody except Todd Taylor. It's Monday night I'll see you there.

Anonymous said...

The 'bend bulletin' the BIGGEST fucking SHILL for HOLLERN & CO, ... time for the people of Bend to put their heads up their BP&LB arses and quick.

Money can't buy you love, but can it buy you building rights at the Metolius?

Carla Axtman

Since developers at Dutch Pacific Resources and Ponderosa Land & Cattle don't have rights under the law to build destination resorts at the Metolius, what's the reason for all the media interest in the last couple of weeks? One likely scenario is the fact that the Oregon Legislature could ban destination resort building in the region.

In 2007, Senate Bill 30 would have done just that. And it had a good slate of support. But at least one of the hearings for the bill was reported as heavily weighted to give testimony to those opposed to the bill, while supporters were stiffed. A heavily weakened and hardly recognizable version eventually died in a House committee. Sources have told me that the bill was allowed to languish and die at least in part due to fears that the lobbyists and media would beat down other legislators in the way that it was unjustly done to Senator Betsy Johnson.

In 2009, at least part of that pattern began anew with the Oregonian's late January (and early February) swipe at Governor Kulongoski, Senate Senator Ginny Burdick and Johnson.

The Bend Bulletin (subscription only) has consistently shilled for the developers and supporters of the resorts as well, virtually ignoring the uptick in support by locals for banning resorts at the Metolius. With the exception of a Nick Budnick piece this week on the Oregon Water Resources Department's second thoughts on giving water rights to the Ponderosa developers, the Bulletin appears to be the lapdog for those who flog these resorts. And from what I've seen, the PR departments of these interests have taken full advantage.

The Dutch Pacific and Ponderosa groups also appear to have a solid cache of financial resources and they're not afraid to go to the well. They've got at least 3 lobbyists between them, as I understand it. Hasina Squires lobbies for Dutch Pacific. Rick Allen appears to be the lead media spokesperson for the Ponderosa folks, and is lobbying for them. I'm told that Dave Barrows also lobbies for Ponderosa. Thomas Barrows is listed as a lobbyist for Ponderosa in the 2007 session but I haven't heard anything about his participation this time around.

James Kean is the Portland entrepreneur behind the Dutch Pacific proposal. He complained to the Oregonian that he's spent $3.8 million on his plan so far. Kean and business partner Shane Lundgren dropped $1.1 million to acquire their 627 acres of property around the Metolius. I have yet to determine the exact cost of maintaining the services for lobbyist Hasina Squires for two legislative sessions, but I'm told that fees for Oregon legislative lobbyists generally range from $5k to $40k per month. So averaging it out on the low end of $20K a month for the six months of the 07 session and the two months (so far) of 09, that's $160k for lobbyist fees.

That leads to a look at campaign contributions. Since the end of the 2007 session, Dutch Pacific has dropped about $20k in campaign donations to Oregon legislators and candidates. If you click on the link, you'll see that both Democratic and Republican campaigns/PACs were the benefactors of Dutch Pacific's largesse.

Ponderosa Land & Cattle is led by the Colson family. William Colson heaped a generous $15k to the campaign of State Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli (R-John Day) in 2006. Ferrioli wasn't up for reelection until 2008, where he essentially ran unopposed. Color me cynical, but I'm going to guess that Ferrioli redistributed generous portions of that contribution among his GOP member candidates. There's no way to definitively track that money trail, but that's my educated guess.

Ponderosa Land & Cattle LLC has spread campaign cash around since the end of the 2007 session as well. They've dropped over $32k to legislative candidates and PACs, the majority of which went to Republican interests. Two of the benefactors, Ferrioli and Representative Gene Whisnant (R-Sunriver) have gone out of their way to shill for the development. There is some possible justification for Ferrioli's work on this, as the proposals are within his district. But Whisnant? This is outside his constituency. So the only explanation for his involvement are the cash contributions to his campaign. Unless he's ideologically predisposed to conferring building rights outside of the law, of course.

The 2009 Oregon Legislature will be taking up the matter of banning destination resorts at the Metolius. Governor Kulongoski's legislative effort is currently under heavy fire from Oregonians In Action and Republicans. OIA president Dave Hunnicutt is complaining that such legislation would take away the rights of these interests to build resorts on their land. Hunnicutt has yet to explain how rights that don't exist can be taken away, but I digress. Perhaps a future screed by Hunnicutt will enlighten. I'll keep an eye out for it.

As I understand it, the only item before the Oregon legislature having to do with Ponderosa Land and Cattle and Dutch Pacific Resources is the building of destination resorts at the Metolius.

Alternative legislation banning destination resorts at the Metolius is coming from State Representatives Ben Cannon (D-Portland) and Brian Clem (D-Salem), or so I hear. As that bill emerges and goes through the process, I'll report further.

Anonymous said...

It's Monday night I'll see you there.

*

Bring it ON, I'm bringing BP's strap-on, and NO its still got Bendbb's blood on it from last monday.

Anonymous said...

Bulletin appears to be the lapdog for those who flog these resorts.

*

Who would have guessed??

HOLLERN was the first resort going back to the 1960's, and then got SB100 passed to 'legalize' these 'resorts', and today HOLLER aka BULL has never seen a resort they didn't like.

Lapdog? Bull? Hollern? PBM? Switzer? Sisters? Metolius? Why do I repeat myself??

LavaBear said...

>>>Why do I repeat myself??

I can't tell you how many times I asked myself why you do that. But you are god damned god at it so keep it up!

Anonymous said...

This is all quite FUNNY, because the primary assert of BP, LB, and PBM is that 'history' don't matter, and HOMER-ERECTUS is a clown. The trouble is there aren't many places like the head-water of the metolius left to screw by Hollern & Co.

First, I think it's important to note that lawmakers like Whisnant and Ferrioli have been long-supporters of destination resorts, even before any campaign contributions were handed out by the land owners. These two lawmakers would have supported the destination resorts either way.

Secondly, I find it appalling that lawmakers from the West side of the mountains continue to dictate what happens on the east side. This happens all the time. There's a reason Central Oregon feels like the red-headed step-child to Portland and the rest of the Willamette Valley.

Lastly, the rights that Hunnicutt is talking about are most likely related to the process of getting the rights able to develop on the land. Once environmentalists and others found out destinations resorts looked more likely in the Metolius, they've been pulling out all the stops to prevent it from happening.

As I said in another post, I personally don't really care for the idea of destination resorts around the Metolius - I think there are better places for them. What bothers me is the great lengths some environmental groups and lawmakers are willing to go to chastise the land owners, and change the rules mid-stream so the developments can't move forward.

Posted by: Carla Axtman | Feb 16, 2009 10:23:41 AM

Jason: So Ferrioli and Whisnant are doing this because they're interested in seeing destination resorts built at the Metolius..? Okay. But I don't see how Ferrioli could have been a "long-supporter" of Metolius resorts before campaign contributions filtered to him. The first of the land wasn't purchased until 2003 and the zoning map issue didn't come up until 2006. The first of Ferrioli's contributions from Colson (that I've found so far) showed up in a big chunk during 2006.

I don't find it appalling that lawmakers on the west side are talking about this. They certainly can't dictate (as seen in 2007). But the land in question is a treasure for all of Oregon, not just those who live within a 100 square mile radius of the land. And frankly, there's an outcry from many of the citizens who do, and they're virtually being ignored and shut out. As demonstrated by the committee process in 07, those who came across the Cascades from the region to support Senate Bill 30 were not allowed to give testimony for the most part.

As far as Hunnicutt is concerned, you may be right. But there is pretty clear evidence that at least part of the regular process to confer rights via the county to these developers wasn't followed (hence its tie-up in court). Further many of the citizens who live in the region who don't want these resorts have been shut out. Incidentally, those "environmental groups" that you're harping about include local citizens and native tribes who live there. And Whisnant? It's not his district..yet he's injected himself anyway. So if having outside the area influences bug you, aim some fire his way.

Posted by: Richard | Feb 16, 2009 10:33:26 AM

Carla,
If no rights exist why is a bill banning it needed?

My earlier contention stands.
Today's Oregon eco-Democrats would be opposing Timberline Lodge if it were a proposal today. As they would also oppose Salishan, Black Butte, Sunriver etc.
Just as they killed Pelican Butte, Smith Rock and obstruct others.

On the Metolius, the purpose for trying to use water as the basis for passage of the destination resort bills is to avoid the compensation requirements of M49. The argument will be that stopping destination resorts in the Metolius is a health and safety issue exempt from M49 coverage. Otherwise, the cost of paying compensation to the property owners under M49 is so high that the bills would die. Right now, the bills contain a provision prohibiting the property owner from making a claim under M49 (that is the story people should be talking about), but I suspect that the Democrats will remove that section, as it really looks bad for them.

But then M49 express claims aren't being approved either.

Carla,
Perhaps you could generate a screed on the detriment of obstructing M49 claims that were promised express approval.
Surely you all of you M49 supporters would like to see the measures promises kept?
There's some 8000 homes awaiting fast approval, construction, jobs and economic stimulus.

Posted by: Carla Axtman | Feb 16, 2009 10:50:14 AM

Richard:

As I've explained (see my previous post on this issue--the very first link in this post), the efforts to confer the rights by Jefferson County (via zoning map) are tied up in court. When the land was purchased by the developers, it was zoned only for timber harvest/management. The land was bought with the hope that the zoning would be changed. That's what land speculators do..they roll the dice.

Today's Oregon eco-Democrats would be opposing Timberline Lodge if it were a proposal today. As they would also oppose Salishan, Black Butte, Sunriver etc.
Just as they killed Pelican Butte, Smith Rock and obstruct others.

Yes, and that was repeatedly demonstrated to be a silly argument without merit in the comment thread attached to the previous post.


On the Metolius, the purpose for trying to use water as the basis for passage of the destination resort bills is to avoid the compensation requirements of M49. The argument will be that stopping destination resorts in the Metolius is a health and safety issue exempt from M49 coverage. Otherwise, the cost of paying compensation to the property owners under M49 is so high that the bills would die. Right now, the bills contain a provision prohibiting the property owner from making a claim under M49 (that is the story people should be talking about), but I suspect that the Democrats will remove that section, as it really looks bad for them.

M49 has nothing to do with this until and unless the land is re-zoned to build the resorts. Period. The attempts to ban destination resorts by the legislature will not reduce the value of the land as it stands now.

The jobs argument involved in these projects is frankly, lame. There would be some short term construction, but it likely wouldn't kick in for awhile. The long term would be low-wage service sector jobs. All this in exchange for an irrevocable wrecking of one of Oregon's pristine areas.

Perhaps that's why you see so many local residents coming out against these resorts.


Posted by: DSS | Feb 16, 2009 11:02:45 AM

Jason said:

"I find it appalling that lawmakers from the West side of the mountains continue to dictate what happens on the east side."

Perhaps it would help if you were reminded that the original SB 30 (the bill that started all this) was a bipartisan creation of then-Senator Ben Westlund (whose district abutted the Metolius) and then-Representative John Dallum (in whose district the Metolius Basin was in).

Posted by: Kevin | Feb 16, 2009 11:10:44 AM

My earlier contention stands.
Today's Oregon eco-Democrats would be opposing Timberline Lodge if it were a proposal today. As they would also oppose Salishan, Black Butte, Sunriver etc.

Likewise, today's Oregon Corporo-Republicans would be in favor of paving over Mt. Hood if it were a proposal today. As they would also favor paving over Salishan, Black Butte, Sunriver etc.

Oh, and the Moon is in fact made of green cheese and the world is in fact flat. Plug in any other wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth assertions that float yer boat.

At the end of the day we have several indisputable facts.

1. The Metolius properties in question were zoned for timber management/harvest when purchased and remain zoned thusly today.

2. James Kean, a resident of Portland (i.e., WEST of the Cascades) has spent $3.8 million to further his plan to get the zoning changed so he can build a huge resort there.

3. Local residents (i.e., EAST of the Cascades) are increasingly opposed to the proposed resorts being built in the Metolius.

Posted by: patm | Feb 16, 2009 11:22:22 AM

I have followed this issue since the 2007 session. I really appreciate your spotlighting this vital issue. Providing accurate information on the is a real service to all Oregonians.

I'm looking forward to see what Represenatives Clem and Cannon can come up with. Carla I hope you will continue your efforts on the Metolius/ development issue.

Posted by: Richard once more | Feb 16, 2009 11:54:37 AM

"All this in exchange for an irrevocable wrecking of one of Oregon's pristine areas."

What a perfect fabrication. "irrevocable wrecking"?

That's exactly what you would call any proposal, including Timberline Lodge.
It would be the "irrevocable wrecking Mt Hood".

As for the idea that this comparison "was repeatedly demonstrated to be a silly argument"?

Yeah right. The only thing demonstrated was the Blue ability to straw man. As was the case when I was criticized for not knowing the difference between a lodge and a resort. A comparison and point I never contended.

The point was that no matter the scale, the Metolius resorts or a Timberline lodge the opposition would be the same.
And you know SunRiver would be opposed today by all of you for the identical reasons.

But instead of admitting the obstructionist agenda we get the pave over everything straw man fabrications.

"Corporo-Republicans would be in favor of paving over"?

Talk about silly. And completely contrived.

The jobs argument involved in these projects is frankly, the identical case made by government stimulus spending proponents for government projects.
If these resorts were a government effort your tune would no doubt switch 180.

There is a lot of pre construction work that pays very well including arch/engineering and at the various planning and permit agencies. That means revenue for Oregon.

Your bias and lack of familiarity with projects has you making unfounded and inaccurate presumptions.

And what exactly is wrong with short term construction?
Every single construction project is short term.

As for the long term would be low-wage service sector jobs?
I don't that same concern when our central planning
regime fails to create anything but that?

Oh the hypocrisy.

And why no comment on the M49 express claims?

Not interested?

In reality the Metoliius resorts could be built while fully preserving the pristine Metolius just as was the Deschutes at Sunriver.

You could have an Democrat gathering there.


Posted by: Jack Roberts | Feb 16, 2009 11:55:21 AM

Carla, as usual you may be the only blogger consistently willing to do the spade work and research to dig out facts and information not already well-known and part of the general discussion of an issue. For that you deserve major kudos.

However, I also think you too often attribute nefarious motives to people who disagree with you. For example, you blithely accept the fact that people on the West side have an altruistic interest in preserving "a treasure for all of Oregon" but Gene Whisnant can't have a principled reason to support the development of anything outside the boundaries of his district so therefore "the only explanation for his involvement are the cash contributions to his campaign."

As pointed out above, this is nonsense. Carla, I honestly think if you matched your industriousness with a little perspective, you would be one of the best political bloggers around.

Posted by: Carla Axtman | Feb 16, 2009 12:04:55 PM

Jack--I'm connecting obvious dots. If you believe they're not justified, by all means, please elaborate further as to why. Given the increasing number of local residents who are coming out against these resorts, its difficult to understand what other reasons Whisnant (and Ferrioli too) have for their ardent support of them. To which "principled reasons" do you refer, exactly?

I appreciate your kind words on my efforts. But you do understand that I have a point of view, as do you. I come at this not just with a journalist's eye, but with a progressive one as well.

As for Richard, you've prompted me to define "irrevocable wrecking". I've already begun the information gathering process. While I doubt it will penetrate your own well-formed (if not well-INformed) opinion, it will certainly put more crucial information out there.

Posted by: DSS | Feb 16, 2009 12:14:27 PM

Richard continues to belabor:

"As was the case when I was criticized for not knowing the difference between a lodge and a resort. A comparison and point I never contended."

Richard, you can't make a comparison, acknowledge the incomparability of the items compared, and then continue your ill-advised screed as if it's still relevant. It flies in the very face of logic -- IT'S VERY FACE! WHY DO YOU HATE LOGIC'S FACE SO MUCH? ARGH!

Richard: Why do you think a lodge on Mt. Hood is okay but a resort in the Metolius is not?
Logic: Because a lodge is different. A lodge is thousands of times smaller and has a miniscule proportion of the impact that a resort would have.
Richard: I don't contend that point. But answer my question!
Logic: WTF?

Posted by: Kevin | Feb 16, 2009 12:24:08 PM

"Corporo-Republicans would be in favor of paving over"?

Talk about silly. And completely contrived.

But the notions that the moon is made of green cheese and the world is flat apparently strike you as perfectly reasonable propositions...

Engaging you on this subject is self-evidently a waste of time.


Posted by: torridjoe | Feb 16, 2009 12:39:41 PM

"The jobs argument involved in these projects is frankly, the identical case made by government stimulus spending proponents for government projects. "

If it's not even zoned properly, the phrase "shovel-ready" seems hardly applicable--and thus, not identical.

Posted by: Brian | Feb 16, 2009 12:40:05 PM

Carla, nice analysis.

Yes, there hasn't been a final approval of the Jefferson County rezoning, since the case is being heard by the Oregon Supreme Court. So there is good reason to argue that Measure 49 compensation for a loss in value due to a change in land use laws doesn't apply here, since the would-be developers aren't yet able to move ahead with the destination resorts.

Also, let's remember that they bought their property under zoning that didn't allow the resorts. By lobbying a couple of county commissioners, they were able to get Jefferson County to move ahead with the attempted rezoning, even though most local residents in the Camp Sherman area were (and are) opposed to the resorts.

So this isn't a case of a land owner being prevented from doing what he could do when he bought the property. The would-be developers weren't able to build a destination resort when they bought the land; they still don't have approval to do this; and efforts are underway to make sure they never will be able to harm the Metolius Basin.

There isn't any unfairness in all this. Just an attempt to protect an Oregon treasure.

Posted by: Richard | Feb 16, 2009 1:03:36 PM

DSS

You just fabricated my side of the point.

I never asked,
"Why do you think a lodge on Mt. Hood is okay but a resort in the Metolius is not?"


Perhpas you need to read slower.

"The point was that no matter the scale, the Metolius resorts or a Timberline lodge the opposition would be the same.
And you know SunRiver would be opposed today by all of you for the identical reasons."

I obviously know a lodge is different than a large resort.

So try and grasp my point. Use Sunriver instead of Timberline.

Contrary to your characterizing Timberline as "miniscule"
the oppostion to it today would cast it an anything but miniscule. My point again.

No the drum beat to protect an Oregon treasure would be loud and aggressive in opposing a Timberline or SunRiver.

We'd be having the identical debate.

I can't wait for Carla's defintion of "irrevocable wrecking".

On another point, the 1000s of residents that would ultimately be impacting the Metolius area would not come all at once. Any unforseen impacts would be indicated long before any "irrevocable wrecking.

Regarding the headwaters/groundwaters concern the region is a massive system with mutiple origins high in the Cascades. I don't but the convenient theory that these resorts have the ability to noticeably wreck the system.

But again that claim of wrecking comes with every oppostion to every recent and current proposal.
That's the agenda. Stop everything.

Posted by: JP | Feb 16, 2009 1:16:37 PM

Looking for clarification on the Ponderosa project's location. Is that the one over the east ridge from the Met and is actually in the Deschutes watershed?

Also, anyone know who lobbies for Black Butte? I'm sure they're not pleased with the potential for competition.

Posted by: Chuck Butcher | Feb 16, 2009 1:39:57 PM

Jack Roberts:
You know, if you were talking about legislators who'd recieved a bunch of little contributions you might have a really valid point. I have no disagreement with the idea that legislators can act from a standpoint of principles. I also don't have a lot of trouble seeing tens of thousands of dollars contributed by one interest with a specific interest in a specific issue as little more than an attempt at legalized bribery. You certainly are not blind to the fact that there is a differnce between those with something to gain or gained and those without either. You don't like the dots Carla connected? Maybe the solution was at those campaigns, because something that looks like a turd, and smells like a turd, probably doesn't belong on your shoe, so you keep your foot out of it. I've noticed your world seems to contain a lot of one way convenience...

You won't get a bit of arguement from me that one size fits all land use regulations are stupid and have bad consequences for those they're not designed around. I also live and work E of the Cascades and I do know something about water, short-term developement, and rotten service industry wages. I'm also real familiar with urbanites deciding what is in the interest of the rest of the state, regardless of consequences.

Maybe it's real naive of me to think that the purpose of government isn't to provide a platform for wealth to get what it wants in the face of the general interest, but then I'm not a Republican... You, on the other hand very definitely are.

Posted by: Carla Axtman | Feb 16, 2009 2:07:33 PM

JP: I don't have a map showing the exact location of the Ponderosa property other than the deed maps, which you can find at my previous post here.

I don't see a lobbyist specifically hired to lobby for Black Butte, at least not on the latest list. But it hasn't been updated for this session.

Posted by: Jack Roberts | Feb 16, 2009 2:07:40 PM

Carla and Chuck, it isn't like Gene Whisnant and Ted Ferioli are normally anti-business, anti-development zealots who suddenly, because of some campaign contributions, decided to support a law allowing specific development. These guys are voting in a way that is consistent with their ideology. People who agree with them--even people who will profit from the success of their ideology--support them with campaign contributions. Is that hard to understand?

It would be like accusing Diane Rosenbaum of supporting pro-labor contributions because of the campaign contributions she receives from labor unions. I happen to believe she gets those contributions because she already supports those positions, and so do the labor usions.

Posted by: Carla Axtman | Feb 16, 2009 2:17:15 PM

Jack: Not to pick nits, but they haven't actually voted yet on this issue. Senate Bill 30 wasn't voted on either.

This is about giving quotes to the media and shilling for the projects, at least to this point. And yes, it makes sense that people who agree with their ideology would give them money. But it's awfully convenient that some who give money stand to make a whole bunch more of it because of the cause they're pushing..against the wishes of what appears to be a growing number of constituents.

To take your Rosenbaum scenario the rest of the way, it would be like Rosenbaum supporting a pro-union bill that would yield a pile of cash (or an equivalency) for a union even against the wishes of her constituents. In addition, her constituents would be essentially blocked from being heard even as their opposition grew. I have a tough time believing that would get such a pass in the Oregon media as these resorts have.

Posted by: DSS | Feb 16, 2009 2:50:48 PM

Richard:

"So try and grasp my point. Use Sunriver instead of Timberline."

Richard, I get what you're saying, but your assertions don't hold water with any example! Your Sunriver example was effectively dismantled in the previous post (here's a link) which explained why there's a practical difference between taking water from the middle of a river and taking water from the headwaters of a river.

If you refuse to acknowledge when your questions are being answered, then I really don't know how to converse with you.

Posted by: DSS | Feb 16, 2009 2:56:41 PM

By the way...

"I don't buy the convenient theory that these resorts have the ability to noticeably wreck the system."

When someone presents evidence and testimony and documentation showing something, it's not really a persuasive point to say that you simply "don't buy" it.

LavaBear said...

>>>it's not really a persuasive point to say that you simply "don't buy" it.

Hey, that's kind of like "Some people say".

Anonymous said...

>>>it's not really a persuasive point to say that you simply "don't buy" it.

Kind of like "FACT" from buster.

Anonymous said...

That's really funny. Given that since when is a reference from Bloomberg or any major 'approved' media 'fact'??

'Some People Say' that be like an opinion, sort of like what might get printed by major media.

Bewert said...

9. Receive proposed Memorandum of Understanding between City of Bend staff and Central Oregon Builders Association regarding Transportation System Development Charges

Mr. Krueger explained the MOU between city staff and COBA provides an update on the process. The methodology process is moving ahead and about six weeks away from presentation for
adoption. No action is requested tonight. The information is presented for council information. COBA has approved the MOU and their president has signed the agreement. It is an agreement between COBA and city staff. Staff will present to council a rate of $3,931 to be implemented over a period of several years. It will be reviewed regularly. There will be a public hearing and staff will request adoption of the amounts stated in the MOU at a later date.

Councilor Johnson asked when the council will have the opportunity to discuss and give guidance. Mr. Garzini responded it depends on the nature of the comments. He explained the
lawsuit with COBA required technical study and determinationof a new rate. After the study and initial recommendation, both the city and COBO had a problem with the resulting
recommendation. They decided to negotiate a new rate. These discussions have been going on or three to four months and both parties came to terms they believe are fair and reasonable. Staff has agreed with COBA to bring the recommendation to council and then request public comment. COBA has agreed to endorse and support this product. Staff will defend the product that was negotiated with COBA. Dialogue on this issue has been ongoing for four years. Staff is duty-bound in good faith to defend the product that is before council. Councilor Johnson will hold her questions until the public hearing. Councilor Hummel doesn’t understand the significance of the MOU. Mr. Garzini explained council has the authority to reject the proposal, but staff will defend the proposal as the best solution. Council is not obligated to adopt it.

###

Source: May 5, 2004 City Council Minutes

Mayor overseeing this: Oran Teater

This is the piece of work that fucked our street system funding. The "consultant" recommended $6000, COBA got it down to $3931 after four years. First year 80% or $3145, upped 5% every year.

And even that $6000 was based on a $190M project list that in reality was closer to $400M.

Buster, you are right on the SDC issue.

I'll go back and bring more forensic evidence when I get the time. We need to know that history.

LB, I'm not shitting on Oran, but rather want to hold his feet to the fire.

Anonymous said...

Does this mean what we read in tSW is a 'fact', given that PBM is a 'real reporter', oh but he quotes the main-stream, to support his selective 'facts'.

One can BUY whatever they wish, most 'intelligence' is accumulated prejudices acquired prior to the age of 18 - A Einstein

Bewert said...

Re: Let's see we can't talk about Resnick who owns Suterra cuz he's Jewish. We can't talk about Schnitzer controlling world scrap steel, cuz they Jewish.

We can't talk about HOLLERN, cuz he's the boss-hogg, we can't talk about LesSchwab, cuz he's dead.

###

No, Dumb Ass, we can talk about them. But let's dig for some facts. Spew is worth less than the beer ingestion that preceded it.

Anonymous said...

Transportation System Development Charges

*

Regular SDC the the city is capped by state law at $200M,

But for 'transportation' there is no cap by State law, thus I see the city ( MOSS/KNIFE-RIVER ) re-defining ALL SDC MUNI-DEBT to be 'transportation cost'.

Sewage, power, water, ... just call it 'transportation'.

Anonymous said...

But let's dig for some facts. Spew is worth less than the beer ingestion that preceded it.

*

What are facts? OH that is shit that your can find at the JR site, where the pussy cuts&paste's city data, ... that is fact, all other is fiction.

The trouble is the BPussy shit is all fed by city, and is the biggest source of fiction in town.

Want 'fact' in BEND?? OPEN your fucking eyes, and walk around downtown and count the empty fucking store-fronts, that is fact, all other in BEND is bullshit.

Are you going to believe ME, or you lying eyes??

Bewert said...

Re: ...most 'intelligence' is accumulated prejudices acquired prior to the age of 18 - A Einstein

###

Pot meet kettle.

You are truly fucking useless.

Which is even worse than simply being a Dumb Ass.

Which is why I think you are a soldier sent to fuck this rock up.

Sorry, not going to happen.

Clueless is just to transparent to make a real difference.

BTW, you might want to provide a link to that Einstein quote. I'm having a little problem finding it...

Dumb Ass, why don't you throw of the yoke of your soon to be broke handlers?

Bewert said...

too...off...ugh...

Bewert said...

Buster is obviously here to fuck things up.

So how do you all want to deal with him?

Bewert said...

Re: This is all quite FUNNY, because the primary assert of BP, LB, and PBM is that 'history' don't matter,

###

Dude, I've been posting history.

You are the fucking clown. If your brain could handle a conversation rather than just a rant, you might get somewhere.

Here you try to tie me to development. Yet again. That really smells.

Anonymous said...

Buster is obviously here to fuck things up. So how do you all want to deal with him?

Ignore him. He won't go away (he's compulsive about posting his shit, and no other blog will let him post it) but at least we can pretend he's not here. He never posts anything worth responding to anyway.

Anonymous said...

I think you may be on to something about Buster being a plant put here to throw sand in the gears. Every time there's a substantive discussion about anything he'll throw in diversions about Boss Hogg Hollern, Suterra, phantom billionaires, etc. etc. Or else he'll just start flinging shit at random like a demented monkey at the zoo.

Anonymous said...

Every time there's a substantive discussion - PBM

That be funny, has it ever happened I mean here? Or any where in Bend??

Anonymous said...

The people of Bend are non-real, the children non-real, the jobs, ..

Then PBM ( psychotic bowel movement ) told us the millions of stolen money was never real.

The ownership of Suterra by Resnick is not real, the ownership of Bend by HOLLERN isn't real.

All is phantom, I guess we could call him 'phantom bowel movement', but he is a legitimate member of the press, and is legally allowed to pull opinion out of his ass and self anoint such as 'fact', or even 'truth'.

So its up for toss phantom-bowel-movement, or psycho-bowel-movement?? I like psychotic bowel movement, and Lava-Beer for the other Neanderthal.

Anonymous said...

Why is it legal to talk about Juniper-Ridge, and the Les-Schwab sales agreement, but illegal to discuss Suterra??

It's most interesting that during the WWII Nazi manufacture of Zyklon-B that Bayer was producing tires and pesticides. Just a coincidence?? Move along.

LavaBear said...

>>>but illegal to discuss Suterra??

I TRIED to talk to you about Suterra a few weeks ago. I asked and asked and asked if you had even the foggiest idea of what they produce. The only answer I got from you was go google it. Which I did because I'm like that. And sure enough it all pointed to your very own fantasies posted on some other blog. None of it answered the basic questions. Finally some other kind soul jumped in and covered for your ignorance. Too bad that was.

I'm still waiting for you to do your research and come back with something other than nazi hallucinations.

Anonymous said...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7500410/How-an-Economy-Grows-and-Why-It-Doesnt-Irwin-Schiff

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


I'm still waiting for you to do your research and come back with something other than nazi hallucinations.


Well, you'll be waiting awhile. But at least he has a cool new catch-phrase:

WHO WOULD HAVE KNOW? WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?

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