Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Banking, real estate, fees and sunshine


Bend makes Forbes magazine again in this story titled, "In Depth: The 14 most troubles real estate markets."

Miami ranks No. 1 with 28.8 percent delinquency, but Forbes has this to say about Bend:

"Even tiny Bend, Ore., is in serious trouble, with 10.3% of its mortgages either delinquent or foreclosed on, up from 4.7% a year ago. Wasn't Bend one of those charming villages where people moved to escape high prices? Opt instead for Corvallis, three hours further east of Portland. Delinquencies there are a tame 1.7%."

One of the enablers of this real estate bubble and eventual bust is Cascade Bancorp, parent of Bend-based Bank of the Cascades. In corporate filings Monday, the bank says that it lost $48.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 and a total loss in 2009 of $93.1 million.

Cascade Bancorp has been on the ropes for a couple of years now and its auditor said there is risk it may fail. It's trading for 58 cents a share. A government takeover of the bank is something to watch.

Meanwhile, the city of Bend discovered that Cascade Natural Gas has underpaid its franchise fees for two decades. Cascade Natural Gas ponied up $1 million to the city last fall, the daily newspaper notes.

This practice is nothing new as Pulitzer-prize winning author David Cay Johnston noted in his best-seller, "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill)."

Utilities rarely pay their taxes, Johnston discovered.

Remember Enron? It never paid about $35 million in taxes it collected from ratepayers in Oregon when it owned Portland General Electric.

Speaking of power, the daily paper notes that the good folks in Christmas Valley don't much care for the solar arrays popping up in this south-central Oregon region that has no Christmas trees. And, it has less than 1,000 residents in this unincorporated community.

But, it does have sagebrush as high as an elephant's eye, and mornings that are beautiful, too.

Christmas Valley was the site of land scam in the 1960s. It also was home to government pork in the form of a transmitter for the Over-the-horizon Backscatter Radar system designed to warn the West Coast of impending Soviet attack that came on line as the Soviet Union dissolved.

Today, alfalfa farmers eke out a living in this arid outback inhospitable to farming. Solar power seems to be the perfect fit for this sun-drenched plain.

It may not be Texas Tea, but it could be valuable Oregon Ore.

Or we can put our money in coal, nuclear and petroleum-based power plants. The choice seems obvious.



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