Sunday, March 15, 2009

Welcome to Mumbai, Oregon!

Can't do a full-scale rant today, so I'll just post some interesting snippets, so we can all get right to the comment-goodness.

A Long Time Ago, In a Town Not So Far Away, I bought a really old Sci-Fi book at a place called The Bookmark. It was like a lot of buys that happen at places like this: It was a little treasure, a little gateway back to my youth, a book I read in my teens, a little reminder of the naive me-of-olde, and it was only $1.50.

It was a quasi non-fictional thesis called "A Step Farther Out" by Jerry Pournelle, an old 1970's era Sci-Fi writer who, when paired with Larry Niven, put out some good stuff. It was a survey of pop-tech and other sci-fi grandiose schemes that Pournelle thought would solve our problems.

Anyway, I guess what was sort of funny about re-discovering this book (it's been boxed up for 6-7 years now), is that Pournelle is addressing his audience as if there is this chronic & terminal disasterous condition with the World. It was written just after the Oil Shock, so I guess that's understandable.

But he writes also with the implied assumption that the Earth is going to become imminently unlivable due to pollution. He posits that population growth is completely out of control, and it'll lead to Standing Room Only within decades. He talks as if food-shortages in Africa are all but inevitable for the rest of the World.

He takes this stance that he is rebuffing The Pessimism Of The World. He's taking a stand, fighting back, and he's going to put out some Damn Pragmatic Solutions. Things such as mining asteroids, converting the Worlds oceans into farms, and quite a bit of other flying-car-in-every-garage-nuclear-power-plant-in-every-house stuff that never happened.

I guess what was really strange about this was the dissonance with what actually happened after Pournelle wrote this.

The malaise ended.

There was a huge explosion in growth, but it was not at all like Pournelle envisioned it. All the pessimism just sort of melted away.

But what's also funny is that some of the problems that he outlined as intracable, never went away. The Earths population has kept growing. Africa is still starving to death. We pollute more than we ever have.

The Oil Shock ended, but other problems of equal or greater importance remained. They're still here today.

But what fundamentally changed was The Attitude about our problems. They just changed. The pessimism just sort of went away. I guess other Feel Good topics like Growth just usurped the importance of Live Aid, and other stuff like that.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say about this, other than this planet has seen times when it looked like The End of Days before. It was just so long ago, no one except real Geezers remember it.

And I'm Not saying The Bad Times Manifested Themselves In 2 Years Just Like Now, So We Can Rest Easy because It's All Over. No. The malaise of the 1970's took a decade plus to work itself out. It took a long time. We're in the 2nd or 3rd inning.

I don't know, I guess it was sort of comforting to know that what is happening today is not totally unprecedented. We've been down before. We've been almost pathologically pessimistic about it, too.

But, it did end. After a long time, it did end.

Next --

We found out what we pretty much knew all along: Patty Moss & Co are frauds.

Cascade Bancorp posts wider adjusted fiscal 2008 loss

Friday, Cascade Bancorp Inc. (CACB), the holding company for Bank of the Cascades, said it made adjustments to its preliminary financial results to include goodwill and asset impairment charges, additional provision for loan losses, resulting in a wider net loss for the year.

Including the non-cash goodwill charge and other adjustments, net loss for fiscal 2008 was $134.6 million or $4.82 per share, compared to a net loss of $21.2 million or $0.76 per share reported in the preliminary unaudited earnings release dated January 29, 2009.


Right. All of a sudden, not in normal earnings season, MossCo woke up & found out that their Idaho acquisition of Farmers & Merchants bank was a 100% LOSER. They wrote off 100% of the F&M goodwill.

This is becoming Standard Op Procedure for MossCo. Last quarter it was "Hey, wow, whoa! You know we just found out due to SOFTWARE ERROR, we actually LOST A SHITLOAD MORE MONEY than we originally told you. Sorry."

Now it's a HUGE LOSS, that will result in the near-nuking of CACB's net worth:

Cascade Bancorp (Oregon) Announces Filing of Form 10-K Annual Report and Audited Financial Statements; Adjusts Preliminary 2008 Results Due to Goodwill Impairment and Additional Provision for Loan Loss


2008 return on book equity and tangible equity decreased to (47.90%) and (80.51%) respectively, from the previously reported (7.02%) and (11.79%). At December 31, 2008, the Company's reserve for credit losses was $48.2 million or 2.46% of total loans and NPA's are reduced by $22.9 million to $159.4 million or 7.0% of total assets.

SO they went from a small ding to earnings to a near WIPE OUT of tangible equity. When you lose 80.51% OF TANGIBLE EQUITY, YOU ARE FUCKED. One good point to this is the tax benefits, but you have to BE ALIVE to recognize such benefits, and CACB's stock price telegraphs a different story.

So you'd think the CEO would have a pretty sobering & concrete response? Hell No! This is Bend!

Patricia L. Moss, CEO said, "We are in serious times and actions will influence outcomes. The challenges we face reflect the stress the economic downturn has caused to our customers, businesses, friends and neighbors, and community at large. We are resolved to play our part in helping the community address the challenges we share, and to progress toward an improving economic future together." Moss continued, "Local deposits from our communities are essential to the economic health in the markets we share.

We are encouraging the community to keep their money local to the benefit of our shared economy. Community banks effectively redeploy their deposits back into our communities." To this end, Cascade has provided additional assurance to customers by participating in the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program which provides unlimited FDIC insurance for all transaction account deposits through 12/31/09.


Commenting on loan quality, Moss said, "We continue to fund our reserve for loan losses to ensure we have provided resources under the current adverse economic conditions. In addition, we have written down a substantial portion of the residential development loan portfolio that has proven to be most negatively affected by the downturn.

Residential development now represents just 10% of our credit portfolio while the majority of the Company's loans continue to perform well. I am gratified that we have taken these actions on the credit side and exceed benchmarks for a well-capitalized bank."


OK, there are several statements of concern, but this is the most startling:

"We are in serious times and actions will influence outcomes."

What the fuck! This is where you know you are dealing with a truly deranged lunatic. Moss has just LOST 80% of the net worth of the biggest bank in Central Oregon, and all she has is some sort of whacky identity logic?

"We're in the shit, and if A= B, and B = C, then A = C. Thank You."

My God, what a fucking idiot. Everytime Moss opens her mouth, I realize that the banking system of Central Oregon as we know it, is 100% DOOMED. This vacuous dumbshit is at the helm of a sinking ship. Know that CACB at $1.22, is INFINITELY OVERVALUED. It is worth NOTHING.

I formally retract all my previous statements that it is "almost worthless". It is 100% WORTHLESS.

Next --

There's some scapegoating going on with some pretty unlikely characters lately.

Someone posted the Jon Stewart crucifixion of James Cramer in the comments. I saw it, and it was pretty good. Jon Stewart is a relatively clear thinking guy, and he tears Cramer a new corn chute. He backs Cramer down pretty well, something Cramer richly deserves.

Then Dunc posted the tut-tut-tut titled Jesse, Jesse, Jesse..., about Jesse Felders point of view on his blog, My Back Pages:

You've been talking this way for months now, and the market continued to decline that whole time. (Don't forget to leave out that little fact.) You started talking about 'bottoms' and then it would drop some more, and then you'd talk about 'bottoms' again, and it would drop some more.

Now you've even gone so far as to post an article in the Bulletin.
Are you so sure it won't drop some more? Especially housing prices? Look at the Bend Economy Bulletin Board, and you'll see prices are still 99.9% down arrows.

Is it really your advice to ignore that and buy now? Really?


Jesse's been calling a bottom since I've started wiping my own bottom: About 6 months ago. And let's face it, he's been dead wrong.

And finally, the vultures have descended on Buffett himself, with articles like "Warren Buffett has lost his touch", "Is Warren Buffett Crazy?", "Bill Gates' foundation dumps shares in Warren Buffett's Berkshire", and it goes on and on.

And to add insult to injury, Buffett's Bershire (along with GE), has lost it's Golden Boy AAA status. There were only a handful of companies on Earth that had been bestowed that honor, and Buffett used it every chance he got to peddle more insurance.

So we're all supposed to jump on the Cramer-Madoff-Felder-Buffett scapegoat bashing bandwagon?

No. Well, Madoff, Yes. But Cramer is a dumbfucking stock tout, he doesn't know what else to do. The fact that the dumbshit fucks chickens on his show to get ratings is more a reflection of American tastes than anything.

He's an entertainer more than anything. If you don't get that, and you actually take his advice, You Are A Dumbass.

Felder. Again, here's a guy just posting his opinion. And for the time being, he's wrong. Fuck, I threw my retirement in 100% a few months ago. 100% WRONG. So far. Sure as hell did not and will not buy at the bottom.

So Felders wrong too. Big fucking whoop. Again, if you take someone's advice to heart, it's not their fault, it's yours. Man the Fuck UP, and admit that you are responsible for your life.

I lost my retirement money, not Felder. Conversely, when (if) things turn around, I will not be sending Felder a commission.

This same thing goes for Buffett. He touted GE right before it took a huge dump, he even bought a shitload of it. So Buffett ate his own cooking, and he's now paying. Big F-ing Deal.

Everyone Loses In A Black Swan.

But we're starting to go after people indiscriminately.

OK, Madoff deserves to die. I mean he just deserves to be stoned to death, nude, over the course of weeks. With his dick in a meat grinder. And maggots eating out his eyes.

But Buffett, Felder, and Cramer are just fallible. Shit, that goes for all of us. These guys are just wrong, that's all. Is Felder digging his own grave deeper by the day? Hell yes. Nobody's perfect. Remember the Opening Of The Second Comic Book Store On 3rd? Hey, but for the grace of God....

That's the one thing ALL THESE PEOPLE have in common: NONE saw THIS coming. Look at Cramer's video: He calls this episode "one in a million". It's not that, but it's still pretty damn rare.

And by "THIS", I mean the utter meltdown of the World's financial system. Which brings us to...

Next --

I saw on NBC's nightly news that the total Worldwide toll of the financial meltdown has been approximated at $50 TRILLION.

$50,000,000,000,000 is a lot of money. That's like $8,000 for every single person on this planet.

I know, you're thinking, "I got way more than that!". OK, good. But the vast majority of the planets population doesn't even have a fraction of that. If you started at the bottom, and just systematically wiped out the net worth of the Earth's poorest, moving towards the wealthiest, with a $50 trillion dollar vacuum, you would probably wipe out well over 95% of all individual net worth on this planet.

95% of the World would be flat-ass broke. Probably more like 98-99%. 95% is extremely conservative. Extremely.

Just an illustration of The True Total Cost of What The USA Housing Bubble Really Is. It's set us back 2-3 decades. It's set others back 2,000 years.

ECONOMIC REPORT
Household net worth plunges 18% in 2008

Consumers pay down debt for first time on record in fourth quarter
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last update: 2:35 p.m. EDT March 12, 2009

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Hit by a double whammy of declining home prices and a falling stock market, U.S. households saw their net worth fall by $11.2 trillion, or 18%, to $51.5 trillion at the end of 2008, wiping out four years of gains, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.

In the fourth quarter alone, household net worth fell by $5.1 trillion, a record 31% annualized decline. Consumers lost $937 billion on the value of their real estate. Their direct holdings of corporate equity dropped by $1.68 trillion, while holdings in pension and life insurance reserve dropped by $1.46 trillion. Mutual-fund holdings fell by $730 billion.

Net worth has fallen for six straight quarters since peaking at $64.4 trillion in the second quarter of 2007. Net worth -- defined as assets minus liabilities -- is down 20% from the peak.
The decline in wealth was accompanied by a sharp pullback in consumer spending at the end of the year.

According to Commerce Department data, real consumer spending fell at a 4.1% annual rate in the final six months of 2008, the sharpest decline since 1980.

Economists figure consumers will spend about 5 cents out of each additional dollar of wealth, or cut spending by about 5 cents for every dollar lost.
"Consumers have turned a lot more cautious and are saving more," said Richard Berner, chief economist for Morgan Stanley.

In the longer term, Berner sees a "sea change in consumer behavior" that will bring the personal savings rate to 7% or 8% within the next few years as consumers begin to understand that quick and easy increases in wealth aren't likely.
"Households are being forced to rely less on rising asset prices and more on their paycheck to fund everyday living expenses," wrote Drew Matus, an economist for Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. "In other words, frugality is coming back into fashion."

The decline in net worth raises the risks of deflation, Matus said. He said money supply growth turned negative in the fourth quarter, based on more complete information about the shadow banking system.


Lost decade

At the end of the year, households owned $9.9 trillion in equity shares outside of pension plans, less than the $11.3 trillion they owned in 1998. At the end of 2008, assets fell by $11.3 trillion to $65.7 trillion. Liabilities fell $87 billion to $14.2 trillion. Home owners' equity in their houses fell to a record low 43%.

"It's an old lesson: Asset values can fall quickly, but debt lingers!" wrote Bill McBride on his blog, Calculated Risk.


At the same time their assets were falling, households were taking on less debt, deleveraging their balance sheets after five years of double-digit growth in debt.


In the fourth quarter, households paid off more debt than they took on for the first time since at least 1952, when the Fed began reporting the information in its quarterly Flow of Funds report.

Household debts fell at a 2% annual rate in the quarter, including a 1.6% decline in mortgage debt and a 3.2% decline in consumer credit, including credit cards and auto loans.
For all of 2008, household debt rose just 0.4%.

Since the early 1950s, debt had never risen less than 5% in a year.


Businesses also took on less debt.

Total debt grew 4.8% in the corporate sector after a 13.4% gain in 2007.

In the fourth quarter, corporate debt increased at a 2.2% annualized rate, the slowest since early 2004.
The federal government made up for the deleveraging by families and businesses, however.

Federal debt increased 24% in 2008 and rose at 37% annual rate in the fourth quarter.
Total nonfinancial debt -- individuals, businesses and government -- rose 5.8% in 2008 and increased at a 6.3% pace in the fourth quarter. It was the slowest annual increase in debt since 2000.

I know hbm likes to think of the poor in America as being crushed by unfeeling corporate behemoth monsters. And that's fine. But in the grand scheme of things, WE are the richest 1%. America is ridiculously wealthy by global standards.

If you actually suctioned up the $50 trillion in losses, the losses suffered by this country as a whole have been miniscule. Worldwide wealth decimation by the poor has been catastrophic. And I mean people with only a few hundred bucks to their name after a lifetime of toil.

The poorest American's are 1,000X better off than them. At least we have something to lose.

Next --

Just a little note about the min wage dogshit jobs that iSky is bringing BACK to Central Oregon.

I mean, I don't want to look a gifthorse, and apparently neither do a lot of other hungry folks, from the 200 applicants TRG got on Day 1.

But let's face it: NO ONE CAN SURVIVE ON THESE SHIT WAGE JOBS. NOT HERE.

Central Oregon always has been and always will be about the EXPLOITATION of locals. You are dogshit to the machine. You're the fucking pigs anus, cat entrails, hobo arm, and leather boot that goes into Central Oregon's LOW WAGE SAUSAGE FACTORY.

This place takes YOUR LIFE & turns it into SAUSAGE. You are dog shit. If you went to iSky, you are on the road to DOG SHIT.

Please, even a single person tell me otherwise. PLEASE! iSky doesn't have a single Family Wage job available. Nada. They have SAUSAGE JOBS. They turn lives into DEAD DICKS.

That is REAL BEND. I don't really want to pick on iSky, when this same fundamental truth applies to about 107% of Central Oregon Employers. They are a meat grinder, and you are a horses asshole.

It's a commentary on the nature of this place. It's where we are going. The Bend of Olde. If you don't like the sound of working for peanuts, losing your house, and living on China Hat Road turning tricks with donkey's, then you need to get the fuck out.

Finally --

In what may have been the event that Turned Things Around, we all found out that Bristol Palin broke up with her longtime boyfriend, and father of her illegitimate child.

This could not be better news for borderline-perverts like me (borderline?) who love Gigantosaurous Boobs. I mean, Mom was doing pretty damn good in the jugular department, but daughter looks like Bend's balloon guy stuffed something under her dress.

Those are the biggest gat-damned teeny-bopper, single mom, mega-jugs I've ever seen. I'm drawn to that shit like hillbillies are drawn to all-you-can-eat buffet's, tractor pulls, fucking yer sister and alcoholism.

So in tribute to all the Mother-Daughter mega-hottie gang-bang 2 on 1 clusterfucks that I hope to have in Heaven, I present Bristol's now-single huge mega titties, swelled by many months of suckling for your viewing pleasure.

Bristol Palin's titties being crushed into all sort of unnatural shapes due to Milk Bustout.
"My hobbies include Mother-Daughter gang-bangs, 2 on 1's, and fucking liberals and eating them."
Hey hbm, when are we gonna fuck? I'm hungry!

208 comments:

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IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Keeping the business going

After Steve Dorn took his own life, his family came to Redmond to ensure their late brother’s RV and boat business would stay afloat.

That’s the day Steve Dorn, a Redmond businessman for 25 years, took his own life, the result of a decades-long bout with clinical depression.
...
Those financial problems contributed to a “perfect storm” of factors in the fall, at the same time Steve Dorn was changing his medication, Mike Dorn said.
...
“He was looking at (his financial troubles) from the eyes of someone who suffered bipolar depression,” he said. “Sometimes, we lose site of the really important things in life — and it isn’t cash and money.”
...
Although he continued paying all of his bills, he foresaw trouble on the horizon, Mike Dorn said. But Steve Dorn’s financial troubles did not cause his death — he died of clinical depression, Mike Dorn said.


Huh? This piece is essentially some sort of weird attempt to convince the World that STEVE DORN DIED OF DEPRESSION AND NOTHING ELSE.

Which of course tells me he died of SOMETHING ELSE. I understand that the depression he had probably contributed to it, but the fact that The Bully is even running something like this immediately raises suspicion that there are OTHER FACTORS.

His business DYING is the easy one. But is there something else? BANK ORDERED MOB HIT? Why this:

“After Steve died, his family came over and stormed the town,” he said. “We spread out and got in front of every business or lender that might have been affected by all this before they got in front of us.”

Mike Dorn and his sister, Sue Ford, 58, spoke with hundreds of people, including bankers, suppliers, credit card companies and insurance companies, Mike Dorn said. They persuaded the banks to accept interest-only payments on real estate and financing loans until the business could be stabilized.


OK, their brother JUST DIED, and they STORMED THE TOWN to talk to creditors? What does that "before they got in front of us" shit mean? Before YOU got your ass MOWED DOWN?

Something is wrong here. The fact that The Bully printed this is very suspicious, and the way it's being reported just fuels the fire.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Picking up the pieces has not been easy for the Dorn family, least of all Steve Dorn’s 17-year-old daughter, Katie Dorn, and 24-year-old son, Jacob Dorn, Mike Dorn said. Steve Dorn was divorced, and he raised the children and had sole custody of Katie at the time of his death.

“The family has rallied together to protect our niece and nephew’s interest at a moment’s notice,” Mike Dorn said. “There was never a doubt in anybody’s mind that this is what we would do.”


Again, this is just a strange thing to say. Protecting the nieces "INTEREST"? WTF?

If my brother died, would I want to CARE for my niece? Yes. That's how I'd put it.

"CARE FOR HER INTERESTS"?

That's just some real weird CORPORATE SPEAK. Or MOB SPEAK.

This family is dysfunctional. They have said & done some pretty odd shit.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This family is dysfunctional.

OK, maybe that's too strong. Fuck, my family is dysfunctional.

But there is something very strange about this story. It's strange that it's even being published.

Who the fuck GOES PUBLIC with this sort of thing?

"Hey McDonald, come on over, we need to do a PR piece on how Steve hanging himself was DEPRESSION AND NOTHING ELSE. Plus we need to telegraph to LENDERS & THE MOB that we're kicking A & taking names, so we don't get shot.

Plus we need to have a tearsheet that legitimizes us STEALING everything Dorn left to his kids, which ain't much.

Can you come on down, and print by Sunday? We're on a deadline here."

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

When the Bully tries TOO HARD to convince us of something, you KNOW the exact OPPOSITE is probably the case:

"Steve Dorn’s financial troubles did not cause his death — he died of clinical depression..."

This tells me his FINANCIAL TROUBLES WERE THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF HIS DEATH.

I mean, but even so, BFD. Why is such a concerted effort being made to convince us of something else? So HOW did DORN REALLY DIE? WHY are Dorn's siblings TRYING SO HARD to convince us of an obvious LIE?

Something is awful fishy here. Now I REALLY wonder exactly HOW DORN DIED.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The Dorns are not ready to say whether they will sell the business, shut it down or keep it alive, Mike Dorn said, adding that anything is possible.

“Dad used to beat this into our heads,” he said. “The word ‘can’t’ died in the poorhouse.”

Steve Dorn’s siblings credit their father for raising them with a “no excuses” upbringing.


Geez, this is pathological. They're running a DOA business, but because of Daddy, these poor fuckers will DIE ON THE SLOPES OF EVEREST.

NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE REALITY! NEVER SAY DIE! KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU ARE PENNILESS, AND HAVE SQUANDERED YOUR HOUSE, SAVINGS, AND YOUR KIDS COLLEGE MONEY!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Man, when someone offs themselves, it's because they see it being BETTER for everyone involved.

Like when a MOBSTER says, "Bitch, you either pay now, or I start shooting, starting with daughter, then son, then brother, the sister. Then YOU. GOT IT?"

This CLINICAL DEPRESSION shit is a cover. DORN was coerced into killing himself, or was flat out killed by someone. This shit don't add up.

Anonymous said...

I thought the same thing as I read the article. Only in Bend will they print something as bizzare is that. WTF man...that is weird!

Anonymous said...

Let's see in the last week,

Fleetwood ... BK

Monaco ... BK

At the very best DORN was a harbinger of RV going BK worldwide, ... Now they want the BULL to lobby CACB to bring it all back.

Best time in 20 years to buy an RV.

But look at Redmond/BEND, the entire ECONOMY is/was nomadic OLD retired RV'ers, and now WHAT?

DORN was depressed, cuz after 20+ year the RV mania ended!!! WTF please where is dunc, he could have told DORN that trading-cards, and all manias eventually end.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Only in Bend will they print something as bizzare is that. WTF man...that is weird!

I know! At first they won't even acknowledge this guy killed himself, now it's front page news.

And HIGHLY SUSPECT front page news.

Anonymous said...

The Dorns are not ready to say whether they will sell the business, shut it down or keep it alive, Mike Dorn said, adding that anything is possible.

*

There is a FUCKING REASON that monaco & fleetwood here in ORYGUN just went BK.

If they could have found a BUYER, there would still be JOBS in ORYGUN.

WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO SELL THIS TO SURVIVING DORN's?? Maybe the CityOfBend will BUY this ICON??

DORN HUNG himself for the obvious reason, he saw the BK of the RV industry, which was feeding all his fucking REDMOND commercial investments, with the end of the cash flow it was over.

Me personal opinion is that the surviving relatives think they got something other than debt, this is standard OP when you have a hard-working entrepreneur, and he OFF's himself, and then the bottom-feeding family comes in looking for hidden gold.

Guess fucking what?? DORN spent all the GOLD trying to keep his empire intact. If he had seen a 'ray of hope', he wouldn't have offed himself.

DORN was one of the BIGGEST BULL advertisers for YEARS, they owe the family to BEG the good people of BEND/REDMOND to make the DORN FAMILY 'GOOD', just like HBM's 'MADE-OFF' investors want to be made 'GOOD'.

The trouble is where the fuck is the money going to come from to make the DORN-FAMILY GOOD, .e.g. to bring back an RV empire from the dead, this has nothing to do with a man committed suicide, it has everything to do with BEND-DENIAL.

The idea that you can bring SHIT BACK from death. Bend RE is dead, but COVA,CORA,COBA try to bring back the dead.

The BULL is DEAD, but it trys to PIMP for others.

I'm telling you folks, we're going to see devil-worshipping all over Bend very soon, to bring back all our dead company's.

JEEBUS just wouldn't have allowed this, oh GOD why have you forsaken our BEND???? WHY LORD??

Anonymous said...

NOPE HOMER your wrong, time will tell, but I'm telling you that BUFFET is a made-off, and has always been a made-off.

Just like a year ago, had you told anybody that made-off was anything but gold they would have kicked you in the groin.

People believed in made-off, cuz he told them what they wanted to hear for 40+ years, and buffet has done the same fucking thing, to the same kind of people.

Anonymous said...

I really think the DORN story is just another "GO SHOPPING post 911" BUSH story, ...

Hell folks, lets remember, that the DORN's just might advertise in the BULL!!!

What the fuck can the BULL lose?

This is page-one editorial advertising.

What did I learn?

1.) You can take your boat to DORN and get CASH today.

2.) There's a DEAL being made every day.

This is the kind of promotion that money can't buy.

I think a lot of people will go down and help the DORN's pull through this, which is good for the BULL.

Why is this strange?? Costa MUST survive, and DORN was one of his biggest advertisers.

Anonymous said...

I think we have now reached the level of pain, that people don't even want to talk about it anymore.

Homer, I notice you missed one of the big fucks of Bend this week, that MT-B is refusing to honor any ski-tickets sold by GI-JOES.

OUCH!!

I mean you just can't even visit Bend, and not get fucked in the ass, by this town.

Anonymous said...

Yesterdays WSJ ( sat mar15 ) had an interesting story in the editorial section, by the Journals #1 right-wing HO, ...

She's basically calling this the end of the world, and that people need to start growing their own food.

No wonder OREO went OPTIMIST this week, as WSJ has gone full on pessimist.

Bewert said...

What says a lot to me, especially after the announcement that an $230K earmark is going to fund a "Venture Catalyst" at EDCOM last week, is that our own highly lauded venture conference can't find a local company to fund:

‘Level has risen’ as top prize handed out at conference
Portland digital video company wins $150,000 at Bend Venture Conference
By David Fisher / The Bulletin
Published: October 20. 2007 4:00AM PST

Elemental Technologies Inc., a Portland company that says it can vastly speed digital video production using standard personal computers, is this year’s winner of the Bend Venture Conference’s $150,000 investment prize.

Subject, of course, to further negotiation and due diligence.

Elemental Technologies beat out four finalists for the conference’s main prize, nudging out close finisher RocketBux, a Bend-based company that has designed a new technology for beaming promotional coupons directly to consumer cell phones, said Bruce Juhola, one of the conference’s organizers.

Juhola is the managing partner of this year’s group of 29 investors, who deliberated for an hour after the daylong conference to pick a winner.

The fourth annual conference brought all five finalists to the stage of the Tower Theatre to briefly pitch their early-stage companies to a panel of six professional venture capitalists, who picked apart their business plans, their market niches, their product choices and their marketing strategies.

About 400 people — mostly a mix of entrepreneurs and investors — showed up to watch, and to catch keynote speaker, author and venture capital investor Guy Kawasaki’s take on the art of the startup.

Originally created to put an added spark into the region’s entrepreneurial mix, the conference has come to be seen as one of the top venture capital conferences in the Pacific Northwest, Juhola said.

“Any one of the five (finalists) could have won in any prior year,” Juhola said. “We think the level has risen.”

The event drew an eclectic mix of business hopefuls.

Elemental Technologies CEO Sam Blackman said he and his founding partners, all engineers from Pixelworks, a supplier of image-processing semiconductors, banded together to create new software that could effectively alleviate the need for expensive video editing equipment. How? By better using the power of a common PC’s graphic processing unit, or GPU — a powerful component that is rarely fully utilized.

The company wants to target the professional video processing market, Blackman said, then possibly the consumer market, hoping to sell out at some point to a larger firm.

Elemental Technologies won over the investor pool because most agreed that — assuming that due diligence proves all the company’s claims to be true — its technology is better than its competitors by a sufficient margin to bring it swift gains in a big market, Juhola said. The group also was impressed that the company’s founders all worked previously as a team at Pixelworks, and that Pixelworks invested in them, Juhola said.

RocketBux, a fast-growing [Bend] company that has already made sales to Safeway, McDonald’s and Dutch Bros. Coffee, uses a variety of methods to beam promotional coupons to cell phones, said Fred Boos, president and chief innovator.

Cell phone users can send a text message to an address on a TV ad to get coupons in the form of bar codes sent to their phones — something that tells an advertiser how many customers are responding and also who is redeeming the coupons, Boos said. It can also be used to drive everything from in-store coupon deliveries at a grocery store to running instant polls for a TV news station.

Other finalists included Zebra Mix Inc., a Seattle company that has come up with do-it-yourself organic food-making kits for children; Floragenex, a Eugene company that says it has developed a gene marking and sorting system that can tell plant breeders whether their cross-breeding programs are going to work before the plants mature, speeding the process of research into new and improved fruits, nuts and vegetables; and the wild-card winner, Pacific Medical Technologies, a maker of destruction kits for used medical needles that beat out six other companies in an audience vote to become the fifth main contender after a rapid-fire series of one-minute presentations.

The competition sounds a bit like a reality game show, but winning it can give a significant boost to a small company.

Dr. Ed Boyle, the president of last year’s conference winner, PleuraFlow Catheter Solutions, said the follow-up due diligence and negotiation process that followed the 2006 conference helped his company to identify its weaknesses, bring on key business advice and get a prototype ready for testing. PleuraFlow makes a self-clearing tube that could allow surgeons to install much smaller, and less painful, drainage tubes in patients following heart or lung surgery.

Gregg Patterson, CEO and chairman of the board of PV Powered, a solar power equipment maker that won the audience vote for the best company at the 2004 venture conference, said his company also has strengthened its focus and grown since that conference win. A different format was in effect at the time and no money came with the deal.

Environmental Technologies’ Blackman said his company will add the $150,000 to its current $500,000 investment pool. He’s also hoping to gain marketing advice from some of the members of the Bend investment group, he said.

Nori Juba, one of the members of the Bend investment group, said he wouldn’t be surprised if some of the investors in the pool put money into RocketBux on their own, as well.

“Even if you don’t win, you get a lot of good exposure,” Juba said.

###

Local guys sending investment money out of Bend. Yep, they are really helping the local economy.

And the winner is creating some new application that does the exact same fucking thing, edit video, that has been done on PCs for years? And is going to sell into the commercial market?

Couple more notes: 1) the Venture Catalyst thing run by EDCO has been done before, and I for one haven't seen much after that initial BULL PR story; and 2) the vaunted venture investment isn't an equity investment, it's a loan, which you didn't figure out until you read the fine print and 3) I was going to show you all the fine print, but bendvc.com goes somewhere else now...

Bewert said...

2008 Bend Venture Conference story from BULL

Where innovation finds investment
By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: October 12. 2008 4:00AM PST

Executives from five startup companies will walk on stage at the Tower Theatre on Friday and try to convince an audience of venture capitalists that their company’s business plan is worth at least a $100,000 investment from the Bend Venture Conference.

The money can fuel a founder’s dream, even more so in the current economic climate that makes it difficult for any business to find financing and for those with only a promising idea, BVC co-founder Karen Fast said.

“This is not an award … to go get a logo designed; we want to materially contribute to help the company make it to next level,” Fast said.

Now in its fifth year, the Bend Venture Conference is a gathering of entrepreneurs and investors each looking to tap into the other, with the added goal of promoting Central Oregon as a great place to do business, Fast said.

Investors buy into the BVC’s Investment Fund in $5,000 increments, each one worth one vote, said Bruce Jahola, a BVC board member who oversees the fund. After hearing all of the five finalists’ pitches Friday, the fund’s investors leave the theater and discuss which company is most worth the investment. After roughly half an hour, the investors vote and determine the winner.

In 2006, the first year the BVC created the fund, the winner was Dr. Ed Boyle, of Bend, who had helped develop a medical device that would aid in the recovery of heart surgery patients.

“At the time, someone said I walked in with an idea and walked out with a company,” said Boyle.

Boyle’s company, Clear Catheter Systems, formerly known as PleuraFlow, won an additional $600,000 in financing over the summer to fund human trials it plans to begin next spring. Boyle said BVC’s initial investment got the ball rolling.

“It allowed us to move forward from the idea stage to an initial prototype; it also allowed us to crystallize our team and because we needed to license a patent … it gave us the initial funding to make all that possible,” Boyle said.

In five years, BVC has become one of the top venture capital conferences in the Northwest, said Erik Benson, a Seattle-based managing director with the venture capital firm Voyager Capital. Benson attended last year’s conference, and several months later, his firm ended up leading a financing round of $7 million for the 2007 winner, Elemental Technologies Inc. of Portland, a firm that uses graphics chips to create better video-processing equipment.

“I think (BVC) tends to get good companies — they get Silicon Valley guys and Seattle guys — and the quality of the entrepreneurs, attendees and the location all add up to a special event,” Benson said.

Benson will speak at this year’s conference as part of a panel discussion on the relationships between angel investors, who tend to give smaller amounts at a company’s outset, and institutional investors, who invest larger amounts as the company grows.

The BVC is considered an angel investment round, Benson said.

Origins

The BVC was founded in 2004 by Fast and Dan Hobin, now the CEO of Bend-based G5 Search Marketing Inc. According to Fast, the two serial entrepreneurs met at the Starbucks on Wall Street and decided Central Oregon needed a venture capital conference, similar to ones common in metropolitan areas around the country.

Both were familiar with the Portland-based Oregon Entrepreneurs Network annual Angel Oregon investment conference, but they lamented that the companies selected for the conferences were predominantly from Portland or the Willamette Valley. The two also believed Central Oregon was home to a number of innovative companies that might benefit from the “quiet money” accumulating in the area as retirees or telecommuters moved in from Portland, the Bay Area and elsewhere.

“We thought those people would be curious about what’s going on in Central Oregon, and still be in the (investment) game, and it’s easier to be in the game when it’s in your backyard … so we decided, ‘What the heck, let’s try it and see where it takes us,’ ” Fast said.

The first two years, the BVC invited investors to hear about investment opportunities with Central Oregon companies, each of whom took turns pitching their business plans to the gathered investors. The investors then voted on the best opportunity, but it was left to the individual investors whether they wanted to fund the companies in exchange for equity positions.

The third year, the BVC decided to create its investment fund, to add more sizzle to the event, Fast said. The pooled money also enabled the BVC to attract more attention, both from investors and startups. And that helped open up the competition to companies from outside the High Desert, such as the 2007 BVC winner, Elemental Technologies.

Fast said the BVC is still focused on raising Central Oregon’s economic profile and helps do that by inviting outside companies to the conference, who in turn might realize Bend is a great place to do business, Fast said. The other important aspect is finding quality investment opportunities.

“The fundamental premise of stimulating economic development in Central Oregon is still there, and that now comes through several different dimensions, but it’s also realized around the fact that the conference wants to provide the best investment opportunities we can find to investors in the investment fund as well as those in the audience interested in angel investing,” Fast said.

Investors

Investors in the fund are free to arrange their own funding deals with any presenting company, not just the winner. The fund generally has 18 to 20 investors and has so far yielded a high rate of return, Fast said. The 2007 award was roughly $150,000.

Jahola said this year’s award is less than that, which he blames on the state of the economy, but could rise because investors can buy into the fund up until the event begins.

The fund’s amount may be down, but Jahola believes the fund has been critical in boosting the conference’s notoriety throughout the region, even drawing investors now from venture capital hotbeds like the Bay Area.

“This year, we’re seeing a wealth of talent, more so than in other years,” Jahola said. “Most of the 10 wild-card companies would have been selected as presenters in previous years.”

In addition to four previously announced finalists, they will be joined by a fifth. Ten companies are selected by the conference to present as wild cards. Each has one minute to pitch their company to the fund investors, who then vote to elevate one to the finalist ranks. The wild card will then give a 10-minute pitch along with the other four finalists.

For the finalists, their 10-minute pitch is only the beginning. They are then subject to 20 minutes of questioning, first by a panel of professional venture capitalists who probe aspects of the presenting companies’ business plan and then by the investors in the audience. The panel then shares its critique of the company with the audience.

“It’s a critical part,” Jahola said of the investor panel. “The audience wants to hear what a professional investor thinks, how they view what they’ve heard, areas of concern, where they would dig deeper, things they like hearing, and they come up with great comments, and it helps put everything in perspective. It makes it so much richer for investors.”

In addition to investment opportunities, the conference also will hear from several notable guest speakers, including Forbes magazine Publisher Rich Karlgaard and Rodrigo Prudencio, a partner in Nth Power, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that specializes in energy technology and materials.

Karlgaard is the author of “Life 2.0,” a book examining the lives of professionals who quit the big city but bring their work with them or telecommute from smaller communities that have a more satisfying quality of life. Bend is listed in Karlgaard’s book as one of the nation’s “telecommunity heavens.”

###

Sidebar describing presenting companies:

Dune Sciences LLC
Location: Eugene
Founded: 2006
Web site: www.dunesciences.com
Presenter: John Miller, co-founder and CEO
Using technology licensed by the University of Oregon and other patented and patent-pending technologies, Dune Sciences manipulates materials on a molecular scale, which can then be put to use by manufacturers, co-founder John Miller said.
As an example, Miller said, his company can apply an antimicrobial coating to a material through molecular manipulation that would then be used to manufacture medical equipment.
The company’s technology also can be used to manipulate materials to produce different reactions in chemical procedures, he added.
“This is on the border of materials science, chemical engineering and chemistry,” Miller said. “It’s about creating molecular building blocks we can build value-added products with.”
Miller said the company plans to license its technology to other companies for use in their manufacturing processes and said the company’s business model is centered on establishing partnerships with manufacturers. But before it can get there, it needs money to shore up its intellectual property protections and expand its operational capabilities, Miller said.
“This money will help us secure more partnerships, and this is a good opportunity for us to introduce ourselves to the Central Oregon (venture capital) community,” Miller said. “We are just at the beginning of this process, and this will be good exposure.”

Golden Signals Inc.
Location: Beaverton
Founded: 2008
Web site: www.goldensignals.com
Presenter: Stuart Golden, president and CEO
In the vision of Stuart Golden, the president and CEO of Beaverton-based Golden Signals, the video projector that’s a mainstay of the corporate board- room will go the way of the dodo.
Golden’s company is developing technology that would allow computer users to wirelessly stream the contents of their laptop to a big-screen TV.
“We think it’s very cool,” Golden said.
The company, founded in February, uses wireless and networking technology to stream music, files and videos to network-enabled devices, including some of the newer television sets available on the market.
For consumers without network-enabled TVs, Golden said his company is developing an adapter it plans to bring to market that can be plugged into any High-Definition Multimedia Interface (commonly called HDMI)-enabled TV.
In the interim, its first product, to be launched later his year, will be software called DisplayShare. It will allow computer users to stream files from their laptop to their television via a PlayStation 3 game console.
The PS3 console is compatible with current wireless and network technology, enabling it to receive a wireless signal from a laptop, which it can then transmit to the TV through its standard cable connection, Golden said.
The technology is currently limited to Windows-based computers, but Golden would like to expand it to Apple computers as well as make a push into business applications and boardrooms.
“We want further development to increase those products, and to do more marketing,” said Golden.
Golden said he is excited to present his company at this year’s conference and that it will likely be the biggest audience to which he has delivered a pitch. He said he plans to demonstrate the technology at the conference.

Eco-Winter Systems LLC
Location: Bend
Founded: 2008
Web site: None
Presenter: Tom Barquinero, co-founder
Eco-Winter Systems has developed patented technology to winterize vacation and second homes by filling the home’s water pipes with a nontoxic antifreeze that would allow the homeowner to shut off the furnace while away, thereby saving hundreds of dollars in heating costs, according to co-founders David Swan and Tom Barquinero.
“It’s one of those palm- on-the-forehead ideas,” Barquinero joked.
As envisioned, a large pump and reservoir unit, roughly the size of a standard air-conditioning unit, would be installed in or near a home. Two related shutoff valves would be installed where the main waterline enters the home and at the water heater.
At the push of a button, the shutoff valves would close and the unit would begin pumping propylene glycol, a common food additive approved by the Food and Drug Administration with a freezing point of minus 60 degrees, into the home’s plumbing.
At the same time, the homeowner would open all the home’s faucets to allow the heavier-than-water antifreeze to push all of the home’s water from its pipes. When the pink solution begins pouring from the faucets, the homeowner would turn the faucets off.
“Then you turn off your furnace,” Swan said.
The whole process would take roughly five to 10 minutes, he added. When the homeowner was ready to use the house again, a vacuum system would suck up the antifreeze solution and store it for reuse.
Barquinero said Eco-Winter is developing a green building technology that if installed in the nation’s roughly 5 million vacation homes that are subject to winter weather, it could ultimately save millions of dollars in wasted energy costs and reduce the nation’s carbon footprint.
Barquinero said the company would like to work with government to create a tax credit for its product as well as with green building certification agencies that could help market the product.
Swan and his family have for 25 years marketed a similar system for use in RVs. He said he’d frequently hear RV owners wish for a similar product for their vacation homes, and last year, Swan formed Eco-Winter with Barquinero to pursue the idea full time. The company is currently building a prototype that will be installed in Swan’s home by November.
This will be Eco-Winter’s first pitch for venture capital, Barquinero said.

Jama Software
Location: Portland
Founded: 2006
Web site: www.jamasoftware.com
Presenter: Erik Winquist, founder and CEO
Jama Software has developed a software application that helps companies manage product development, said company founder and CEO Erik Winquist. Its target market is companies that develop technology-based consumer products that have multiple design needs and complex technical requirements, all of which are hard to fit on a spreadsheet or other planning document, Winquist said.e_SClB“Eighty percent of product-development teams now try to use spreadsheets and documents and e-mail to communicate all this information, and the (technical) issues in these products is getting so complex, so doing that in a single document is overwhelming,” Winquist said. “And the other issue is teams now are (geographically) distributed more than ever, so it’s hard to develop products with tools not designed for that.”
Winquist said the company’s software application, called Contour, can make product development teams more efficient, cut development cycles in half and get products to market quicker, thereby saving money at a critical time in the nation’s economy.
The company, which has eight employees, has been self-funded, but Winquist said he entered Jama in this year’s Bend Venture Conference to seek capital to grow his startup.
“We’re at a point where we got a pretty significant number of customers who have validated our product, and so we want to push forward now and grow,” Winquist said.

The wild cards
Each of the 10 wild-card companies will have one minute to deliver an investment pitch to the audience, who will then select by vote one company to join the four finalists.
Aquamodus of Bend: An indoor pool facility targeting the aqua therapy and aqua fitness markets.
DesignMedix Inc. of Portland: Developer of drugs that overcome drug resistance for malaria and other diseases.
eRep.com Inc. of Gresham: An online employment service that screens, ranks and matches candidates nationwide with employers across a broad spectrum of industries.
FootGaming.com of Bend: An online casual gaming community driven by a patented user interface, the FootPOWR pad.
GadgetTrak of Tualatin: Provider of theft recovery software solutions for mobile devices.
HydraCool Inc. of Eugene: Developer of a proprietary truck transport refrigeration system.
iComprehend Inc. of Vancouver, Wash.: Developer of image classification software.
Ninkasi Inc. of Vancouver, Wash.: Developer of an interactive kiosk containing proprietary software to promote wine purchases in grocery stores.
Quicksilver Interactive Media Inc. of Bend: Publisher of a suite of online travel guides for active vacations.
Take Shape Inc. of Springfield: Developer of a platform technology that provides rich information about the human body.

###

Jama Software pf Portland took $150K out of Bend in 2008.

This place is completely fucking dysfunctional sometimes.

Anonymous said...

Re: Dorn

###

The very public nature of his hanging is rather interesting.

Just saying.

Duncan McGeary said...

I think it's all promotion for promotion's sake. The money is in the promotion, in selling the miners shovels. Not in the actual results.

It's all B.S.

Green, networking, lead generation, ...none of it produces anything.

Floating on air.

(word verification: crokerry.)

Duncan McGeary said...

The 'promotional' mindset works best when the economy is going up. They can always claim credit.

The 'analytical' mindset looks on askance, unable to see real value, but watching them prosper nonetheless.

When the Economy goes down, the analytical mindset at least holds his own, while the 'promotional'
mindset begins to looks desperate.


Where's the real value? Is it worth the effort? Are they actually trying to sell you something, instead of help you?

All good questions to ask.

(word verification: jassess. I love sychronicity....)

Bewert said...

Lately Trudy has been making go get the Sunday Oregonian so she has a "real paper" to read (her term). So, in news not seen in the BULL, we learn of a 34.3% increase in Central Oregonians are on food stamps. It doesn't seem to be on the website yet, but a graphic shows C.O. leading the state in increases, and the article states that the state is "...sending workers from around the state to shore up the Bend office..."

###

Bend--we're always number one at something!

Bewert said...

From Wednesdays CC Packet

E. Authorize the City Manager to enter into a professional services agreement with CH2M Hill for Phase 2 of the new Construction Standards and Specifications in the amount of $387,041 (Issue Summary) (Report)

The City needs updated and modern standards and specifications. These documents are the foundation for all designing, contracting and construction of public infrastructure. Legal and contracting requirements that protect the City have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. In addition, construction methods and practices continue to improve. New standards and specifications are needed to better meet the needs of the community, properly protect the City, and provide clear and consistent requirements of the development community. The total budget impact to the Public Works Department for Phase 2 of the standards and specifications project is $387,041. This amount will be split equally four (4) ways and paid for out of the operational budgets in the Water, Water Reclamation, Stormwater and Street Operations Divisions. This is an unbudgeted expense, so each division will be reallocating money from other areas in their budget to cover this expense.

###

I can't even think of how to correctly express how dumb this is right now.

Duncan McGeary said...

Bewert,

It would be helpful to me if you explained the significance of this. You post thing ofttimes that I simply don't get the upshot...

humor me...

Anonymous said...

It would be helpful to me if you explained the significance of this. You post thing ofttimes that I simply don't get the upshot...


####


In Portland the water bill is $50 every quarter ( 3 months ) for average water use, in Bend the water bill is over $50/mo, for a tiny home that uses no water.

Portland has way more 'infrastructure' than Bend, so why are the people of Bend paying 3X more than PDX??

CH2M-HILL.

Dunc, asks why? The upshot is $387k is real money, and expect to see our water bill soon be $100/mo, and why not? It's Bend.

We're #1.

Note that the $387k is coming from the water bill, BP say's its off-budget, of course its off-budget, they'll just raise the monthly rates. They ain't got no competition, they got the home-owners by the balls.

Hey, its Bend.

Anonymous said...

Like the city says the construction-std's are over ten years old, but you would think the money would be coming from STD's (SDC's), or from the Building-Permit fee's, but naaaaaaah there is NO money there, so instead to have the construction-permit guidelines and standards re-written they raid the public-water service fee's, of course this is why OUR water bill is already 3X of the 'other' most expensive city in ORYGUN.

Anonymous said...

CH2M-HILL is one of the biggest private contractors in ORYGUN, and they're starving for business.

Follow the MONEY.

WHY now, the PUSSY is right, why didn't we re-write the building-code back when we were ROLLING IN CASH in 2005??

TYPICAL BEND, wait until we're BK,

The troubling thing here is that the water bill monthly, costs more than my internet cable? Go figure.

Anonymous said...

The UP-SHOT DUNC, is your 'water-bill' is going UP, UP, UP, ...

All in order to keep the people who work @CH2M-HILL 'employed'.

Just like MOSS-MDU, .e.g. JRMB just to keep knife-river employed, don't you KUNTS realize that citizens in BEND only exist to finance private companys???

Anonymous said...

Something is wrong here. The fact that The Bully printed this is very suspicious, and the way it's being reported just fuels the fire.

Homer, you paranoid asshole, people DO kill themselves every now and then. Especially if they're depressed to begin with and on top of that their business is going tits-up. No need to fantasize a "mob hit" every time some poor schmuck who's going broke kills himself.

Now if he'd tied his own hands and feet with electrical cord, shot himself twice in the head and thrown himself into the Crooked River gorge, THEN I'd say you might be on to something.

Bewert said...

Re: This amount will be split equally four (4) ways and paid for out of the operational budgets in the Water, Water Reclamation, Stormwater and Street Operations Divisions.

###

Dunc, right now we have less than a months reserve in these departments. It's almost $400K in real money, money that could patch potholes, suck up dust from the streets, etc. Or even just add to the reserves. It's unbudgeted, which means it is unplanned-for.

And of course the BULL didn't say a word about it in their article on the agenda.

I'll put a post up on it in the Gazette tomorrow morning. Maybe if the link gets forward to locals that care, enough people will show up at the Direct Line to the Council event Monday night to bitch about it that the council will vote it down.

Bewert said...

BTW--where is Chapter 4 already ;)

In integrating Twitter and stuff, you could link to a custom-made twitter home page, like the one you have, and have your readers read the tweets, then come back. Set the link up to open in a new window so you don't lose them.

Pay attention to your time stamps, too.

Bewert said...

Or you could add a twitter feed to your story, and tweet in real time, updating the story in little bits between the chapters.

It's quite entertaining. I find myself checking every day to see if a new chapter is up.

Duncan McGeary said...

I'm working on chapter 4,5,6 and will probably finish 6 first. So I'll post it out of order.

I'll adjust the time stamps at the end to make sense to run congruently with the storyline? Is that what you mean?

Really, even though I call it the Twitter murders, I'm more interesting in the killing off of Bend developers than I am in the technology.

Bewert said...

It's been a pleasure (Updated)

It's tough all over.

What attracted me to this site, which seems to be quieting down lately, is the rank discourse. Although often crude beyond belief, it was truth, and untruths received beatdowns. Harsh, kicked in the balls, beatdowns.

DailyKos, although gentrified now from what it once was, is still predicated on having a reality-based view.

So feel free to beat me down. I just had to share this story. It's bad in other places, too. Really bad.

Bewert said...

Dunc, I left you a couple messages on the book blog. I can help with tech, or someone will. There are a bunch of techies here.

Anonymous said...

So long, and thanks for all the fish

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Homer, you paranoid asshole, people DO kill themselves every now and then.

Dude, I know. I live in Bend.

But tell me you don't find ANYTHING strange about this story? Really?

Something about it feels ALL WRONG.

Anonymous said...

Some kind of record, 6pm on sunday, and almost 35 posts.

Fucking eh!! HBM show us some pic's your corn-hole!!!

Anonymous said...

$400k, is probably enough cash to keep the CH2M-HILL Bend office open through, 2009.

Don't laugh.

Why the FUCK do you think the KUNTS of BEND exist??

Could you imagine Bend with out MOss, or knife-river, or mdu, or jr, or cacb, or brooks-resource??

Could you imagine Bend without the BULL or SORE??

The BULL got $5M last year, what will the SORE get to stay in biz??

Anonymous said...

How much campaign contributors did CH2M-HILL give our city-hall?

Anonymous said...

Lately Trudy has been making go get the Sunday Oregonian so she has a "real paper" to read (her term).

You can get home delivery, you know.

I pick up the NY Times every day. THAT's a real paper. Oregon has no "real papers."

Anonymous said...

But tell me you don't find ANYTHING strange about this [Dorn] story? Really?

No, I don't. Really.

Guy has a history of depression. Guy's business is going down the crapper. Guy kills himself.

Happens every day, all over the world.

Unless, as I said, there's something that looks not quite kosher* about the circumstances of the death, I don't see anything strange at all.

(*Jewish word I threw in for Buster's entertainment)

Anonymous said...

"I know hbm likes to think of the poor in America as being crushed by unfeeling corporate behemoth monsters. And that's fine. But in the grand scheme of things, WE are the richest 1%. America is ridiculously wealthy by global standards."

In poor countries, as people get poorer, they get skinnier.

In America, as people get poorer, they tend to get fatter. Seen all the ultra-cheap calories for sale at WalMart? The stuff that will last for 2 years on the shelf, and still taste the same?

For that I have little sympathy.

Anonymous said...

"We'll FUCK YOU in Bend" - COVA 2009

"Where every tourist is raped with a condom, our pledge to you"

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Pacific Northwest should require resort developers to be responsible

Oregon and Washington have the two strongest growth management laws in the country. As far as of designating areas for urban growth and protecting working farms and forests goes, nothing compares.

Unfortunately, there's a loophole in both laws which allows the development of big resorts outside of designated urban areas.

In Oregon, they’re called “Designation Resorts” (ORS 197.435-467). In Washington, they’re called “Master Planned Resorts” (RCW 36.70A.360). That the Washington loophole mirrors Oregon's is not surprising as Washington's Growth Management Act (passed by the Legislature in 1990 and 1991), was largely modeled after Oregon's law, adopted in 1973.

Both provisions are meant to provide vacationers with increased opportunities to connect with nature and to provide rural counties with economic development. But do they achieve either of these objectives?

Joseph Sax, the well known public trust law scholar, proposed a new wild lands management approach in his book Mountains Without Handrails.

His thesis was that land should be managed to maximize a visitor's chances of gaining a significant appreciation for nature. I think such an approach is how we must treat the siting of resorts and what amenities are offered.

While both the Oregon and Washington statutes require these resorts be located in rustic areas, developers rarely make an effort to actually place vacationers in a setting that can be described as natural.

The resorts almost always coddle their guests with indoor recreation and golf courses. For example, Suncadia, a master planned resort near Roslyn, Washington (located east of Snoqulamie Pass), offers two eighteen hole golf courses, indoor swimming pool, fitness center, and ice skating rink.

Semiahmoo, a master planned resort near Blaine, Washington, offers two eighteen hole golf courses, a spa, and five dining options. The Resort at Port Ludlow offers twenty seven holes of golf, “exceptional” dining, and a marina for luxury yachting.

In Oregon, the Running Y Ranch, a destination resort near Klamath Falls, Oregon, offers an Arnold Palmer designed eighteen hole golf course, an ice arena, sports and fitness center, and several dining and retail opportunities. Then there's Eagle Crest, a destination resort near Redmond, Oregon. It offers three eighteen hole golf courses, an indoor and outdoor pool with spray park and wading pool, eleven miles of paved trails, a fitness center, and several dining options.

The Pronghorn Club near Bend, Oregon, offers both Jack Nicklaus and Tom Fazio designed golf courses. The Brandon Dunes Golf Resort on the southern Oregon coast, offers four golf courses and not much else.

All these artificial amenities - which are pitched to vacationers before and during their trip - leave little time for enjoying our region's natural wonders or the scenic landscapes these resorts are purposefully set in.

What's to be done about this unfortunate situation?

A good first step would be to ensure that resorts actually connect their vacationers to nature. Activities should be geared toward the surrounding environment.

There are a few resorts that at least provide some opportunity to do more than play games in the midst of rustic countryside. The Brasada Ranch, a destination resort in Eastern Oregon, provides an equestrian center with 1,800 acres for roaming and stocked ponds and streams for fishing, although the developers couldn't resist also including a golf course.

The Running Y Ranch provides opportunities to experience Western life on horseback with trail rides, cattle round-ups, and barrel racing, as well as guided fly-fishing trips, scenic boat tours, kayaking, canoeing, whitewater rafting, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, bird watching, bird hunting, and geocaching.

And the Rosario Resort on Orcas Island offers essentially only sea-based adventures to explore the Puget Sound.

A second step would be to take preventative action to protect our environment from further destructive development.

Two proposed developments in and near the Metolius River Basin in Oregon provide a striking example of how resorts can harm ecosystems.

The Metolius River is a crystal clear river that magically appears from an aquifer in the eastern Cascades. Federally designated as a Wild and Scenic River, the river is home to one of the world’s finest bull trout populations – who grow up to thirty inches long! This great place, loved by generations of Oregonians, is threatened by two very different resorts.

One resort, the Ponderosa, isn’t actually within the upper basin of the river, but just over the ridge. However, the Ponderosa is meant to be a whopper of a resort, with two golf courses and residences for up to nine thousand vacationers. Its wells would draw two and a half million gallons of water.

How will that impact the Metolius River and those precious bull trout (which, by the way, are listed as a threatened species)?

The other resort, the Metolian, seems more benign as it is intended to be much smaller in size and will supposedly be built using the principles of Natural Step. However, even this resort adds six and hundred and thirty residences, which at least triples the existing development within the basin.

Thus, the Metolian essentially dumps a huge subdivision in the middle of Oregon’s equivalent of Tolkien’s Shire.

When and where are we going to draw the line? Can't we agree that urban development is just completely inappropriate for some places? Like the North Cascades, Zion, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Olympics, Glacier, or Hells Canyon?

The Metolius is one of those places.

The development threat may be neutralized by the Oregon Legislature, administrative regulations, the Oregon Supreme Court, or private action through a land trust. Nevertheless, the proposed urban oases in the Metolius symbolize what is wrong with resort development today.

Too many modern resorts fail to connect vacationers with nature, deprive others of the ability to enjoy our environment, and harm ecosystems.

An important reason for allowing these islands of development outside of designated urban areas is the supposed economic boon they provide to local communities. Sadly, often resorts fail to pay their own way.

A county can receive some compensation through impact fees for the public services the county provides to the resort.

Unfortunately, a county can come under pressure from the developer to reduce impact fees so as to incentivize the construction of the resort, which the developer argues will bring general economic development to the region.

Counties may also be hampered by asymmetric information or uncertainties regarding costs, resulting in inadequate compensation.

Cities are in a worse position. Cities that are located near these resorts often see an increase demand for public services. More traffic rolls through town. More people use parks. The city's fire services may be needed in an emergency.

These cities have no way to recoup these costs through impact fees. Only the counties have the authority to collect the fees.

Again, what's to be done about this? Here are a few specific ideas:

* Ensure resorts are not residential subdivisions, but are truly destinations for low impact tourism.
* Make resorts pay their fair share for county and city public services, including emergency response. Grant cities the ability to charge an impact fee.
* Ensure resorts do not interfere with commercial farm, ranch, or forestry operations on EFU or forestry lands.
* Site resorts at least ten miles away from any wilderness and at least five miles from any Wild & Scenic River.
* Resorts must have no net negative impact on water quantity or quality of in-stream flow.
* Resorts must have a net-zero carbon impact, including estimated vehicles miles traveled to the resort by tourists, workers, and residents.
* Keep resorts out of critical habitat for state and federally listed species and ensure resorts will have no net negative impact on listed species.
* Ensure resorts have no net impact on big game habitat or migration patterns.
* Require resorts, as a core mission of the enterprise, to provide educational programs for the engagement of visitors with either the surrounding ecosystem or an integrated agricultural enterprise.
* Prohibit the construction of resorts within ten miles of another resort or urban growth boundary.
* Prevent further development within five miles of the destination resort, as of the time the development permit is issued and in perpetuity, accomplished either through a TDR program, land trust, public-private partnership, or zoning.
* Recreation not based on ecological experiences, such as golf courses, tennis courts, basketball courts, and swimming pools, must be limited to a certain number of acres.

The Pacific Northwest is one of the world's most majestic places. Protecting our natural wonders from thoughtless resort development needs to be a priority.

Anonymous said...

Unless, as I said, there's something that looks not quite kosher* about the circumstances of the death, I don't see anything strange at all.

*

Dorn is a Polish Jew name. There could be a Large Sausage involved in this puzzle.

If BP can find the missing page of the BULL, perhaps he can find the missing polish?

In ameriKKKan Beauty the movie, didn't the kind take himself out cuz his neighbor refused his sausage?

Where does the BULL play in? Is it really just 'courtesy'? Slow day at the BULL? Hey DORN family, how its goin in Redmond? ... You shouldn't have asked.

A well hung polish is a terrible thing to waste.

Isn't COSTA also a tex-mex jew name?

Anonymous said...

“It was a sad end to a good story. All of his life, Steve dealt with depression. So many people dealing with depression end up as drug addicts, but Steve managed to overcome all his demons and create quite an empire for himself.”

*

So much drugs & alcohol, so little time to build an empire thereof.

Then there are those demons in Bend.

Anonymous said...

Steve Dorn ran into problems when the declining value of his real estate investments, coupled with the sharp downturn in consumer demand for RVs and boats in 2008, created cash flow issues in his business, his brother said.

*

Glad they mentioned this. One of the biggest 'HOLDERS' of commercial in BEND. One of the BIGGEST STD developments in Northern Idaho.

'CASH-FLOW', who could have guessed.

Like KING-KONG, it wasn't RV cash-flow that brought the 'W' down, it was Beauty.

Anonymous said...

One bright spot for Steve Dorn RV & Marine has been a slight market turnaround fueled by the approach of spring — the dealership is now making about a deal a day, Mike Dorn said.

*

"Making a DEAL a day"!! WTF

Are they selling? CASH? There is barely any loans on this shit right now.

"WHY the CODE word 'DEAL'??"

See the ENTIRE PURPOSE of this page-1 'BULL STORY' is to get Central-Oregon HAIR-LIPS down to the RV park and find a 'DEAL'.

Every fucking day theres a 'deal', yes, people are given RV's away in most parts of ameriKKKa.

Is this news? Hey want to buy an RV? Try the Monaco plant near Coburg,OR, the Fleetwood out by Pendleton, there are lots of deals, EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Anonymous said...

Dorn is a Polish Jew name. There could be a Large Sausage involved in this puzzle.

Ah, I knew DA JOOS would be behind it somehow!

Isn't COSTA also a tex-mex jew name?

It's a dago JOO name.

"Miller" (Mueller) is a Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) JOO name. Lotta us JOOS among the Amish. We run all the banks, the hedge funds, the stock markets.

BTW "Switzer" is another Amish JOO name.

Anonymous said...

But in the grand scheme of things, WE are the richest 1%. America is ridiculously wealthy by global standards."

Gosh, we're better off than Darfur. THAT's something to brag about.

I remember when America used to brag about being the greatest country in the world. Now we brag that we're better than most Third World shitholes. I guess that's how Republicans define "progress."

Anonymous said...

When we were kids they would say "Better eat your vittles, for children in China, ... are starving"

Today in China, Africa, India, ... they say, "Better not get in debt, or you could end up like ameriKKKans".

HOPE&CHANGE... YEH!!!!

Anonymous said...

Eeerie Shit-eating today KUNT troopers. ... of BEND-ORYGUN

WSJ say's "The dollar is now more valuable than gold" WTF?????????

No where in the media today is there bad-news, its all good, and biggest news today is that 2009 will be the END of the recession, I can see that, probably in Nov09, they'll define the recession as a depression, and that will be the end of the recession.

Another BIG news is even though the FED-RES caused most of the problems, it appears that they'll be taking over MORE of the economy. Great, the people who run the US economy will NOT have to answer any questions from CONGRESS.

I think we can all call March 16, 2009 the first day or OREO-WELL, sounds like ORWELL, but under OREO-WELL, its 1984, deja-vu, and HOPE&CHANGE is here.

Politics will be never the same, I suspect that on friday the JonStewart show blew the lid on corporate-responsibility and lying, and now the CORP's havre taken full control of the SHOW-2009.

Anonymous said...

Well its true HBM Dorn is a polish-jooooooo and there has been a lot of fudge-packing taking place in Bend in the recent years by a large polish sausage.

Bewert said...

City May Spend $687K "Updating" Construction Standards

Anonymous said...

Ok, So the city says the std's are 10 years old, and the citys own website says they were revised in 2007.

The original story says $387k, but pussy pulls $687k out of hole, and doesn't tell us where that new figure came from.

Again, WHY is ch2m-hill getting $400k NOW?? Because they need the money.

Bewert said...

Read the article:

"An additional $300,000 has been included in the 2009-10 budget for phase 3 of the work (split equally between Water, Water Reclamation, Stormwater and Street Operations)."

My question is how much has already been spent? They have a 50-page report and over 2600 pages of appendices on CD ROM. How much has that cost us?

Bewert said...

Oh, forgot the link for where that sentence comes from: http://www.ci.bend.or.us/city_hall/meeting_minutes/docs/IS_Standards___Specs.pdf

Bewert said...

It is getting quiet around here. Not just on BB2, but in the stores. Been through Albie's, Freddies', Ray's, and Safeway today. Not much a problem with too few cashiers...

Anonymous said...

BEND PUSSY TO BE BUSSED TO XMAS-VALLEY, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED??


Oregon emergency officials plan for the worst
Posted by The Oregonian March 16, 2009 07:10AM

BEND -- Oregon authorities are contemplating an abandoned 2,622-acre U.S. Air Force base as a place to store supplies as well house people in case a major disaster hits the state.

The Bend Bulletin reports that the base, originally designed to monitor military threats across the Pacific, is 95 miles southeast of Bend and far from population centers.

Which is a selling point to planners in case cities become uninhabitable. Here's an excerpt of the story by reporter Keith Chu:

WASHINGTON -- Christmas Valley's former military radar site could be a camp for disaster victims -- as well as a renewable energy hub -- if the state of Oregon gets its way.

The 2,622-acre site once held an Air Force radar complex designed to watch for threats across the Pacific Ocean. But the machine was shuttered in 1990, only a few months after it was finished. Since the Air Force announced it would close the radar station in 2005, the military, the Bureau of Land Management and the state have envisioned developing the site for solar or wind power.

Now, the state is also eyeing the land as a depot for emergency supplies or tent encampment for people displaced by natural disasters, said Oregon Emergency Management Director Ken Murphy.

The site is about 95 miles southeast of Bend and far from any large population centers. But that's not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to storing supplies or relocating disaster victims, Murphy said.

"To some extent your population centers might not be available," Murphy said. "They may be destroyed, they may be contaminated, so I always look for those areas away from population centers."

Anonymous said...

Let me get this straight:

A businessperson in Bend (known to us all) is writing imaginary stories about the murder of other businesspeople.

This isn't being put in a private journal -- it's being advertised all over the Internet. So that all of Bend knows that a downtown shopkeeper is imagining the deaths of other Bend citizens.

WTF?

Does this strike anybody else as strange?

Maybe someone might have a talk with our shopkeeper?

Duncan McGeary said...

A little literal minded there, bub?

One of my favorite books is by Carl Hiaasen, who doesn't much care for the Florida developers. He especially doesn't seem to care for a certain Florida developer who has a huge theme park starring a Mouse.

SPOILER

In one of his books, he has a very horny dolphin in one of the pools, and at the end of the book he dumps this villain into the pool where to dolphin....

Very funny scene. Somehow I never thought it was actually Walt Disney being porked by the dolphin.


But, so it won't hurt your sensibilities, my murder mystery doesn't take place in Bend...it happens in...Peyton Place, or Oz, or any far enough distance that you could lighten up.

Bewert said...

Re: BEND PUSSY TO BE BUSSED TO XMAS-VALLEY, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?

No, BP moves himself to a place where 15% unemployment is taken seriously...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

OREGON FEB UNEMPLOYMENT: 11.9%

That is up 1.2% from last month.

THIS MEANS 16%+ IS COMPLETELY POSSIBLE FOR BEND FOR FEB>

Watch for mass exodus from Bend when school is out. END OF DAYS.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Oregon jobless rate hits 10.8%

Posted by bsherman March 16, 2009 21:40PM

Nadine Cunningham, 81, answers the phone Monday at Fish Emergency Service, a Portland agency that provides food, clothing and other items for families in need. As unemployment rises, Cunningham appreciates the part-time minimum-wage job, which keeps the great-grandmother from losing her house.
The state government's chief economist couldn't comment on Monday, the day officials announced that Oregon's unemployment rate hit double digits -- 10.8 percent -- for the first time since 1984.

He was, after all, on unpaid furlough.

Tom Potiowsky's forced silence spoke louder than words about the extreme Oregon has reached as the recession seems to permeate every crevice of life in the state. While Potiowsky walked the beach with his wife, other economists expressed shock at the 775 jobs Oregon lost on average each day in February.

The one-month loss of 21,700 jobs, seasonally adjusted, was the largest since the state began keeping records in 1977.

Oregon's unemployment rate, which exceeded the nation's 8.1 percent figure in February, also surpassed the national average last year for several age groups, including people 65 years and older who need to work.

Among them is 81-year-old Portlander Nadine Cunningham. The widowed great grandmother, a breast cancer and heart surgery survivor, clutched her cane as she took a TriMet lift bus to work Monday answering phones at minimum wage.

"I could not let my home go into foreclosure," said Cunningham, explaining why she went through retraining to work at Fish Emergency Service.

In the past 12 months, Oregon Employment Department officials said, the state lost 81,800 jobs -- far exceeding the 64,500 jobs lost between 2001 and 2003 during the previous recession. By January, the state logged the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the nation. February's national ranking hasn't yet been determined.

Last month, unemployment in Oregon jumped a full percentage point -- up from January's rate of 9.8 percent, estimated initially at 9.9 percent. Oregon hasn't had 10.8 percent unemployment since July 1983, said David Cooke, a state labor economist.

To Tim Duy, a University of Oregon economist, that rate is staggering, having soared from 5.9 percent in June. But Duy finds the 21,700 jobs lost in February particularly dire.

Duy's pessimistic projection had anticipated losses of 10,000 a month for five months. But Oregon lost more than twice that last month -- on top of 13,000, as revised, in January.

"What that suggests to me is the state's budget forecast is not going to work," Duy said. "My main problem is I barely see any light in the tunnel."

Potiowsky, the state economist who prepares budget forecasts, couldn't talk Monday as he took one of four furlough days he must log by June 30 as the state cuts spending. Under federal law, if a state employee has any contact with work while on furlough, the worker must be paid for the day and then take another day off instead.

Josh Harwood, senior economist at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis, spoke instead. He noted that state officials had expected this quarter to be weak. "It's turning out to be such," he said.

New faces in market
One surprise, Harwood said: 15,000 people entered Oregon's job market last month, as workers' spouses or semi-grown children began seeking employment. Usually people leave the labor force in a weak economy, he said, out of frustration or to reenter school.

The number of unemployed Oregonians jumped to 236,286 in February, more than doubling over the past 12 months. The state's total nonfarm payroll employment fell to 1,636,400.

In February, Oregon's construction industry lost jobs, as did manufacturing. Over the year, employment in three other major industries shrank by about 7 percent: financial activities, professional and business services, and trade, transportation and utilities.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski said he wasn't surprised by the double-digit jobless rate. Monday's numbers signal that the state's revenues will continue to decline into the 2009-2011 budget, he said.

"We're in a very steep decline," Kulongoski said. "Economists tell us this is a trend that may last until the middle of this year."

Professionals linked to the housing industry have taken it especially hard. Portland architect Magda Gerencer has sought work since being laid off in October. She and her family have cut back on travel and restaurant meals.

"I'm looking for some administrative jobs at this point, and I've even looked into driving a semi," Gerencer said. For now, the 40-year-old mom sticks to motorcycling on her 750 cc Ducati Monster.

Only two major industries have added jobs over the year: government and private educational and health services.

"Food manufacturing seems to be one of the brighter industries in an otherwise gloomy economy," said the state report issued Monday. "It employed 23,200 in February, which was a gain of 1,400 jobs since February 2008."

Oregon's unemployment rate has consistently surpassed the nation's level, with February's 2.7 percentage-point spread constituting a recent high. Economists blame:

• Close ties to California, which is also suffering.

• Reliance on manufacturing, which is down nationally.

• Absence of large cities, which act as economic engines.

• Pronounced job losses during recessions and restructuring.

• A mild climate, which attracts people seeking work.

Portland is known nationally for attracting "young creatives" who seek jobs. That could explain Oregon's comparatively high unemployment rate among 25- to 34-year-olds in 2008.

Oregon's rate surpassed the national average in the 45- to 54-year-old bracket as well, and especially among those 65 and over.

Cunningham, the Portland octogenarian who answers phones to supplement social security, went two years without a paycheck after heart surgery disqualified her from caring for other senior citizens. She says she almost lost her house after paying some medical bills instead of the mortgage.

A fellow bus rider encouraged Cunningham, the widow of a D-Day paratrooper, to visit Easter Seals. The agency got her computer training, working on typing skills she had developed before graduating from high school in 1945. She enjoys her work.

"My house would have been auctioned off on the 23rd of March," Cunningham said, "if it hadn't been for another of the angels on the TriMet bus."

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Awesome! They're blaming CALI-BANGERS & our 395 days-O-year of sunshine each & every year for our unemployment problems.

Take a look at this Oregonian piece; there are some pretty disturbing graphs.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Just so you can see for yourself, Oregon has 11.9% UNEMPLOYMENT.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

To Tim Duy, a University of Oregon economist, that rate is staggering, having soared from 5.9 percent in June. But Duy finds the 21,700 jobs lost in February particularly dire.

Duy's pessimistic projection had anticipated losses of 10,000 a month for five months. But Oregon lost more than twice that last month -- on top of 13,000, as revised, in January.


See? Everything coming in 3 Std Dev's below expectations... even UofO economists.

People aren't just going to flee Bend, they're going to flee Oregon.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The one-month loss of 21,700 jobs, seasonally adjusted, was the largest since the state began keeping records in 1977.

Take a look at the Oregonian story here

The job loss graphs are heinous. You can see the 2001-2 recession was nothing compared to this.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

S.F. cottage's demise spurs calls for new rules

Seth Rosenfeld, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The demolition of an 1861 building on Russian Hill is an example of what San Francisco officials say is a serious problem: Hundreds of owners are letting residential properties deteriorate or remain vacant, posing safety hazards, harming historic resources and spurring a drive for new legal powers to force corrections.

As a small group of protesters looked on, a wrecking crew used a backhoe Monday to demolish a cottage that had been listed as a historic resource. The workers left behind a pile of debris and a clear view of Angel Island on the spot where the Victorian had stood on Lombard Street for 148 years.

Dilapidated residences mark the city like festering sores, even in well-off areas. Across the street from the Lombard lot sits another empty Victorian-era home in blatant disrepair. A front window is broken, and missing stairs have left a 20-foot drop from the front door. A few blocks away on Union Street, another empty house has been boarded up. There is no exact tally of the number of vacant or deteriorating homes, but "it is a severe problem," said Debra Walker, a member of the city's Building Inspection Commission and a declared candidate for supervisor in 2010. A building inspection official said there are hundreds of them.
City has little recourse

Although the decay often occurs in plain sight, city officials have little power to intercede. Now Walker is pushing to amend the city's anti-blight ordinance to require owners of houses vacant more than 90 days and commercial properties vacant more than one year to register them with the city, pay an annual fee, and keep the properties clean and secure. Owners also would be required to prominently post contact information on the building.

Building inspectors would receive police training and have new powers to inspect properties and fine owners, said a Building Inspection Department official.

The legislation would require approval by the commission and the Board of Supervisors. Board President David Chiu plans to ask the city attorney's office today to draft the measure, his spokesman said.

The matter took on urgency last week when the imminent demise of the Russian Hill cottage mobilized preservationists.

One of the city's oldest buildings, the two-story residence at 1268 Lombard originally was a one-story Italianate Victorian cottage. A second floor was added, and the home was covered with brown shingles.

In 1945, John B. Molinari, a San Francisco judge who served on the state Supreme Court, bought the property. After his death in 2004, ownership passed to his heirs in a family trust managed by John L. Molinari, a former San Francisco supervisor.

For years the family rented out the house. But as they prepared to remodel it in the late 1990s, engineers told them the foundation was shaky, Molinari said. The family applied for a permit to demolish it, but the city denied it on the ground that house was a historic resource.
Expensive repairs

Faced with the prospect of costly repairs, the family chose to leave the property vacant, though they installed a new roof, Molinari said.

In November 2007, the family sold it for $1.3 million to a partnership of developer Michael Cassidy and James Nunemacher of Vanguard Properties.

Scaffolding and a tarp soon went up.

In March 2008, a neighbor complained to the building department that the cottage was abandoned. "Back of building is open, which is accessible for intruders, etc. Safety concern," the complaint said. In April, city officials ordered Cassidy and Nunemacher to board up the building, city records show, and they did.

Last week, neighbors were surprised when a large orange backhoe parked by the building. It belonged to Granite Excavation & Demolition Inc., whose president is Joe Cassidy, Michael Cassidy's brother.
Pushing preservation

F. Joseph Butler, an architect and member of the Little House Committee, which seeks to preserve the city's small houses, discovered the owners were seeking an emergency permit to demolish the building.

Butler believes the building could have been stabilized and restored. He and his allies were especially concerned because the emergency order would exempt the owners from routine requirements, such as first getting approval for a new construction plan.

But a city engineer agreed that the building was in danger of imminent collapse and last week approved the demolition. On Monday, the demolition crew removed the building's facade for possible future use, and then used the backhoe's steel jaws to crush the cottage like balsa wood.

Several preservationists at the scene said demolition should have been delayed pending an investigation by the city attorney's office into whether the home had been purposefully neglected, an allegation the owners have denied. One protester, Megan Smith, said, "It will be a lot harder to find evidence once this is a vacant lot."

In another dramatic case, a Victorian house at 1160 Page St. had become so dilapidated a few years ago that the ground floor gave way, and the elderly owner relied on painter's scaffolding to get to his kitchen. One day he fell and fatally injured himself, an official said.

Building inspectors learned about the condition of the house only after his death.

The proposed legislation wouldn't necessarily alert officials to any interior problems.

But it would give them more power to intercede to protect occupied or vacant houses that have become eyesores or subjects of complaints, like the Russian Hill cottage.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Oregon's jobless rate hits double digits

PORTLAND, OR- Today, the Oregon Employment Department released its latest unemployment figures - 10.8% of Oregon's workforce is unemployed, up from 9.8% as reported in January. Moreover, there is a sizeable population of "discouraged workers" who are unemployed and not actively seeking work, and the numbers do not account for individuals who are underemployed. Rural Oregon communities have seen some of the most severe impacts.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Moreover, there is a sizeable population of "discouraged workers" who are unemployed and not actively seeking work, and the numbers do not account for individuals who are underemployed.

Roundabout way of saying our unemployment is FAR HIGHER than officially reported.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Some comments from the above piece:

A
03/17/2009
I love the Bend area and have been here for 23 years, but if things don't pick up soon I will have to go out of the area for work. Which in itself is not good. My family would have to stay here till we can sell our home. Good Luck! Which adds more cost to our living expenses.
Wish I could go back to school and still get some kind of unemployment. But I can't. So, I stuck looking for job where there isn't any and I can't go to school, because I will lose my unemployment, which would, at this point, make me homeless.

Guest
03/17/2009
As if Obama and his socialisim, along with his "tent camps" has a plan to fix it.
How about we all keep paying taxes to pay bonuses to AIG. The economy is such a cluster, right now. It's very sad, and scary.

Anonymous
03/16/2009
If we just reduced the minimum wage to $3.00, we could get everyone back to work!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Sorry, but this is just hilarious: Someone is selling 5ac of scrub with "lava tubes" for $4.5 MILLION!

5 Acres with Lava Tubes (Bend)
Reply to: hous-qg8tj-1077258354@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-03-16, 8:15AM PDT



How would you like property with your own giant lava tubes in Bend Oregon?

This truly is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Five acres in Bend, with two massive lava tubes under ground. The larger cavern is presently 230' long by an average of 55' wide (up to 65") and present ceiling height averaging 12'. The smaller tube is 130' long and 35' wide. At this time...

It is what lies beyond and below the surface of each existing cavern that the eventual purchaser will get discover for themselves. Each tube could extend for another 10' or for miles? Each tube could hold wonders never before seen by humans. The buyer gets to become his own Indiana Jones. Lava tubes maintain a cool temperature of between 51°-57°, so you can economically cool your home during hot summer months. Imagine a stairway leading down into your own private lava tube right from your living room. You can even have DSL in your own cave! TV Cavemen, eat your heart out. Be as creative as you wish. Initial Asking Price is $4.5 million.

Bend is one of the most popular places to live. Mt Bachelor is right there and so are the Cascades Range and high desert.

Instead of telling more about it in this post, I've attached a Profile of property in PDF format. Its only a 1.25 MB File so a quick download.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Each tube could hold wonders never before seen by humans. The buyer gets to become his own Indiana Jones.

Lava Tubes? $4.5 MILLION

Craigslist Description? Priceless

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

You can even have DSL in your own cave!

Dude, you should be a comedy writer!

Be as creative as you wish.

Wow, he's giving us permission to BUY THESE TUBES & GO APESHIT! AWESOME!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The buyer gets to become his own Indiana Jones.

Can someone tell me how this works? How do I become MY OWN Indiana Jones? What if I want to become someone else's Indiana Jones?

Only in Central Oregon folks.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

And those tubes are FSBO.

No realtor would let such a deranged idiot in the front door.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

How would you like property with your own giant lava tubes in Bend Oregon?

Dude, you'd be surprised how little I want that. And not to burst your lava-tube bubble, but you won't find anyone interested at even 1/100th your asking price.

This place never ceases to amaze.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Budget woes cut health care for illegal immigrants

By JULIANA BARBASSA

Associated Press

Monday, March 16, 2009

SACRAMENTO — Graciela Barrios, an undocumented immigrant, has long relied on her Sacramento County health clinic for the advice, medication and tests that keep her diabetes under control.

But next month, Barrios and thousands like her will be on their own as communities cut non-emergency health services to illegal immigrants and more local governments are forced to make similar decisions. Nearby Contra Costa County will vote Tuesday on whether to cut services to the 5,000 illegal immigrants they serve each year.

“The general situation there is being faced by nearly every health department across the country, and if not right now, shortly,” said Robert M. Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Data on health care for unauthorized immigrants is hard to come by, because community clinics and hospitals usually do not ask patients for their immigration status. But the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of the 11.9 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, about 59 percent have no health insurance. That accounts for about 15 percent of the nation’s approximately 47 million uninsured.

As the financial crisis takes a toll on local health systems and job losses spike the number of uninsured, health care providers are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of those they serve, said Pestronk.

More than half of local health departments across the country laid off or lost employees in 2008, according to a survey in January by the health officials association. About one-third predicted layoffs in 2009.

In Sacramento County, such cuts at first meant closing three of six clinics. In February, with less money and more patients, county supervisors and health officials had to decide: close one more clinic — laying off up to 40 staffers to save $2.4 million — or cut services to the approximately 4,000 illegal immigrants treated annually.

“It was very difficult ethically for me,” said Keith Andrews, head of primary health services at the county’s Department of Health and Human Service. “People I’ve been caring for for years will be hurt.”

Contra Costa County officials are doing the same hard math: if they vote to cut services, they will save about $6 million.

After letting go of social workers, cutting mental health services and watching a delivery room built to handle 120 births a month accommodate 240, there were few other options, said Contra Costa Health Services Director William Walker.

“We’ve never had this crisis before,” said Walker, who submitted the plan being voted on Tuesday. “We’ve tried to carefully slice what we thought we could without cutting off our ability to respond. Now we’re looking at bad choices among bad choices.”

Counties may legally cut services to illegal immigrants. Although hospitals receiving Medicaid funds must provide emergency care for anyone who needs it, there is no law requiring health care providers to offer primary care.

Health officials and immigrant advocates say they do not know how many local health systems provide primary care to undocumented immigrants. Officials note that many hospitals and clinics do not ask a patient’s immigration status, in part because treating chronic conditions such as asthma and hypertension keeps patients from emergency room visits that are far less effective and more expensive.

The fraying of the safety net provided by local health systems could have serious consequences — not only for illegal immigrants, who are among the most vulnerable, but for the rest of the population, said Sonal Ambegaokar, health policy attorney at National Immigration Law Center.

“Cutting care, you save $100 today, but you may end spending $500 tomorrow when that person shows up in the emergency room because you didn’t provide them with basic medication,” said Ambegaokar. “It’s shortsighted.”

Asking local health officials to verify immigration status also is problematic, said Julia Harumi Mass, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

“The devil’s in the details. Asking county workers to act as immigration officials puts them in a difficult position,” she said.

For Barrios, the economic crisis has already hit home. The same economic forces that slashed Sacramento County’s sales and property tax revenues also took her husband’s job in a landscaping firm, and the family’s bills are piling up, she said.

“I have no insurance, no resources, nothing to fall back on,” said Barrios, who has one daughter. “I have no idea what I will do.”

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

But the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of the 11.9 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, about 59 percent have no health insurance. That accounts for about 15 percent of the nation’s approximately 47 million uninsured.

There's your next Cause, hbm. There are plenty of AMERIKKKANS who don't have coverage, but we cannot stand by & let these poor ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT LAWBREAKERS go without!

Poor things. All they ever did was BREAK AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAW. And now, we have the GALL to deny them FREE HEALTH COVERAGE. This country is unbelievable. C'mon, hbm. THEY NEED WHITEY! They need HEROES TO SAVE THEM!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Crown Point Bank is DOA.

New Bend bank hits regulatory hurdles
CEO is still hopeful despite some delays
By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: March 17. 2009 4:00AM PST

Officials of the proposed Crown Point National Bank have moved into the bank’s new headquarters at 950 N.W. Bond St. in downtown Bend but are still waiting for regulatory approval, according to the bank’s president and CEO, Andrew Gerlicher.

Gerlicher had hoped to have the bank open by February, but he’s now predicting it will open in early summer. Gerlicher said in an e-mail to The Bulletin that the nation’s bank regulators have not been able to move as quickly as in past years due to the nation’s ongoing financial woes.

The bank is seeking a federal charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

“Not surprisingly, our regulators are being cautious and performing added due diligence as it relates to our application approval process due to the current economic environment,” Gerlicher wrote.

“We’re also seeing that difficulties with existing financial institutions nationwide have inundated bank regulators who are doing their best to deal with those challenges within current staffing levels. Obviously, those types of concerns have become the priority and the agencies are having to push the review of new bank applications outside of historic timelines, thus altering our projected opening date,” Gerlicher wrote.

The recession also has slowed the bank’s ability to raise capital. Organizers had hoped to have $30 million on hand when the bank opened, but they’re finding the current economic climate “challenging,” Gerlicher wrote. He would not say how much the bank has raised so far, but he anticipates the bank will be able to meet its capital goal once it wins final regulatory approval.

“We’ve had to educate prospective investors about the difference between existing financial institutions with troubled assets and a new bank entering the market with a clean balance sheet,” Gerlicher wrote.

According to a recent article in Time magazine citing data from business analysis firm SNL Financial, at least 30 different groups have filed to form new banks since last summer, spurred by the opportunity to make loans in a business environment starved for lenders.

“If we can get open, we’ll be in pretty good shape because we’ll have a good balance sheet and be in a good position to (start) lending people money,” said Eric Weber, a Sisters resident and investor in the bank.

Weber said he’s not discouraged by the delay in the projected opening date. He understands banking regulators have a lot on their minds, and, overall, he’s optimistic about the bank’s future.

The bank is still soliciting investors. The minimum investment is $25,000. If not enough private investors are found, Gerlicher said the bank is considering other resources.

“Almost all of our capital so far is committed from local investors, but we’ve recently opened serious discussions with institutional investors and broker-dealer firms who are more familiar with the concept.”

The bank was founded by Sisters resident Elijah Aldinger, a former Southern California resident who sold a mortgage business before moving to Sisters a few years ago. About 40 other founders are listed in the bank’s February newsletter.

Gerlicher wrote that the bank, which also plans to open a branch in downtown Portland, remains well-positioned to capitalize on the nation’s current financial turmoil. It plans to specialize in business banking for small and medium-size businesses.

“A new bank with fresh capital is not only able to lend, but is motivated to lend to make money,” Gerlicher said. “We are getting calls from owners of profitable businesses on a regular basis who need credit to operate their businesses.”

Should Crown Point open, it would be the third bank to be based in Bend. Bank of the Cascades opened in February 1977 and had approximately $617 million in local deposits as of June 2008, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s annual market share report. High Desert Bank, which opened in September 2007, had a little more than $19 million in local deposits.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The recession also has slowed the bank’s ability to raise capital. Organizers had hoped to have $30 million on hand when the bank opened, but they’re finding the current economic climate “challenging,” Gerlicher wrote. He would not say how much the bank has raised so far

Translation: We're barely making rent payments. We are doomed. Please attend Bledsoe's Donkey Cum Bucket Swallow Fest, and raise money for us! Every bucket of cum swallowed, raises $2 for charity! I mean, our bank!

Anonymous said...

The RE optomists quoted last month are from Mars:

March 09 sales to date
13 Sold @ $221k med
March 08 to date
47 Sold @284k med

I see that the steam building up in the market is just hot air.
Kinda like Dorn making a deal a day.

Bewert said...

RE: March 09

Wow, the hits just keep coming. Looks like prices may be coming down a little faster now.

PopGoesBend said...

Remember back in the "good old days" of the bubble when we would have 13 sales per business DAY?

How many of those were bank owned / short?

Anonymous said...

>>How many of those were bank owned / short?<<<<

8 bank owned
1 short sale

:{

Bewert said...

Police plan traffic enforcement blitz on Bend Parkway

BEND, Ore. – Officers from multiple police agencies plan to hold a traffic enforcement blitz on Wednesday, focusing on aggressive drivers traveling on the Bend Parkway, police announced.

Bend Police Sgt. Chris Carney said officers from Bend and Redmond Police Departments, Oregon State Police Troopers, and Deschutes County Sheriff’s Deputies will be out in force patrolling the parkway from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., March 18.

In addition to violations related to aggressive drivers, members of the Multi-Agency Traffic Team (MATT) will also be looking for those following too closely, making unsafe lane changes, and speeding, Sgt. Carney said.

Anonymous said...

"it happens in...Peyton Place, or Oz, or any far enough distance that you could lighten up."

No one on this blog will mind, but people not patient enough to read it will just assume you're plotting murders -- or making fun of them.

"not patient enough" describes a lot of people.

Anonymous said...

OREO Received a $101332 Bonus from AIG

Examiner.com - ‎43 minutes ago‎

AP Photo/Ron Edmonds Senator Barack Obama received a $101332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the AIG are - Senators .

Bewert said...

OREO recieved .000136% of his $745,000,000 fundraising total from AIG...he's obviously under their thumb.

Jelement said...

So I've been reading this blog on and off for a few months now without posting, today seemed like a good day to finally jump in though.

My fiancee and I moved to Bend a few months ago (yes, from California - though she has lived here before and has family here). I find all of the doom and gloom somewhat amusing considering the place I left behind was much worse for us than Bend is.

We were in Santa Cruz, CA which is home to way too many ultra liberals, activist college students, and more recently a TON of immigrants. The unemployment numbers are actually worse than Bend (Santa Cruz was 12.6% in January), and crime is a much bigger issue there than it is here. There are multiple stabbings a week, it actually got bad enough that there is now a stabsantacruz.com site set up to track the number of days without a stabbing (I've never seen more than 7 days).

And to make matters worse, the median home price for Santa Cruz county was $425k in January. The county opposes growth so they've driven away potential jobs for years and things are just going to get worse there.

Given all of that, and being a 30 year old almost married guy with no kids, packing up and coming here was a great choice for us. We've both found work and while we make a little less than we did there, our rent is also less than half of what it was in Santa Cruz, and without the 8.5% (soon to be 9.5%) sales tax, our money lasts a lot longer here.

By the end of this summer we should have a home here instead of being renters, and have our other debts (small amount of credit card debts from the wedding) paid off. Leaving behind a situation where we were destined to be lifelong renters, and were both in jobs with uncertain futures due to pending layoffs makes Bend look pretty good.

I'm certainly not the kind to be overly optimistic about things, but it all depends on where you're coming from. For us Bend has been great, I'm much happier with the culture here and have a lot more to look forward to. When we get our house it will be on some land outside the city limits so we have room for raising animals and growing some fruits/vegetables. I guess when the end of days finally does come, we'll at least be set to barter with our neighbors.

Bewert said...

Hey, at least you waited to find the right one to get married :)

Bewert said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bewert said...

Heard of another suicide today. Happened several days ago. 30-something guy shot himself in front of his mom as she begged him not to. Heard it from the sister-in-law of the guy. She's been noticeably upset, and just told me why today.

Anonymous said...

"today seemed like a good day to finally jump in though."

Welcome dude.

One of this board's chief contributors appears to be on vacation, so we need all the life we can get.

Anonymous said...

Jelement: Welcome. I hope your job here is secure. Bend is not a good place to find yourself unemployed. In Santa Cruz you can commute to Silicon Valley or SF for a job if you have to. Here you're stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully this AIG dust-up will provide the cover for Obama to lose his lame-ass Treasury Secretary.

Not impressed with the Obama crew yet at all. Came to the dance with three left feet.

Anonymous said...

Can you post pictures of your financee?? If she has big tits she might even get to be on the sunday post.

Anonymous said...

This ones for BP, his boyfriend that wanted Mayor Eckmans job, controls the propane in Bend, this little tidbit below, could be the 'compromise'.


Ore. DEQ says diesel school buses could be harmful to students


KDRV Staff

March 17, 2009

MEDFORD, Ore. - The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality says riding the school bus could be harmful to thousands of Oregon students.

They say close to 4,000 diesel-powered school buses leak fumes into the cabin because of a problem with the emissions system.

The DEQ says children exposed to the fumes could develop health problems into adulthood, such as an increased risk of cancer, heart disease, and impaired neurological development.

The Oregon legislature is discussing two bills to fix the problem. One would require districts to fix the buses by 2017, the other would ask for federal grant money to pay for repairs.

Anonymous said...

Given all of that, and being a 30 year old almost married guy with no kids, packing up and coming here was a great choice for us. We've both found work and while we make a little less than we did there, our rent is also less than half of what it was in Santa Cruz, and without the 8.5% (soon to be 9.5%) sales tax, our money lasts a lot longer here.

*

Hey if you don't have to work, and your a trust-a-farian, it just might work for a year, but after that BEND will get your money.

Remote Bend property? Water? Gardening? Summer 2-3/months year? This KUNT obviously has been selectively reading this site.

NOTE, and it will happen soon that the canals will go PIPE, and when they do, all your fucking 'out of city' water wells will go DRY. BEND DRY. Then how you going to get your water?

You moved to the fucking desert.

"We've both found work"? Call center? Collections? Or foreclosure? Or gubmint?

NEVER MOVE to Bend unless you made of money, and don't need to work, or make money. Bend has always been a place where people 'PLAY', or "CAMP". It's NEVER been a working mans town, well not since the 1950's or earlier.

Anonymous said...

Well the MADE-OFF 'ponzi' is final.

RICH US JOOS(HBM) are now going to be able to write-off all phantom-income for 10yrs in the future on all taxable income. NICE!!!!

That means say if you 'invested' $1k with MADE-OFF 40 years ago, and it compounded (phantom) to $1M, that you can write off $100k in income for the future ten years. Not fucking BAD, when you consider the 'tax dodge' only cost you $1k.

Only in ameriKKKa.

Anonymous said...

On the news front today, GE which has about $800B in Real Estate, currently has $80B for sale.

They're saying that the value of their RE is only down 1.5%.

It's also interesting that during the past 2+ years, that virtually ALL their income for GECC came from selling commercial RE. Now that the shit is NOT selling, guess what? NO FUCKING INCOME.

What's MOST interesting is that they say they're only down 1.5% and mark-to-market don't count, cuz RE is long term, when in fact their SHIT is down +50%.

GE is going down and hard,

Anonymous said...

WSJ today is calling for CRAMER to be fired.

Given that CNBC has been part of the POODLE show to make all US 'investing' look good, ... its time that heads roll, given that CRAMER is an ICON of the incompetence, the WSJ is calling for his head.

Cramer says that he's NOT a journalist, that he's an 'entertainment financial adviser'.

Should be interesting. They also went on to point out that the most incompetent pundits rule the roost today, and most have gone on to cabinet spots in government. OUCH!!!

All this SAID, where the fuck was the WSJ in the last ten years? They seemed to be cheer-leading also. Of course they NOTE that Friedman was the voice of sanity all along, and I'm sure tomorrow they'll tell that in 1998 GREENSPAN tried to bitch-slap the US pubic.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully this AIG dust-up will provide the cover for Obama to lose his lame-ass Treasury Secretary.


*

London financial times is saying Geithner will be GONE by summer of 2009.

Not surprising, BUSH-W-SHRUB-TWISTED had quite a few treas-sec's.

The important thing is having GEITHNER got OREO elected. Now he can put Larry Summers in charge.

The funny thing is that the FED-RES is getting MORE power every day, and taking more over the economy. What all this proves is that FED-RES people do best in the environment of saying "FUCK YOU" to questions, as their private. When you put GEITHNER in a political seat where he is accountable these types don't perform, but behind the scenes GEITHNER is a very good JEW.

The US Treasury Sec needs to be a professional (lawyer) LIAR.
A real professional, Geithner is just a technician.

Anonymous said...

Not impressed with the Obama crew yet at all. Came to the dance with three left feet.

*

The OREO has brought "HOPE&CHANGE".


THE DEM party hoped for work in DC, the lobby for DEM's now raking the dough $$$, and the PUG's are starving. HOPE.

The change is COMPLETE, the DEM's wanted to be once again in the #1 position in the pork-bowl@DC, and now they have it.

Life is good.

HOPE&CHANGE.

The 'dance' is on, just watch Geithner when he is asked any 'tough' questions about where $12T dollars has gone of FED-RES $$$ in the last six months, he'll dance around that question forever.

ONE BILLION dollars a day, ... and nobody even knows where its going, and nobody cares to ask, cuz hope&change is that we'll ALL get some of the money, but sadly what we'll all get is a worthless dollar.

Anonymous said...

"By the end of this summer we should have a home here instead of being renters, and have our other debts (small amount of credit card debts from the wedding) paid off. Leaving behind a situation where we were destined to be lifelong renters, and were both in jobs with uncertain futures due to pending layoffs makes Bend look pretty good."

No. Santa Cruz is way better. Trust me. I lived there for ten years. The economy is FAR stronger. Hope her mom and dad don't mind putting you up for a while.

Anonymous said...


All this SAID, where the fuck was the WSJ in the last ten years? They seemed to be cheer-leading also. Of course they NOTE that Friedman was the voice of sanity all along, and I'm sure tomorrow they'll tell that in 1998 GREENSPAN tried to bitch-slap the US pubic.


At first I thought by "Friedman" you meant Tom Friedman, of "The World is Flat" fame.

So I read the WSJ article myself and see that they were talking about Milton Friedman. His reputation hasn't been doing so well, IMHO, and I don't know why the WSJ brought M. Friedman up in an article about Jim Cramer.

Here's a take on T. Friedman:

Thomas Friedman's stock wiped out

Could there be any columnist of his stature more irrelevant today than Thomas Friedman? He's just phoning it in now. The current crisis is a direct and devastating challenge to the worldview he's been propagating for years, and you'd think he'd have something thoughtful to say about it. He has declined as suddenly and as profoundly as the markets. You get the idea that he's built his entire reputation on flattering elites. I don't mean to suggest at all that Friedman is cynical -- he really does believe this stuff -- but that he has become popular because he made himself into a gifted publicist for a worldview that went hand-in-glove with the views of international elites, in whose circles he traveled and was feted. And now he's really got nothing to say to us.

Rod Dreheri

Bewert said...

Marge, how much inventory listed and how much is vacant, to compare to that horrific sales number for Feb to date.

PopGoesBend said...

>Marge, how much inventory listed and how much is vacant, to compare to that horrific sales number for Feb to date.

How about comparing it to NODs? Yesterday there were 23 NODs in Deschutes county, of which I count 10 in Bend.

Bewert said...

Wish there was an easy way to pull Bend NODs out of the county totals.

Just checked and compared countywide:
2009, through 3/17 671
2008, through 3/17 264
2007, through 3/17 75

Anonymous said...

Here's a take on T. Friedman:

Thomas Friedman's stock wiped out


*

Just one short word about T-FRIEDMAN, esp given the WSJ about M-FRIEDMAN.

FRIEDMAN is PAID AIPAC HO, probably #1 in the nation, when HBM finger fucks his ass @night, he's got a pic of T-FRIEDMAN above the mirror, in the background is T-FRIEDMAN promoting 'tomorrows JOOO talking points'.

Nah, the WSJ has just been on a crusade lately how if folks had just been finger banging with photos of AynRand, we wouldn't be in the Sheeet.

Anonymous said...

GOD DAMN DUMB FUCKING PUSSY.

YOU don't

"OREO-ELECTION-CASH--AIG" / "TOT-OREO-CASH"

That don't mean shit.

What you do is

OBAMA-AIG-CASH / TOT-AIG-CASH

Now that means something, especially if you compare with GS, ML, Lehman, ...

Normalize all the data with OREO unity, 1/100 for a senator, 1/500 for a congressman.

SToooopid fucking DKOS pussy, your OREO is going to make the twisted-little-W-shrub look good.

p.s. DEM's make good on all that made-off ponzi, and Bend-1031, and Sawyer, cuz baby-jeebs is coming to Bend, to take you christians home.

Anonymous said...

if folks had just been finger banging with photos of AynRand

You mean like this?

http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/images/rand_pic.jpg

Shee-it, I don't think even Greenspan could get it up for that.

Anonymous said...

What the FUCK is this supposed to mean? The 'deal' was made in early Feb 08 ( before OREO, BO ), DODD made it exempt from TARP(CARP) during W, and now that we should really just putting a 100% tax on ALL bonus coming from TARP/TALF,... but NO, it was just last week that OREO took the CAP off exec-pay on TARP of $500k, and that was done by exec-order in SECRET. OREO is trying to have it both ways, being a populist, and being SANTA. COME ON KUNTS what is the OREO??

Obama Accepts Blame for AIG Bonuses
March 19, 2009
By LAURA MECKLER

COSTA MESA, Calif. -- President Barack Obama said he will take the blame for bonuses being paid at American International Group Inc. if it will settle an intense finger pointing under way over how such payments were possible at a company that has received tremendous taxpayer aid.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I think that all the Bend KUNTS would rather Fuck T-Friedman on the backside, than AynRand on the front side. One BEND ugly bitch.

Anonymous said...

This is the FIRST FUCKING TEST for the OREO, and he gets a BIG FUCKING 'F', what they MEAN nobody KNOWS who writes the LAW in the USA???

This fucking country is BEND-FUCKED.

####

The mystery over who killed a provision in the stimulus package that would have curtailed bonuses at bailed out companies is a disturbing D.C. whodunit. But even more disturbing is what it reveals about how our government is run.

"It is the ultimate indictment of what Washington has become," Sen. Ron Wyden, co-sponsor of the eliminated provision, told me. "It's a place where, again and again, the public interest is deep-sixed behind closed doors and without any fingerprints."

For those of you who might have missed Sam Stein's original story, here it is in a nutshell:

Building on public outrage and presidential denunciations of executives at bailed out companies getting bonuses, Wyden and his Republican colleague, Sen. Olympia Snowe, crafted a provision in the stimulus bill that would have forced bailout recipients to cap their bonuses at $100,000 (any amount above that would be taxed at 35 percent).

According to Wyden, he "spent hours on the Senate floor," working to get the bipartisan amendment passed. He succeeded -- not a single Senator voted against the provision. "But," says Wyden, "it died in conference."

So who killed it? Wyden doesn't know.

Think about that for a second. We live in a country where one of the 100 most powerful people in government, the cosponsor of the amendment in question, has no clue how it got removed in the Senate-House conference committee -- or if it was taken out of the legislation even before it made it into conference.

And, so far, no one in the administration of a president who promised that transparency would be a "touchstone" of his presidency has demanded that whoever killed the provision step forward and own up to it.

It took Andrew Cuomo, using his authority as New York Attorney General, to get us at least some of the details about the AIG bonuses.

It's time for the White House to do the same, using its authority to uncover who removed the Wyden-Snowe provision from the stimulus bill.

"I pulled out all the stops," Wyden told me, "to convince the president's economic team that this amendment was vital to the White House for two reasons: 1) the president had spoken out against bonuses; 2) fury about bonuses would kneecap confidence in the president's entire economic policy."

But no one inside the president's economic team was in favor of it. As Wyden put it: "If the White House economic team had made it clear that this was important, this provision would never have been removed. I don't believe the president has been well-served on the bonus issue by his economic team."

So who asked for the amendment to be removed? Jason Furman? Peter Orzack? Tim Geithner? Larry Summers?

Such a move would certainly be consistent with the positions put forth by Summers who, as late as yesterday -- even contradicting the president -- continued to argue that attempting to stop the AIG bonuses would have "put the whole economy at risk."

Have you noticed how, whenever there is a serious effort to put an end to business-as-usual, we are warned by insiders like Paulson and Summers that the result will be the end of civilization?

"This lack of transparency -- and the lack of accountability that results -- is one of the most significant threats to our democracy," Wyden told me. "This is not at all how the civics books tell us the system is suppose to work. What we have here is a prime example of Washington deny, defer, delay."

He's right. We deserve better. Let's make this D.C. mystery the cause célèbre it deserves to be. Let's demand that the White House live up to its vows of transparency.

Anonymous said...

GEITHNER to BE FUCKED BUY RAILCAR...


Treasury Secretary Facing a Defining Moment

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Timothy F. Geithner finds his plate is more than full of shit.

Published: March 18, 2009

WASHINGTON — All three of President Obama’s top economic advisers were on message when they appeared Sunday on separate television talk shows. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, they said, had concluded, based on lawyers’ advice, that he could not stop the $165 million in bonuses that the American International Group was even then doling out to hundreds of employees.
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But when Mr. Geithner and other officials met at the White House that night, the president’s political advisers — who had agreed to the day’s message — decided the growing outcry left Mr. Obama no choice but to publicly second-guess his Treasury secretary.

The next morning on camera, the president said he had directed Mr. Geithner to find a legal way “to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

Thus began perhaps the worst week in a string of bad weeks for the Treasury secretary. The mixed messages on A.I.G. gave further ammunition to critics who had begun questioning Mr. Geithner’s credibility as the administration’s point man on the economy, an essential commodity if he is to help restore consumer confidence.

Fair or not, questions about why Mr. Geithner did not know sooner about the A.I.G. bonuses and act to stop them threaten to overwhelm his achievements and undermine Mr. Obama’s overall economic agenda. The controversy comes as Mr. Geithner is about to announce details of the restructured bank rescue program, and it clouds prospects for more rescue funds that the administration is all but certain to need.

The once-heralded Wall Street credentials of Mr. Geithner, formerly the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, were already marred by false starts in revamping the Bush administration’s bank rescue program, even as his perceived closeness to financiers and unease with populist politics left Main Street skeptical.

On Wednesday, a junior Republican in Congress and some traders on Wall Street went so far as to call for him to quit or be fired. The Republican leader of the House, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, told a conservative talk-radio host that the secretary is “on thin ice.”

But Mr. Geithner’s boss, the president, interjected a vote of “complete confidence.”

“Tim Geithner didn’t draft these contracts with A.I.G.,” Mr. Obama told reporters on the White House lawn as he left for California on Wednesday. “There has never been a secretary of the Treasury, except maybe Alexander Hamilton right after the Revolutionary War, who’s had to deal with the multiplicity of issues that Secretary Geithner is having to deal with — all at the same time.”

“He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand,” the president continued. “And what we need to be doing is making sure that we are providing him the support that he needs.”

Mr. Geithner is shouldering more crises on his slight frame than most Treasury secretaries ever have. And he is doing so without the usual complement of Treasury assistants because of administration delays in vetting potential nominees — a consequence in part of its efforts to avoid embarrassments like the disclosures of Mr. Geithner’s past tax lapses, which nearly doomed his nomination.

Since before his confirmation in late January, Mr. Geithner has juggled a crushing workload: overhauling the Bush administration’s discredited financial bailout program; helping with Mr. Obama’s nearly $800 billion economic stimulus plan; and managing the government effort to salvage the auto industry.

Mr. Geithner is now fashioning a new federal regulatory structure for the financial industry to replace the one that failed. He has developed a housing program that aims to avert up to nine million more foreclosures, and programs for getting credit flowing to small businesses and consumers as well as the major financial giants.

At 47, the same age as the president, Mr. Geithner works out at 5:30 a.m., gets to his desk by 6:30 and leaves 15 hours later.

On Tuesday last week, as he prepared for a meeting in London of the finance ministers of the Group of 20 nations, Mr. Geithner learned that A.I.G. by Sunday would send out the bonuses to employees at its financial products unit, which developed the risky derivatives now blamed for the global credit crisis.

With few senior political appointees on hand, the word came from one of the numerous career civil servants who keep the Treasury functioning through changes of administration, according to an official.

Mr. Geithner consulted lawyers. They told him the government could not override the contracts that the insurance conglomerate had signed in early 2008, when its financial products unit already was fast losing money.

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Geithner called A.I.G.’s government-appointed chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, and demanded that he renegotiate payments. The next morning, Mr. Geithner informed White House advisers. Later that day a senior adviser, David Axelrod, informed the president.

On Friday, Mr. Liddy said he could not block the bonuses; he did agree to reduce future executive bonuses set for July 15 and Sept. 15. With Mr. Geithner in London, Treasury officials tried to manage the potential criticism by leaking word to selected news media on Saturday. On Sunday, the economic advisers went on TV.

The A.I.G. tempest has been especially explosive for Mr. Geithner because, as president of the New York Fed, he was the one administration official who had been involved in the Bush-era bailouts.

Once A.I.G. was under the Fed’s control, its executive compensation plans hardly came up, according to officials.

For all the furor, “ultimately we will all be judged by whether we get out of this economic mess,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, “and Tim, with his intelligence, experience and dedication is the best guy to get us out.”

Anonymous said...

The A.I.G. tempest has been especially explosive for Mr. Geithner because, as president of the New York Fed, he was the one administration official who had been involved in the Bush-era bailouts.

*

Who could have KNOWN??

Who could have guessed?

Anonymous said...

OREO RATINGS TO FUCKING EXPLODE ... OREO TO BE MORE POPULAR THAN FUCKING 'W'

OREO & GEITHNER didn't know about the bonuses, and have NOW been caught lying to the public. Who would have guessed??

Don't worry the PUSSY will forgive OREO, but the US public will not.

###

AIG CEO: Obama Officials Knew About Bonuses

KARK - ‎7 minutes ago‎
On Capitol Hill Wednesday, CEO Edward Liddy says he encouraged employees to give half of the money back. He worries about turning over their names to ...
AIG’s not the only company to pay bail-out bonuses
eYugoslavia.com - ‎8 minutes ago‎
As AIG head Edward Liddy faced criticism on Capitol Hill Wednesday, a federal regulator defended a payment by Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance firm seized ...
AIG
AIG boss, Obama in the hot-seats as Congress fumes
Times of India - ‎9 minutes ago‎
After a day-long congressional grilling for AIG's government-appointed boss, Edward Liddy, Democrats announced late Wednesday plans to slap a 90-percent ...
AIG
AIG, Obama under fire as as Congress, public take aim
Newstrack India - ‎10 minutes ago‎
... which according to testimony before the House Financial Services Committee from AIG head Edward Liddy had known about the intention to pay the bonuses ...

Anonymous said...

GOOD SHIT:
letters suggest that all bonus recipients should be “executed with piano wire around their necks, their familys.”

Another one read, “If the government can’t do this properly, we the people will take it in our own hands and see that justice is done. I’m looking for all the CEOs’ names, kids, where they live, etc.”


Federal relationship with AIG is “toxic”

By Rick Spruill (Contact)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009


AIG leaders felt the ire of American taxpayers through members of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee in a meeting Wednesday.

Edward Liddy, who agreed to become chief executive officer of the ailing insurance giant when asked by Congress last year, told committee members some employees have begun returning all or part of bonus checks totaling $165 million.

The bonuses have stirred the darker side of public opinion in reaction to government bailouts for big businesses that seek to abuse the taxpayer money sustaining them.

Taxpayer anger was apparent in written threats Liddy read to the committee Wednesday.

One of the letters suggested that all bonus recipients should be “executed with piano wire around their necks.”

Another one read, “If the government can’t do this properly, we the people will take it in our own hands and see that justice is done. I’m looking for all the CEOs’ names, kids, where they live, etc.”

Financial Services Committee member U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., voiced his concerns at the start of Wednesday’s meeting.

“It disappoints me to see that some of the very companies who requested taxpayer assistance have failed to change their pattern of irresponsible decision-making which undoubtedly contributed to the current economic crisis,” Barrett said. “The Bush administration and then- chairman of the New York Fed Timothy Geithner mismanaged the implementation of this program and the Obama administration, while assuring us that they knew exactly what was going on and how monies were being spent, have failed to bring about the necessary reforms and safeguards to protect the American taxpayers.

“We need to figure out our exit strategy, how taxpayers are going to be paid back, and when we can end this toxic relationship with AIG.”

Liddy said he, too, was angry about the bonuses. He asked recipients of more than $100,000 to return at least half, he said, and added that some have “already stepped forward and returned 100 percent.”

He did not respond directly when advised in sharp terms to pay to the Treasury all the money handed out last weekend in “retention payments.”

AIG has gobbled up $170 billion in federal bailout money since the U.S. financial crisis erupted late last year with the collapse of the housing market.

Since then, AIG has paid $220 million in retention awards to its financial products employees — $55 million in December and $165 million had to be paid this month.

Both federal financial bailout programs — the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Bush Administration and the $780 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of Obama — remain politically unpopular with anxious voters and lawmakers alike.

Financial Services Committee member U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., voiced his concerns at the start Wednesday’s meeting.

B.J. Boling, Barrett spokesman, said Wednesday there are spending limit-based proposals floating around capital hill that might offset some of the taxpayer money being spent in government stimulus programs.

Anonymous said...

OREO got elected cuz he put GEITHNER in the driver seat.

The bankers drove this country into the soil, and OREO was supposed to protect their WHITE ASSES.

It's NOW going to get very fucking interesting, now that OREO is a CONFIRMED fucking pocket liar.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

We were in Santa Cruz, CA which is home to way too many ultra liberals, activist college students, and more recently a TON of immigrants.

hbm, doesn't it sound like heaven?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

By the end of this summer we should have a home here instead of being renters...

Dude, I would IMPLORE you to wait.

Lots of Cali's have come here & had their ass handed to them, especially the past 3-4 yrs.

If youcan put up with the "stigma" of renting for another year or two, you'll see just how bad a place can get.

I think you might be thinking "things could be worse, this place is GREAT!", but this place is on Leg 1 of it's way down the toilet.

Rent, and find out. You might have BIG SECOND THOUGHTS. We have (probably) 16-18%+ unemployment, and it'll get worse before it gets better.

We're in The Crushing Phase of Depreciation now. Hop on, and you'll just get crushed.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

March 09 sales to date
13 Sold @ $221k med
March 08 to date
47 Sold @284k med

8 bank owned
1 short sale


Wow, 70% REO & shorts.

So, the traditional 6% on those sales is $172,380, for about 17 days or $10,140 per day for brokers.

For 1,500 brokers (?), that's $6.76 per day. Gross profit. Net might be a few bucks less.

HELLO iSKY!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Rocketing through the recession

As people look for more ways to save, they’re opening up to new ideas – and a Bend startup is reaping the benefits

A piece about RocketBux, this is the sort of employer we should have solicited back when we had the money.

I'm not sure what they pay, but there is at least the hope of family-wage jobs that are going somewhere coming out of this sort of company. More likely a VC buyout for the owners, but hey, you take what you can get.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

hbm, your "victims" are fighting back:

Mexico's new tariffs could cost Oregon millions
by Richard Read, The Oregonian
Wednesday March 18, 2009, 8:45 PM

Mexico, angered by a ban on its trucks entering the United States, slapped tariffs on 90 U.S. products -- a move effective today that could cost Oregon exporters tens of millions of dollars.

The duties include 20 percent tariffs on Christmas trees, pears and frozen potatoes, all of which Oregon sells to Mexico. A Mexican official confirmed his government chose the $2.4 billion worth of products partly to target states with powerful Democratic politicians.


Mexico TARGETING Liberals? What the fuck is next? No free health care for illegals? Blacks voting RePug?

Better put the kaibash on this hbm... you bastards won't have anymore VICTIMS to rescue.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Columbia River Bank relocates some staff
by The Associated Press
Wednesday March 18, 2009, 7:17 PM

As it pares its payroll, the Columbia River Bank plans to relocate several departments and 30 positions from Vancouver to The Dalles.

The move will increase the bank's staff in the Columbia Gorge to about 150 - up about 25 percent - and decrease the bank's overall work force.

By the time the relocation is complete at the middle of the year, the bank says it will have 335 workers - down 25 percent from a peak in August 2008.

The bank expects the move, other staff reductions and attrition to save $3.1 million annually.

The bank says some technology and human resources employees will remain in Vancouver.


Same thing could be happening at CACB, but it'd NEVER get reported.

Welcome to Bend.

Anonymous said...

The duties include 20 percent tariffs on Christmas trees, pears and frozen potatoes, all of which Oregon sells to Mexico. A Mexican official confirmed his government chose the $2.4 billion worth of products partly to target states with powerful Democratic politicians.

*

It's an interesting problem. OREO won the election by being financed by bankers ( robbers ), but courted UNIONS. I think its in everyone's interest to let truckers move goods, especially given they were grand-fathered.

So be it, no goods to mexicans, but they'll still run drugs here, so in the future, most mexicans you see will not be here to work, but only to steal or sell drugs.

Then of course BEND is PUG, so under the HOMER theory we'll be FULL of Mexicans, who will buy our STD's cuz Bend is PUG. So all of Bend RE problems will be solved with Mex Drug dollars.

How long will this last? Soon EVERYONE will hate the OREO, bankers and unions so what.

This country is all going to FUCK each other.

Anonymous said...

We were in Santa Cruz, CA which is home to way too many ultra liberals, activist college students, and more recently a TON of immigrants.

hbm, doesn't it sound like heaven?


The PC crowd in Santa Cruz is a little over the top, even for me. But I'd still rather live with neighbors like that than with a bunch of right-wing hillbillies.

This guy's idea of paradise seems to be a place with a lot of conservative rednecks. If that's the case, Bend isn't a bad choice. But there are many locales that are even better -- Texas, Oklahoma, M'issippi, South Cah'lina, etc. I'm wondering why he didn't move to one of those. (And the homes are even cheaper than in Bend.)

Bewert said...

He could have considered Logan, UT. Conservative as hell, and tied for the second lowest unemployment rate in the US--2.8% in December.

Bewert said...

BTW, get ready for a $3 per household transit tax on your sewer/water bill this summer.

Jelement said...

Given the choice, I'd rather be around a lot of conservative rednecks than illegals. I wouldn't define myself as either liberal or conservative, but Santa Cruz is a joke. UCSC students will get behind any bullshit cause just to go out and sit in traffic and be annoying. Illegals are taking over neighborhoods and schools, and jobs are going away as the few chain retailers that were able to open in town are closing up.

Can things get way worse in Bend? Sure they can, but at least Bend isn't a sanctuary city with 25% unemployment like Watsonville (in Santa Cruz county, and yes, 25%). So what if unemployment gets to 16-18%, things are already at almost 11%, that doesn't mean nobody has a job.

As for people from Cali who moved here over the last 3-4 years and got screwed in RE, that happened to anyone who bought in the central valley in the last 3-4 years too, and tons of other places around the country. If they were too stupid to realize they were buying an overprices house, that's their own damn fault, and to take an ARM with it just proves their stupidity.

I think by this summer it will be a good time to jump in the local market for something around $150k-$175k. The way things have been going that will probably be the places that are $200k-$250k right now. There's plenty of places at that price that would make a fine home, and not cost that much more than renting.

Jelement said...

I bet the 2.8% of the population unemployed in Logan, UT is the same percentage that isn't LDS. That would be me, not able to get a job because I don't believe in their BS.

Bewert said...

Yep, you get that right Jed ;)

Take a look at my link, and it's amazing how all Utah's numbers are in the top 50.

Bewert said...

Krugman piles on:

Krugman: The big dither
By Paul Krugman
Published: March 6, 2009

In his big speech to Congress last month, President Barack Obama argued for bold steps to fix America's dysfunctional banks.

"While the cost of action will be great," he declared, "I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade."

Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there's a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Obama's failure to match his words with deeds.

The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.

Here's how the pattern works: First, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators.

Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again.

Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often referred to these days as "toxic waste," are really worth much more than anyone is actually willing to pay for them - and that if these assets were properly priced, all our troubles would go away.

Thus, in a recent interview Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to make a distinction between the "basic inherent economic value" of troubled assets and the "artificially depressed value" that those assets command right now.

In recent transactions, even AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities have sold for less than 40 cents on the dollar, but Geithner seems to think they're worth much, much more. And the government's job, he declared, is to "provide the financing to help get those markets working," pushing the price of toxic waste up to where it ought to be.

What's more, officials seem to believe that getting toxic waste properly priced would cure the ills of all our major financial institutions.

Earlier this week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was asked about the problem of "zombies" - financial institutions that are effectively bankrupt but are being kept alive by government aid.

"I don't know of any large zombie institutions in the U.S. financial system," he declared, and went on to specifically deny that AIG - AIG! - is a zombie.

This is the same AIG that, unable to honor its promises to pay off other financial institutions when bonds default, has already received $150 billion in aid and just got a commitment for $30 billion more.

The truth is that the Bernanke-Geithner plan - the plan the administration keeps floating, in slightly different versions - isn't going to fly.

Take the plan's latest incarnation: a proposal to make low-interest loans to private investors willing to buy up troubled assets. This would certainly drive up the price of toxic waste because it would offer a heads-you-win, tails-we-lose proposition. As described, the plan would let investors profit if asset prices went up but just walk away if prices fell substantially.

But would it be enough to make the banking system healthy? No.

Think of it this way: By using taxpayer funds to subsidize the prices of toxic waste, the administration would shower benefits on everyone who made the mistake of buying the stuff.

Some of those benefits would trickle down to where they're needed, shoring up the balance sheets of key financial institutions. But most of the benefit would go to people who don't need or deserve to be rescued.

And this means that the government would have to lay out trillions of dollars to bring the financial system back to health, which would, in turn, both ensure a fierce public outcry and add to already serious concerns about the deficit. (Yes, even strong advocates of fiscal stimulus like yours truly worry about red ink.) Realistically, it's just not going to happen.

###

Any bets on who gets shown the door first? My bet is on Larry Summers.

So why has this zombie idea - it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming back - taken such a powerful grip?

The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren't willing to face the facts. They don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable.

But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president's fears: Inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more.

Anonymous said...

>>Marge, how much inventory listed and how much is vacant, to compare to that horrific sales number for Feb to date.<<<

More RE stats:

As of this day,
Total active listings in Deschutes County including lots, farms, the whole kaboodle are 5337. So far this month 83 have sold.

Now strictly listings that have a dwelling included in the County. Active = 3461 Vacant = 1098.

Bend only with a dwelling Active = 1813, Vacant = 618 Sold = 25 @ $210k median.

What else did you want?

Bewert said...

Marge, how does that 25 @ $210K relate to the 13 @ $221K from the other day?

Bewert said...

Local economic numbers, pretty dismal
bend-gazette.blogspot.com

But, hey, it's worse in the Central Valley.

Will update per Marge.

Anonymous said...

From Bruce's link:

Unemployment in Oregon (by Metropolitan Statistical Area)

Corvallis, OR 7.7%
Salem 10.7%
Eugene-Springfield, OR 11.9%
Medford, OR 12.9%
Bend, OR 14.6%

Anonymous said...

Those numbers are for January 2009.


Bruce - it's hard to read the text on Bend Gazette.

Not enough contrast.

How about a white background?
(Or larger font?)

Bewert said...

Try ctl + to make them bigger. I'm not sure it works in IE, though.

I'll play around with the font and BG.

Bewert said...

Better?

Anonymous said...

Month to date sales march 19/09
25 @210k

2008
57@289k

Anonymous said...

Bruce,
Small misquote on the Gazette "Bend real estate listings with a dwelling-current numbers

Active listings 1813
Number of these vacant 1098 "

The vacant # for Bend only is 618 not 1098. 1098 is for the County.

Bewert said...

Marge, I updated the sales numbers, too. Do you have REO and shorts sales available through the 19th?

Anonymous said...

From Dunc's blog:

Driving home last night, I watched as a huge new pickup, with two new 3-wheelers in back, the driver talking on a cell phone and waving his hands, tailgating a smaller car.

What's to say? It could just as easily be a Bendite as a Californian.


More likely to be a Bendite, based on my experience in both places. Bendites just LOVE their huge trucks and noisy motorized toys.

I've never been able to understand why anybody who isn't a farmer, a rancher or a construction worker would want a pickup.

But I guess it's all about making a statement: "Look at me! I got a big, tough truck! That makes me a big, tough man!"

Anonymous said...

15 REO's 3 Short sales of the 25 sold to date.

Anonymous said...

hbm blathers:
"What's to say? It could just as easily be a Bendite as a Californian.

More likely to be a Bendite, based on my experience in both places. Bendites just LOVE their huge trucks and noisy motorized toys.

---

I guess you never been to Pismo Beach, eh?

I've never been able to understand why anybody who isn't a farmer, a rancher or a construction worker would want a pickup.
---

I guess you never had any toys to tow behind, eh? Kinda hard with that Prius POS, eh?

But I guess it's all about making a statement: "Look at me! I got a big, tough truck! That makes me a big, tough man!"
---

Yep, only Bendites make statements like that, eh?

I have never known Cali-Bangers to make statements like that. Have you?

(hbm... like shooting fish in a barrel!!)

Bewert said...

Reminding myself everything's relative:

http://reliques.online.fr/detroit/detroit00.html

"The Ruins Of Detroit"

">" on lower left to view pics.

Anonymous said...

Anon 12:05: I suspect you are actually "Coyote" from the NW Republican blog. The line about "shooting fish in a barrel" gave you away.

What's the matter -- traffic so light on your imbecilic right-wing blog that you have to come over here to stir up some action?

Yap yap.

(PS: I drive a Jaguar, not a Prius. The statement my car makes is: "I am SOOOOoooo much cooler than redneck morons who drive pickup trucks.")

Anonymous said...

"The Ruins Of Detroit"

Wow ... may that never happen here.

Bewert said...

Facing huge cutbacks, Council approves $687K building standards update

Won't be posting much soon. That's the last straw. We're out of here by the end of May.

Anonymous said...

Won't be posting much soon. That's the last straw. We're out of here by the end of May.

####

Good luck wherever you may go BRUCE PILGRIM (BP).

Anonymous said...

Bend, OR 14.6%

*

#1 bend is always #1.

'face the facts'

Listen BP, don't you get it?? The AIG $160B, and a good hunk going to bonuses, people are making MORE money than anytime in their lives right now.

'Face the Facts' - these people can print money and hand it out to each other forever.

Anonymous said...

BTW, get ready for a $3 per household transit tax on your sewer/water bill this summer.

*

It's always interesting here that the 'water bill' is where they stuff all the 'taxes' in PDX, they put it all on property tax bill, but in BEND can't do that, us landlords make tenants pay the water bill, so in effect everybody in BEND gets fucked, very fair system.

I expect to see $100/mo 'water bill' in 2-3 years in BEND, and in PDX its still $40/quarter.

At the current rate the 'water-bill' will be $500/mo in BEND in ten years.

Anonymous said...

So when is newbie boyfriend of BP going to post the pic's of her financee's tits??

Sunday is coming up quick.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't help but notice in this weeks SORE, that HBM has an ad for a 38MM @starz.

You don't think homer had an influence?

Anonymous said...


Won't be posting much soon. That's the last straw. We're out of here by the end of May.



It's not like you have to pay all $687,000 by yerself!

What's May -- the end of your rental contract?

Surely there's other reasons...?

Anonymous said...

They're almost here!! Who would have guessed?? Soon OREO & Clones can print all they want, and nobody will even have their hand-out. Sort of like currency in during the civil-war.


U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar

Wed Mar 18, 2009 11:16am EDT


LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar.

Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket.

Persaud, chairman of consultants Intelligence Capital and a former currency chief at JPMorgan, said the recommendation would be one of a number delivered to the United Nations on March 25 by the U.N. Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform.

"It is a good moment to move to a shared reserve currency," he said.

Central banks hold their reserves in a variety of currencies and gold, but the dollar has dominated as the most convincing store of value -- though its rate has wavered in recent years as the United States ran up huge twin budget and external deficits.

Some analysts said news of the U.N. panel's recommendation extended dollar losses because it fed into concerns about the future of the greenback as the main global reserve currency, raising the chances of central bank sales of dollar holdings.

"Speculation that major central banks would begin rebalancing their FX reserves has risen since the intensification of the dollar's slide between 2002 and mid-2008," CMC Markets said in a note.

Russia is also planning to propose the creation of a new reserve currency, to be issued by international financial institutions, at the April G20 meeting, according to the text of its proposals published on Monday.

It has significantly reduced the dollar's share in its own reserves in recent years.

GOOD TIME

Persaud said that the United States was concerned that holding the reserve currency made it impossible to run policy, while the rest of world was also unhappy with the generally declining dollar.

"There is a moment that can be grasped for change," he said.

"Today the Americans complain that when the world wants to save, it means a deficit. A shared (reserve) would reduce the possibility of global imbalances."

Persaud said the panel had been looking at using something like an expanded Special Drawing Right, originally created by the International Monetary Fund in 1969 but now used mainly as an accounting unit within similar organizations.

The SDR and the old Ecu are essentially combinations of currencies, weighted to a constituent's economic clout, which can be valued against other currencies and indeed against those inside the basket.

Anonymous said...

What's May -- the end of your rental contract?

Surely there's other reasons...?

*

The PUSSY has so many fucking anal diseases that he can't even go out anymore and get lucky in BEND, not even at BendBB's trailer.

The PUSSY has been PROMISING to leave forever. But I'll tell you all the real story, anybody drive by the bike-shops lately?? They're all closing around Galveston, remember BP lives off his wife, and the bike-shop is Bend dead. The PUSSY told us months ago that when wifey bailed, he was going with her to UTAH.

PUSSY has only been here 1-1/2 year, and has been promising to leave since day-one.

Don't hold your breath, and watch the wifes bike shop.

Anonymous said...

I am outta here in May too. But I'm coming back. Pussy....you coming back? or running. You're going to miss the best time in Bend, "summer", 39 days of sunshine and thunder storms. At least wait til October,"winter", to leave. Maybe HBM will go with you.

Anonymous said...

You're going to miss the best time in Bend, "summer", 39 days of sunshine and thunder storms.

LOL! But I always figure on 90 days of sunshine (mid-June to mid-September).

At least wait til October,"winter", to leave.

"Winter" starts promptly on Oct. 31 here. As an olde-tymer I thought you would know that, Marge.

Maybe HBM will go with you.

Alas, he will not, more's the pity. It'll be a couple of years at least before I'm able to escape.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't help but notice in this weeks SORE, that HBM has an ad for a 38MM @starz.

Tits and JOOS, tits and JOOS -- that's all anybody talks about here. BORRRRRrrrrr-ing!

Anonymous said...

Bruce - it's hard to read the text on Bend Gazette.

It's just plain hard to read the thing, period. Or maybe I should say stomach.

Anonymous said...

A hard gazelle is good to find.

Anonymous said...

Tits and JOOS, tits and JOOS -- that's all anybody talks about here.

*

More pic's of tits&jooz, is the fiancee a Jewess?

Homer, for real the 38MM in HBM's rag this week is the 'real thing' and there are pic's.

I think her name is Crystal Ashley aka 38MM ( not the ammo, this be 38" and MM cup ). That's the april 1 lineup, then on April 21, 2009 HBM has "Little Lisa" lined up, more of the same all 3 ft of her, a dwarf (midget?) with bazookas, ONLY IN BEND.

Anonymous said...

Here are some of Taleb's highlights:

*Those who did not see the crisis coming in government should be out of there.
*Those responsible should not only be punished but removed from office.
*Bernanke did not see the risk coming.
*Bernanke should not be the Fed Chairman.
*Bankers who got us here are still around and we're giving them more money.
*Unless we do something drastic we are not going to pull out of this.
*The responsible people, need only be punished, but out of there.
*The dependence on debt needs to be eliminated.
*You cannot trust someone making a bonus and handling risks.
*Society pays for this risk. This can't be.
*We need to de-leverage massively.
*Build robustness by eliminating debt.
*Change the culture, maybe change the system too.
*This class of people, i.e., Geithner et al., can't manage this problem.
*Geithner et al. have failed before and they will fail again.

Yesterday on Larry King Live Arianna Huffington made some brilliant points, including "liquidity is not the problem but solvency is." She also called for the removal of Geithner and Summers. Considering Geithner was the President of the New York Federal Reserve, Larry Summers was President Clinton's last Treasury Secretary and Ben Bernanke was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, this may be best. It was believed that these gentlemen could best address the financial problem because of their experience -- maybe not.

Taleb, Roubini and Huffington are probably right. Geithner, Summers, Bernanke et al. should go. And while we're at it, Senators Chris Dodd (D) and Richard Shelby (R) as the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs should go too. Maybe Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Nouriel Roubini should be advising President Obama.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

New water rules may cost Bend $22M
State considering changes to drinking water systems to comply with EPA rules

By Kate Ramsayer / The Bulletin
Published: March 20. 2009 4:00AM PST

The city of Bend could be facing a $10 million to $22 million upgrade to its drinking water system in the next 3½ years under proposed changes to the state’s drinking water rules.

The changes — the subject of a public hearing in Bend next week — will bring Oregon into compliance with federal Environmental Protection Agency regulations, said Chris Hughes with the Oregon Department of Human Services Drinking Water Program, which is proposing to amend state rules.

While the rules would affect drinking water systems across the state, and require several Central Oregon water providers to do additional testing, Bend will see a significant cost for infrastructure improvements associated with the updated regulations.

The new rules would require some water suppliers who use surface water supplies to use tougher, more effective methods for getting rid of Cryptosporidium — a parasite that infects people and animals and causes diarrhea, nausea, dehydration and other symptoms.

“It’s very hard to remove, and it’s very hard to treat for,” Hughes said.

“If you have an abnormally high number of Cryptosporidium in your water, you’re going to be required to increase your treatment,” she said.

Bend, which gets its water from creeks west of the city, has never found any evidence of live Cryptosporidium in the drinking water, said Tom Hickmann, utility services division manager with Bend’s Public Works Department, although it has found a couple isolated shells from the bug.

“But we know the possibility for them to be there is very real,” he said.

And because Bend is one of the four unfiltered drinking water systems in the state, even though the drinking water is clean, it still needs to install systems that would kill the parasite.

Two options

The city is considering two options, Hickmann said.

One is to shine ultraviolet light on the drinking water to kill the Cryptosporidium. The lights would cost about $10 million to install, but would come with a hefty price tag for the electricity and maintenance over the years.

The other option would be to install special membranes that would filter out the parasite, Hickmann said, at a cost of about $22 million. But the membrane system would also filter out debris and ash from the water, should a wildfire break out in the Tumalo Creek watershed.

“When we look at the other risks we’re facing, for instance fire in the watershed, this actually provides a higher benefit to the community,” Hickmann said.

The City Council will probably decide which option to go with this summer, he said, and the new system has to be in place by October 2012.

It’s a difficult economic time for a project of this magnitude, Hickmann noted, even though he understands the rule and the need to address the risk.

“Pulling resources together to deal with this is a challenge to do in a short time frame,” he said, adding that any major project would probably raise water rates.

Additional rule changes from the state could require more monitoring for other contaminants in the drinking water supply.

The state is proposing a different way for water systems to check for a class of contaminants called disinfection byproducts, which are formed when chlorine added to the water to kill some pathogens combines with organic materials, such as decaying vegetation, Hughes said.

Water systems previously had to test for these contaminants at the spot they are most likely to occur. But now, Hughes said, the providers would have to do a study to determine other places where the byproducts might pop up, and test in more places.

“That one we’re well under way with compliance,” Hickmann said.

The city has developed a computer model to see where potential hot spots are, and checked out those sites.

A source of pride

In general, disinfection byproducts aren’t a concern for the city’s water supply, he said.

“We’re kind of a freak of nature when it comes to our drinking water, in the sense that we don’t have much mineral content or organic content in our water,” he said. “We’re incredibly fortunate that way.”

The city is proud of its drinking water quality. Hickmann noted that even when the city adds a new treatment step, the taste should not change.

The state’s new rules would also require providers that get their drinking water supply from groundwater sources to prove they treat the water well enough to get rid of 99.99 percent of certain pathogens, such as fecal coliform, Hughes said. That change in monitoring standards starts in December.

And the rule outlines how suppliers who don’t meet those standards have to fix the problems, for example by adding more storage facilities so the water can come into contact with chlorine for longer periods of time.

Again, Hickmann said, Bend is in a strong position for meeting this rule because the city’s groundwater — which complements its surface water sources — is clean as well.

“This is just a reasonable effort to say, let’s make sure we’re protecting the community and the citizens,” Hickmann said. “I don’t think it’s going to be too burdensome.”

Effects on suppliers

Avion Water Co. doesn’t use surface water and doesn’t have to chlorinate its water, so the only rule that applies to the company would be the groundwater monitoring, said Art Sharkey, assistant service manager with the company. And with Avion drawing water up through basalt from aquifers 400 to 600 feet underground, its wells provide clean water and shouldn’t require radical changes, he said.

“There will be a little more regulation on testing. I don’t think it’s going to be a dramatic effect for us,” he said.

Water officials in Madras and Redmond could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

Teresa Mireles with Umpqua Research Co. in Bend, which tests the city of Prineville’s drinking water, said the cost of additional testing could be a burden, however. “Some of the smaller (water systems) just can’t afford it,” she said.

The new rules are meant to ensure the safety of drinking water, but would cause extra work and extra money for the water systems, said Jason Green, the executive director of the Oregon Association of Water Utilities, which could translate into higher rates.

“New rules are always a challenge,” he said.

Anonymous said...

Homer,

City of PDX has the same issue as above, but PDX has bull-run which is similar to the Tumalo water shed.

What the city of PDX did was tell the federal government to FUCK-OFF.

All this conversion to $20M-$1B systems is the result of the 'filtering' and construction industry.

Bend could also tell the US-GOV to 'FUCK-OFF', but the city of Bend, will simply add $500/mo to the water bill to carry the $20M loan, and then pass the $20M to MOSS(MDU/KR), this is how things are done in BEND, it would never occur to the city of bend to tell the EPA to 'fuck off'.

Simply another reason why people will just 'move away' from BEND. In Bend we have our own AIG, here all the tax-payer and city dweller money goes to MOSS&CO.

Anonymous said...

>>I've never been able to understand why anybody who isn't a farmer, a rancher or a construction worker would want a pickup

I had an old small truck once. Very useful to take things to the dump with. Cheaper than a passenger car.

I'm not into the fancy ones--I think the cult of the urban truck is ridiculous. But the cheap old reliables are appealing to me.

Thing you notice about having a truck is the numerous requests you get from people who only have cars to borrow it so they can move a mattress or something.

Anonymous said...

>>*Change the culture, maybe change the system too.

Obama sounded like he wanted to do this in inauguration speech. Since then, he's been one lame fucker showing no signs of change at all.

Anonymous said...

Obama sounded like he wanted to do this in inauguration speech. Since then, he's been one lame fucker showing no signs of change at all.

That's not true, that's just not true. He got rid of that evil George Bush. George Bush caused all the problems in the world in the last eight years. I know because I read about it in the Daily Kos, and the Huffington Post! And because Barbra Streisand, and Sean Penn, and Alex Baldwin, and Phil Donahue, and Jimmy Carter told me so on T.V. Those guys know what they're talking about! And it was on the news, too. Katie Couric even said so.

And I saw the change, too. He even put up a swing set at the White House.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and I forgot, that HBM guy over at the Source told me too!

Anonymous said...

"There was no one in that firm, including secretaries, that were getting less than hundreds of thousands of dollars," she said.

READ THE ABOVE VERY CAREFULLY. SEE AS I HAVE SAID ALL ALONG, THE ENTIRE US ECONOMY HAS BEC0ME A 'PONZI' IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS. EVERYBODY THAT KEPT THEIR MOUTH SHUT (OMERTA) GOT 10X PAY THEY DESERVED. AIG IS JUST THE TIP OF THE BONUS-PAY ICEBERG. OMERTA IS BEND, SAWYER, 1031, SORE, BULL, ... MOSS, MOSS, & MOSS.


Madoff, a man who pioneered the use of computers for stock trading, reportedly used antiquated gear in his office.

"They were 15 to 20 years old," Franks said. "The reason for this is that modern computers keep records. You can archive anything. Anything can be saved. Madoff didn't want any records retained."

And according to Franks, even the people answering the phones were earning top dollar.

"There was no one in that firm, including secretaries, that were getting less than hundreds of thousands of dollars," she said.

Anonymous said...

So same with bend city government city elected, and staff.

Same with MOSS(CACB), and Knife-River, ... HOLLERN, ... all the incompetent made a TON of fucking money.

Now the money is due and payable. Solution, default on the dollar.

Take our city in PDX its bechtel&halliburton, in Bend its MDU. In PDX its ch2m-hill, in pdx its ch2m-hill.

It's always been this way in orygun. The big architecture firms and construction firms pick&choose the electable, and then all the taxpayer cash flows back to the 'owners' of the city.

Like all PONZI's it all works fine, when everyone is ROLLING IN CASH, but during a depression the house-of-cards collapses.

Today in BEND its every crook for himself, which is why you see MOSS, sawyer, Bend1031, bull, costa, sore, ... all going down.

Anonymous said...

In PDX its ch2m-hill, in BEND its ch2m-hill.

Every 5-10 years, throw away all the 'code' and pay another $1-100M for new rules, ... always been this way, Ch2M-Hill wouldn't want it any other way.

Jelement said...

What has become more infuriating over the last several days is all of congress and the media wasting time on these $165 million of AIG bonuses. A whopping 0.1% of the bailout money AIG has received from taxpayers. The wasted man hours going into this worthless show of passing a bill to try and tax the bonuses when anyone who paid attention in high school government knows that it wouldn't stand up in court is a joke.

Just more pandering by both sides, trying to act like they're doing something when they really know it won't get anywhere.

As for the pickup truck issue, I started out with a couple of beat up 60's ford trucks and loved them. Now I drive a ford ranger, simple truck with a few options. I don't get the luxury trucks (Lincoln Blackwood anyone?), but for basic useful transportation some of them aren't bad.

So who is going to give me the run down on the regulars here? Seems a lot of people post as anonymous but others know who they are...

Anonymous said...

Show us the fiancees 'goods' we tell you all about the pussy's. Sunday is coming up soon we need new pic's.

Anonymous said...

>>> who is going to give me the run down on the regulars here


Lessee, we got homer, marge, apu, bart, flanders, and .... am I missing anyone?

Anonymous said...

City of Bend may soon be able to get CARP first hand.

###

US lawmakers ask Fed for muni lending facility
Reuters - ‎59 minutes ago‎
WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) - A group of Democratic lawmakers on Friday urged the US Federal Reserve to create a temporary lending facility for the municipal bond market, saying it could help state and local governments access the capital markets

Anonymous said...

Smithers, Barney, Lisa,

Anonymous said...

Smithers is B-PUSSY, spineless, but in his case the 'boss' is wifey.

Barney is lava-beer

Lisa, well we haven't had a lisa for years...

A lisa in this group would be an oxymoron, e.g. an intelligent non-caustic woman.

marge is our marge, as she's been around powell-butt one too many times, ...

Anonymous said...

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=The+Obama+Deception+HQ+Full+length&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#

New OREO video is very good.

Anonymous said...

This is interesting on craigslist, .. the BP just might be leaving Bend.

Craigslist.com

For sale Gazelle. Male. Surgically modified with permanent erection.

"A hard gazelle is good to find"

Make offer. OBO.

bewert@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

This is the MOST fascinating thing I have seen yet.

We all know that 'credit unions' are SAFER than US BANKS. WE'll GUESS WHAT?? Tonight the US Government has SHUT-DOWN credit unions, NOW you MUST use the FED-RES 'approved banks'.


U.S. seizes top credit union clearing house
Fri Mar 20, 2009 8:13pm EDT



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators seized control on Friday of U.S. Central Federal Credit Union, a huge wholesale credit union with $34 billion in assets that provides services to nearly every other credit union.

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) also took control of Western Corporate (WesCorp) Federal Credit Union with $23 billion in assets.

The regulator said both institutions had an "unacceptably high concentration of risk."

Also on Friday, bank regulators seized three small banks with a total of 1.1 billion of assets.

The NCUA said service will continue uninterrupted at U.S. Central and WesCorp, and said member accounts are guaranteed through December 31, 2010.

Corporate credit unions are the retail credit union's credit union, providing services including lending, and check and payment clearance services.

NCUA said it seized the credit unions after completing a detailed analysis and stress test of the mortgage and asset backed securities held by all corporate credit unions.

U.S. Central based in Lenexa, Kansas has 26 corporate credit union members and says it provides settlement services to 100 percent of corporate credit unions and 93 percent of all U.S. credit unions.

WesCorp based in San Dimas, California, has approximately 1,100 retail credit union members, the NCUA said.

Regarding the three small banks, the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp found other banks to acquire the deposits of TeamBank (TFIN.O) of Paola, Kansas and Colorado National Bank of Colorado Springs, Colorado. But the FDIC became receiver of FirstCity Bank of Stockbridge, Georgia, and approved the payout of its insured deposits.

Anonymous said...

Not a good day for the Pussy, this is the real reason he's leaving Bend, and most of PRO OREO Whore's, they're running and hiding.

Their nigger that was going to en-slave us all, and make the BPussy rich, so we could all be like his wife and take care of him, is now about to collapse.

...


Anti-Obama DVD 'The Obama Deception' a web hit with 160,000 YouTube views

March 16, 6:24 PM · 11 comments
Feed

Alex Jones, a radio host and underground filmmaker for many years, has released a DVD called "The Obama Deception" that has conspiracy theorists of the left and the right shaking their fists with concern about how the president is owned by international banking interests.

March 19 Update: From a review of the DVD at the Citizen Online website, I found more information about Jones and the anti-Wall Street, anti-New World Order beliefs of the film's fans. The reviewer writes:

Though Obama gets top billing in this movie the film isn’t that much about our spruce pack-a-day new Prez. What it breaks down is the false left-right paradigm, the military industrial owned and therefore controlled mainstream media and the unholy alliance between the Federal Government and the private offshore banking cartel that is the Federal Reserve.

This seems to be a new form of NWO paranoia, one that is clearly feeding off the backlash against Big Banks and the financial meltdown. The reviewer explains that the Fed is the "crack dealing money machine to the Federal Government which has been an addict of fiat money since 1913 when Woodrow Wilson sold our country out to the Wall Street den of vipers and thieves."

It's quite an interesting explanation.

This is the film that will finally get people to understand that there is a shadow government behind the puppet government. It is run by the Rothschild-Rockefeller-British & Dutch Royal Family and assorted Bilderberg cohorts. This is the Anglo-American Empire exposed and Jones does better in exposing the great lie in The Obama Deception than any other film on the subject to date, even his own earlier films.

Some highlights of the 2 hour film are commentary by the extremely balanced and knowledgeable historian Webster G. Tarpley, who is the epitome of calm in a crisis as well as Gerald Celente, top future trends forecaster who long ago saw the onset of Depression 2009 like a dim light down a subway tunnel.

The best line in this movie goes to seminal hip-hopper Professor Griff of Public Enemy who asks, “where did we get this sense that just because we have a black man as President everything is going to be OK…everything is NOT going to be OK.”

You can find out more at the website set up by Jones here: http://www.obamadeception.net/

Earlier:

The first epsiode of the DVD on YouTube, a 9:00 cut of the film, has been viewed more than 136,000 times, with thousands more hits on the subsequent videos (there are 12 episodes).

Bewert said...

Re: Smithers is B-PUSSY, spineless, but in his case the 'boss' is wifey

###

As my old boss at the Alta Patrol, Piney, said--"You can argue and be forced to admit you're wrong, or you can just admit you're wrong."

I'm so spineless I managed to get the Les Schwab sales agreement that was deemed "secret".

Yeah, we made the decision to leave. The last CC meeting brought it home--this place just doesn't face reality well. Spending $700K to update construction codes when we have no money and there is no construction going on is patently ridiculous.

Trudy bought a house near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon in the Salt Lake area years ago. She sold it to her brother after we moved here. They move up to Homer, AK every summer, so we can move back, take care of the garden, and figure things out. We want to live in a place with an economy and and a knowledge of the outside world.

Watching the goings on here, it looks like 2006 was the best in the next 20 years. Which truly sucks.

Jed seems like a COBA plant, after a couple of days out of here.

Anonymous said...

Adios Bike-Boy! Don't let the door hit you and T.T. in the ass on the way out. Hope you have a blast in Joooootah. One less complaining stupid fuck to deal with. Love, Local

Bewert said...

The comments on either side of mine pretty much sum up why I've decided to leave. Happily, there aren't homeless beggars on every other corner where I am going to.

Enjoy your life, Local.

Anonymous said...

I'm laughing so hard I think I have soiled my favorite 'depends' which has BP's sig.

Anonymous said...

Let me understand this, but for over a year and almost two we somehow existed PRE-PUSSY.

So pray tell me, how in the FUCK are we going to 'exist' post-pussy???

Lastly, sadly, this is the NOT the first time our pussy has promised to Bend leave.

Let's all home in EARNEST that Java-Element with his fiancee being 'little Tina' ( see this weeks SORE ) is not another pussy.

Anonymous said...

I was wanking my dick this afternoon at Drake Park, and this cop came up and asked for my idea.

I gave him my UDL and he immediately said 'bruce', I said 'yessa massa, I be yo bruce'.

He said "Yo believing da bend and soon, YA?", I said 'yessa, massa da bruce believing da bend'. He then 'this is warning, and walks off'

Shit ?? Should I stay or should I go??

Anonymous said...

It's not often you read something 'rational', especially near our Bend, as we all knew well here PRE-PUSSY & PRE-HBM, rule#1 according to GOD "BEM" was 'we don't do stupid', sadly under the leader ship of hbm/bp we have gone 'stupid' 24/7, but with be-leaving of BP, and the Herpes-Semplex-12 that's killing HBM, perhaps we can all revert to our formal Orwellian, and Buddists selves??

The Lord, that be 'baby jeebus' of Bend, if the good lard-da bend, see to it that the BP & HBM off themselves bend-time, so be it, so long as BB2 can get back to old-time Socratic reasoning.


Obama's use of controlled chaos
Posted: March 18, 2009

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

~ Machiavelli

In the 1998 movie "Enemy of the State," Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) and "Brill" (Gene Hackman) have their lives turned upside down by excessive surveillance activity from a sinister top NSA official, Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight). Reynolds and a rogue group of NSA agents killed a congressman in a political-related murder, which was caught on tape, and for the rest of the movie they try to cover up the murder through deceit, misdirection and chaos theory – destroying evidence and intimidating witnesses, including Dean and Brill.

In a climactic scene between Dean and Brill, the tables are turned when Brill, a former career NSA agent himself who became "rogue" when his best friend was killed 18 years ago (the result of a covert mission overseas gone bad), decides to team up with Dean, a labor lawyer who stumbled upon the congressman's murder by accident. He teaches his young protégé the rudiments of war strategy reminiscent of the military and political classics – Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," Machiavelli's "The Prince," Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and chaos theory.

Here is an excerpt from the movie:

Brill: In guerrilla warfare, you try to use your weaknesses as strengths. (Here Brill shows Dean several listening devises NSA agents had planted on him, which up to that point allowed them to make his life a living hell.)

Dean: Such as?

Brill: Well, if they're big and you're small, then you're mobile and they're slow. You're hidden and they're exposed. Only fight battles you know you can win. That's the way the Vietcong did it. You capture their weapons and you use them against them the next time.

That scene from a popular movie 11 years ago reminds me of the Machiavellian tactics President Obama and his advisers are using today. These people, most of them Ivy-League graduates and diehard socialists, are very intelligent people. They realize that their policy remedies to fix the economy have no historical or rational basis and are only causing more economic uncertainty and chaos on Wall Street and on economic indicators throughout the world.

(Column continues below)



Therefore, the salient question becomes: Why is the Obama administration causing such chaos against his own nation, his own people who just elected him as the first black man to serve as president of United States?

It's chaos theory.

In 1890, Henri Poincare, a French mathematician, physicist and philosopher of science, was the first discoverer of chaos theory. He applied it to mathematics and described this new phenomenon in this manner:

Chaos theory – the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose states evolve with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Applied to politics, chaos theory is reminiscent of several derivative military, political and philosophy treatises of the past, including "The Art of War" (circa 500 B.C.) – All war is deception; victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win; "The Prince" (1513) – Politics have no relation to morals; the end justifies the means; and "Rules for Radicals" (1971) – Rule No. 13, Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

Obama is a master at using his enemies' strengths (Christianity, free-market capitalism, Reagan conservatism) as a weakness (moral and economic collapse, multi-billion dollar bailouts, George W. Bush). Obama, along with his socialists and fascist minions, believes the best way to dominate a society is by always having a certain degree of controlled ("determined") chaos to supply the means to achieve their long-term ends of womb-to-tomb socialist controls over the people.

The president has masterfully manipulated chaos theory to exacerbate existing societal problems by acting like he is somehow above it all or disassociated from the plethora of existing problems. ("I inherited this economy" and "not on my watch" are favorite Obama mantras.) Furthermore, Obama has purposely refrained from seriously focusing on fixing these pressing problems facing America, whether it's the economy, Wall Street, the home mortgage industry, the auto industry, the multi-trillion dollar debt we have with China, or the numerous geopolitical catastrophes across the world.

In "Enemy of the State," Brill's dialogue with Dean concluded, "You grow stronger as they grow weaker. Learn to use your enemy's own weapons against him." Obama and his minions have been taught by radical professors at the Ivy-League schools they attended to utterly hate America and all of her wonderful attributes like Natural Law, Christianity, liberty, integration of law and morality, free markets, the Bible, the Constitution, separation of powers, federalism – qualities that made America the greatest nation in this history of the world in less than 200 years. Instead, we are literally watching the Obama administration wage a coup d'état against his own country and wage a full frontal assault against her most sacred and vested interests.

I truly believe that Obama and the radicals in his administration will stop at nothing to achieve their nefarious ends, because they have the one characteristic conservatives and Republicans with all their God talk and reliance on the Constitution's framers could never champion … self-righteousness.

Using pride, arrogance and self-righteousness combined with the political and legal application of chaos theory, the Obama administration should collapse upon the vanity of its own failed ideas, but for the media and our own self-delusion as products of the Stalinist public schools. The result? In the manner that Obama's mentor, FDR, used the Great Depression as a pretext for the New Deal, Obama will likewise exploit societal instability, the collapse of Wall Street and the brink of a worldwide great depression, which under chaos theory is determinism and chaos, as a means to achieve his diabolical ends of transforming America from the USA to the USSA (the United Socialist States of America).

Obama's tactics are not new. As I delineated above, they have precedence in Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Alinsky and chaos theory. President Obama, the prep school/Ivy-League/ community organizer, is banking on the fact that as a public school educated citizen you have never read any of those authors and theories. If that is so, please rent the movie, "Enemy of the State" to understand that your precious natural rights are virtually extinct, and let's turn chaos theory against the Obama administration instead of being unwitting victims of his vast, Machiavellian conspiracy where in the name of affirmative action, bipartisanship and civility We the People have become willing accomplices to our own demise.

May God forbid.

Ellis Washington, currently a professor of law and political science at Savannah State University, former editor at the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including "The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law" (2002). See his law review article "Reply to Judge Richard Posner." Washington's latest book is "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust."
Obama's use of controlled chaos
Posted: March 18, 2009

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

~ Machiavelli

In the 1998 movie "Enemy of the State," Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) and "Brill" (Gene Hackman) have their lives turned upside down by excessive surveillance activity from a sinister top NSA official, Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight). Reynolds and a rogue group of NSA agents killed a congressman in a political-related murder, which was caught on tape, and for the rest of the movie they try to cover up the murder through deceit, misdirection and chaos theory – destroying evidence and intimidating witnesses, including Dean and Brill.

In a climactic scene between Dean and Brill, the tables are turned when Brill, a former career NSA agent himself who became "rogue" when his best friend was killed 18 years ago (the result of a covert mission overseas gone bad), decides to team up with Dean, a labor lawyer who stumbled upon the congressman's murder by accident. He teaches his young protégé the rudiments of war strategy reminiscent of the military and political classics – Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," Machiavelli's "The Prince," Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and chaos theory.

Here is an excerpt from the movie:

Brill: In guerrilla warfare, you try to use your weaknesses as strengths. (Here Brill shows Dean several listening devises NSA agents had planted on him, which up to that point allowed them to make his life a living hell.)

Dean: Such as?

Brill: Well, if they're big and you're small, then you're mobile and they're slow. You're hidden and they're exposed. Only fight battles you know you can win. That's the way the Vietcong did it. You capture their weapons and you use them against them the next time.

That scene from a popular movie 11 years ago reminds me of the Machiavellian tactics President Obama and his advisers are using today. These people, most of them Ivy-League graduates and diehard socialists, are very intelligent people. They realize that their policy remedies to fix the economy have no historical or rational basis and are only causing more economic uncertainty and chaos on Wall Street and on economic indicators throughout the world.

(Column continues below)



Therefore, the salient question becomes: Why is the Obama administration causing such chaos against his own nation, his own people who just elected him as the first black man to serve as president of United States?

It's chaos theory.

In 1890, Henri Poincare, a French mathematician, physicist and philosopher of science, was the first discoverer of chaos theory. He applied it to mathematics and described this new phenomenon in this manner:

Chaos theory – the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose states evolve with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Applied to politics, chaos theory is reminiscent of several derivative military, political and philosophy treatises of the past, including "The Art of War" (circa 500 B.C.) – All war is deception; victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win; "The Prince" (1513) – Politics have no relation to morals; the end justifies the means; and "Rules for Radicals" (1971) – Rule No. 13, Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

Obama is a master at using his enemies' strengths (Christianity, free-market capitalism, Reagan conservatism) as a weakness (moral and economic collapse, multi-billion dollar bailouts, George W. Bush). Obama, along with his socialists and fascist minions, believes the best way to dominate a society is by always having a certain degree of controlled ("determined") chaos to supply the means to achieve their long-term ends of womb-to-tomb socialist controls over the people.

The president has masterfully manipulated chaos theory to exacerbate existing societal problems by acting like he is somehow above it all or disassociated from the plethora of existing problems. ("I inherited this economy" and "not on my watch" are favorite Obama mantras.) Furthermore, Obama has purposely refrained from seriously focusing on fixing these pressing problems facing America, whether it's the economy, Wall Street, the home mortgage industry, the auto industry, the multi-trillion dollar debt we have with China, or the numerous geopolitical catastrophes across the world.

In "Enemy of the State," Brill's dialogue with Dean concluded, "You grow stronger as they grow weaker. Learn to use your enemy's own weapons against him." Obama and his minions have been taught by radical professors at the Ivy-League schools they attended to utterly hate America and all of her wonderful attributes like Natural Law, Christianity, liberty, integration of law and morality, free markets, the Bible, the Constitution, separation of powers, federalism – qualities that made America the greatest nation in this history of the world in less than 200 years. Instead, we are literally watching the Obama administration wage a coup d'état against his own country and wage a full frontal assault against her most sacred and vested interests.

I truly believe that Obama and the radicals in his administration will stop at nothing to achieve their nefarious ends, because they have the one characteristic conservatives and Republicans with all their God talk and reliance on the Constitution's framers could never champion … self-righteousness.

Using pride, arrogance and self-righteousness combined with the political and legal application of chaos theory, the Obama administration should collapse upon the vanity of its own failed ideas, but for the media and our own self-delusion as products of the Stalinist public schools. The result? In the manner that Obama's mentor, FDR, used the Great Depression as a pretext for the New Deal, Obama will likewise exploit societal instability, the collapse of Wall Street and the brink of a worldwide great depression, which under chaos theory is determinism and chaos, as a means to achieve his diabolical ends of transforming America from the USA to the USSA (the United Socialist States of America).

Obama's tactics are not new. As I delineated above, they have precedence in Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Alinsky and chaos theory. President Obama, the prep school/Ivy-League/ community organizer, is banking on the fact that as a public school educated citizen you have never read any of those authors and theories. If that is so, please rent the movie, "Enemy of the State" to understand that your precious natural rights are virtually extinct, and let's turn chaos theory against the Obama administration instead of being unwitting victims of his vast, Machiavellian conspiracy where in the name of affirmative action, bipartisanship and civility We the People have become willing accomplices to our own demise.

May God forbid.

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Ellis Washington, currently a professor of law and political science at Savannah State University, former editor at the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including "The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law" (2002). See his law review article "Reply to Judge Richard Posner." Washington's latest book is "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust."

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Anyone got more info on this Bully subscription-only story:

Tetherow course sells to golf pro for $10.5M

March 21, 2009 4:00 am

A partnership led by a former European PGA Tour player has purchased Tetherow Golf Club from Eugene-....MORE

Anonymous said...

I don't think there is anyone left on BB2 that can afford to subscribe to the online BULL.

Anonymous said...

During the last 20 years Wall Street has had its way with us. On a bipartisan basis it provided the Treasury Secretaries, filled the regulatory agencies, paid itself unconscionable bonuses, and stuffed the campaign coffers. The greed knew no bounds. The distortions of public policy - right up to Greenspan's infamous decision to leave financial regulation up to the firms themselves - have wrecked the world economy.

The fascinating thing about this greed is that it is so deeply ingrained that neither the bankers themselves nor our economic leadership understands just how disgusting and dangerous it is. Even after the music stopped, to use Chuck Prince's now famous simile, the bankers keep dancing - with our money. They continue to grab billions of taxpayer dollars (in Merrill's case) or at least hundreds of millions of dollars (in AIG's case) with giddy abandon, in full view and with a straight face. And our economics officials declare that this is unavoidable or too dangerous to curb. Contracts are sacred, unless of course it is union contracts, in which case we should demand that wages and benefits be cut as conditions for government help.

Anonymous said...

Today in the BULL, another high-society 'best of bend' person has been accused of 'witch-craft' by the BULL...


'Individual' embezzlement is quite old. Anybody with access to the 'books' can create fake accounts payable and funnel money to an account.

What is fascinating in these times is 'collective' embezzlement, or better yet 'collective theft'.

Take Made-Off, not even his secretary's made less than several $100k/yr, ... think about that everyone was getting paid astronomical sum's, no wonder nobody saw the 'ponzi'.

Collective like our Bend-1031, which involved dozens of Bend's respected lawyers, cpa's, and church icon's. Sawyer is a collective. Neuman of Bend-1031, had one of the most expensive homes in Bend up in Highlands@BT.

Go back and read 'grand popular delusions, and madness of the crowds' mcKay, South-Sea bubble, everyone was living beyond their means, and eventually when the final crash came, in the following years tons of people were sent to prison, what is most interesting is that if you stayed out of prison, it was who you knew.

Always during the post collapse of a bubble, society must punish, but those punished are generally people not smart enough to pay off the right people, or to re-invent themselves soon enough. In the south-sea bubble, if you were very early in accusing others, you could avoid prison.

This is why in the same book (delusions) there is also a chapter on witch-burning, as those who accused a witch, not only had them executed after trial, but shared their assets with the court.

So in every bubble or mania, the collective ones are always the worse. What the survivors do is blame those with assets, and then make a deal with courts to share. Quite often its not in the systems interest to go after paupers, its best to go after those who still have wealth post-bubble.

Your going to see lots of people in Bend 'outed' in the coming years, but its COSTA&MOSS and gang that really need to be examined, but like the south-sea or witch-hunt, COSTA&MOSS will be sitting at the court acting as the judge, all the while being engineers of the mania.

Anonymous said...

I had an old small truck once. Very useful to take things to the dump with.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Going to the dump is a major social event in Bend. Us guys who only have cars miss out.

Anonymous said...

Krugman:

The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding.

But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives.
In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.

Or to put it another way, Treasury has decided that what we have is nothing but a confidence problem, which it proposes to cure by creating massive moral hazard.

This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work.

What an awful mess.


The Looting of America continues, under new management.

We need a third party. Maybe three or four new parties.

Anonymous said...

Just like BUSH, OREO says he'll stand by his man, ... til the very end, ...


Obama Says He Wouldn't Accept Geithner's Resignation
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been criticized over the AIG bonuses and steps to revive the economy.

March 21, 2009 CBS

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to announce, possibly as soon as Monday, the Obama administration's plan to deal with the toxic assets on the books of the country's banks. (AP)

President Obama told CBS in an interview for "60 Minutes" that he wouldn't accept embattled Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's resignation if Geithner were to offer it.

Obama joked that if Geithner tried to give up the position, the president would say, "Sorry buddy, you've still got the job."

Geithner has been criticized over his handling of AIG after news broke this month that bailed-out company had doled out millions of dollars in bonuses. That controversy and criticism of Geithner's efforts to revive the economy have prompted some Republicans to call for his resignation.

CBS released excerpts of the interview with Obama on Saturday. In it, the president also says corporate executives need to better understand the public's outrage over bonuses. He says executives should get out of New York and spend time in Iowa or Arkansas where people are thrilled to be making $75,000 a year with no bonuses.

The interview is scheduled to air Sunday evening.

Anonymous said...

So fucking Bend,...


U.S. regulator probing "rampant Ponzimonium"


Fri Mar 20, 2009 5:55pm EDT


By Jason Szep

BOSTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of people in the United States are under investigation for financial scams, many involving Ponzi schemes, a U.S. regulator said on Friday, calling the phenomenon "rampant Ponzimonium."

While none are as mammoth as disgraced financier Bernard Madoff's $65 billion fraud, multimillion-dollar "mini Madoffs" are proliferating from New York to Hawaii, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.

So far this year, the agency has uncovered 19 Ponzi schemes, which depend on an influx of new capital instead of investment profits to pay existing investors.

That compares with just 13 for all of 2008.

"Because of the economy, people are seeking redemptions more than they ever have and that's making a lot of these scams go belly up," Bart Chilton, commissioner of the Washington-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in a telephone interview.

In the last month alone, his agency has pursued investment fraud in Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, Iowa, Idaho, Texas and Hawaii.

Chilton called the problem "rampant Ponzimonium" and "Ponzipalooza" -- a play on the word "Lollapalooza," an American music festival featuring a long list of acts.

Many of the financial scams are small but grew fast to support lavish lifestyles, like the suspected $40 million, five-year Ponzi scheme that came to light last month when a North Carolina man, Bruce Kramer, committed suicide.

Claiming he was an expert mathematician, Kramer is accused of persuading 79 people to invest in what he said was a foreign currency trading operation, Barki LLC. He promised monthly returns of at least 3 percent to 4 percent, the CFTC said.

Instead, he funneled money into a Maserati sports car, a $1 million horse farm and artwork while holding "extravagant" parties, according to a CFTC complaint released on Wednesday.

As the economy soured, Kramer struggled to find new clients to keep the scheme going. In the days before his suicide, his investors demanded their money back and grew suspicious when they couldn't access their own funds, said Chilton.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission shares oversight of financial markets with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which also faces a swelling casebook of Ponzi schemes, including charges against Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, who is accused of bilking investors of $8.8 billion.

The SEC has taken emergency action in 24 cases this year "to halt ongoing fraud," said SEC spokesman John Heine.

The FBI is also ramping up probes of financial wrongdoing. The agency has 43 corporate fraud cases under way directly related to the financial crisis, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told a Congressional panel on Friday.

The CFTC, which set up a task force last year to pursue foreign currency Ponzi schemes and fraud, discovered about $80 million invested in four Ponzi schemes this month. That followed 10 such schemes in February totaling about $1.46 billion, and about $450 million in such scams in January.

Anonymous said...

What an awful mess.

The Looting of America continues, under new management.

We need a third party. Maybe three or four new parties. - hbm

*

Is this our 'real' mr-burns, the guy we call 'hbm' that controls all the levers of power at the SORE??

Sure hbm will claim he's only a front or patsy like mr-burns of our springfield-bend, but ya somewhere in Sisters are the real owners of the SORE, but hbm will always be our mr-burns, so fucking cynical, tired, and abused by the process.

So is our mr-burns (hbm) now admitting that OREO is owned by the banks??

That OREO is actually MORE-BUSH than BUSH, as I (bart) have said all along?

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