Friday, March 25, 2011

Babbitry Rites of Spring.

I've been paying attention to the economy in Bend long enough now to notice certain seasonal rites.

Every spring, we get the "upbeat" reports. We are headed for prime tourist season, and or housing sales market. Time to roll out the Star Making Machinery. The Bubble Blowing Contraptions. The Hail Friends and Well Mets Sloganeering.

So any uptick -- any uptick at all -- will serve as positive news.

But I've also noticed that you can find positive and negative in the news at any time, sometimes with the same statistics, depending on how you interpret them. It's the spin, baby.

KTVZ has a really upbeat story on all the building in N.W. Crossing -- the development that seems to have the largest or the most adamant supporters. We were being told two or three years ago that the West side would be immune to any downturn, then it was, well maybe not the entire West side, but N.W. Crossing. I think the building there is more a case of: in for a penny, in for a pound.


Still and all. Downtown Bend continues to keep it's vacancy rate down. The town seems to be holding onto most of it's population -- we aren't turning into Detroit. Most importantly, we haven't turned into the poster child for boom and bust -- I think because most people aren't paying attention, and the bust lobby (bubble bloggers and such ) just dropped the whole issue. "See?" they said, and walked away.

The local real estate blogs are publishing some real nonsense, and no one is challenging them much. People are still moving to town, and still buying -- and when I talk to them at the store, I swear they have no idea that Bend is any different than anywhere else when it comes to the economy. Blessed ignorance.

So while I've lost a whole bunch of regular customers, I've also gained a few newcomers. Why and how they are managing to move to Bend is a bit of mystery.

The subtext is the alarming number of people who have lost their homes, around here. I'm amazed how cheerful some of them are about it -- but what you gonna do? Jobs? People scramble admirably, and find ways. People are survivors.

Bend's economy remains a mystery -- almost as much a mystery as it was when it was booming.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post, Duncan. I think a lot of people have gotten over the trauma of having lost a house, etc., and are ready to move on with their lives. Reduced expectations. Perhaps where you always were?

H. Bruce Miller said...

Re The Bullshittin's relentlessly "positive" spin: It's not just them. American news media decided quite a few years ago that people would rather get "positive" news than "negative" news. They started consciously playing up the "positive" and playing down the "negative."

The result of this was that the media, instead of telling people what they needed to know, began telling them what they wanted to hear (or what the editors thought they wanted to hear).

And as the news media served up more and more pap, they became more and more useless as sources of real, useful, meaningful news, and their readers/viewers/listeners turned elsewhere.

The media, by trying to please everybody, ended up alienating everybody. Q.E.D. and R.I.P.

RDC said...

HBM

Interesting how that switch occured. Especially since it occured about the same time we switched control of the whitehouse.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"Bend's economy remains a mystery -- almost as much a mystery as it was when it was booming."

Yes, it's an amazing feat of levitation. It appears to remain aloft with no visible means of support. What are people here living on? I often ask myself. And I have no answer.

I would like to point out to all the "shut down big gummint" types around here, however, that without unemployment checks and food stamps and Social Security payments and Medicare and direct local, state and federal government paychecks, the local economy would completely collapse. This would be El Detroit del Norte.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"Especially since it occured about the same time we switched control of the whitehouse."

Which switch was that? I can't pinpoint it to any particular change in administration. It was a gradual process beginning, as I recall it, in the late 1970s - early 1980s.

H. Bruce Miller said...

Check out the puff piece about NW Crossing on KTVZ's site. It ain't just The Bulletin.

Quimby said...

HBM >>I would like to point out to all the "shut down big gummint" types around here, however, that without unemployment checks and food stamps and Social Security payments and Medicare and direct local, state and federal government paychecks, the local economy would completely collapse. This would be El Detroit del Norte.

Exactly, what are people living on around here? Borrowed $ from China in the form of handouts.

Bottom line is that stupid actions should hurt, and these days....eh, lose a house? Don't worry, you won't go hungry. Lose your job, eh, don't worry, unemployment for YEARS.

80 years ago, you would go hungry....there was no China $ to eat and men had the brains, balls and brawn to go out and work. Charity was there for those who really needed it. These days, it's a complete entitlement mentality through and through.

Anonymous said...

"Borrowed $ from China in the form of handouts"
Sorry, makes no sense at all. If you are saying that China buys a lot of US Treasury bills, then that makes sense. But it mainly does that to keep the value of its currency low, and the US currency inflated, so that Chinese manufactures are cheap to us, and the manufacturing jobs go there.

The Chinese have a weak dollar policy, because it's good for manufacturing, and therefore jobs.



"These days, it's a complete entitlement mentality through and through."

You think people like to be on unemployment benefits?

Anonymous said...

Dunc, please bring bilbo buster back, I miss him so much. Please.

H. Bruce Miller said...

Quim, you don't know WTF you're talking about. You weren't around 80 years ago, and your idea of what America was like 80 years ago is a false nostalgia probably instilled by listening to Limbaugh and Beck.

80 years ago it was 1931. America was mired in the Great Depression -- a depression brought on by precisely the kind of laissez faire, dog-eat-dog and devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism you so dearly love. Hoover's "plan" for fixing the economy was to sit on his hands and let "the market" take care of everything while people starved. In 1932 voters rejected that strategy and kicked Hoover out on his ass, and America didn't elect a Republican president again until 1952.

But too many Americans have forgotten that history and have been persuaded by right-wing revisionist historians that the world of their grandparents and great-grandparents was paradise until the liberals and "socialists" destroyed it.