Housing values in Bend have dropped at a higher rate than in any other metropolitan area in the nation during the past year, according to real estate website Zillow.com.
Bend's median home price fell by 21.8 percent, to $167,500, from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter this year. Values have dropped 52.5 percent in Bend since the peak of the market in mid-2006, when the median price was $354,000, according to Seattle-based Zillow.
This is an awesome, in-car video of Porsche driver Jeff Zwart's winning Pike's Peak run. It's amazing how calm and steady this guy is. I'd be all over the road:
Two years ago, heavy short-term debt issuance drove the average maturity of outstanding U.S. Treasurys to a 26-year low of 49 months. As stimulus and bailout spending has rolled off, so too has the need for short-term cash, sending the average maturity back to 58 months. The Treasury expects it to extend further, minutes of Tuesday's Borrowing Advisory Committee meeting show, but at "a slower pace."
That's unfortunate. While Treasury's debt-management office can't control how much it has to borrow, it can control how the debt is financed. Dire budgetary forecasts driven by huge Medicare and Social Security commitments mean fiscal concerns won't soon recede. The risk is that, when huge slugs of debt must be rolled over, bond vigilantes one day gain the upper hand, increasing borrowing costs.
This could happen sooner rather than later. FTN Financial estimates that, excluding short-term bills, $1.2 trillion of debt will have to be rolled in 2012. That would be a record, and nearly double last year's amount. Pushing out debt maturities would reduce supply that will have to come to market in the next few years.
The borrowing committee still recommends the Treasury increase the average maturity, but given progress thus far, some members say that, now that borrowing requirements are falling from their peaks, it makes sense to reduce issuance across the curve.
This could prove clever. Continued weakness could push rates even lower. After all, yields on Japan's 10-year government bonds dropped below 1% this week, the lowest in seven years. Yields on similar Treasuries have dropped back below 3%, but nearly touched 2% during the depths of the crisis. So they could go lower. And if bond vigilantes haven't yet hit Japan, despite its debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio approaching 200%, they are arguably a way off attacking the U.S., with a ratio of 60%.
This is a fascinating video analysis of Mariano Rivera's dominance on the mound. Basically, his fast ball and cutter look nearly identical to a hitter but have drastically different flight. This makes it purely a guessing game from the batter's box.
There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.
