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At Work Maintaining your sanity in an always-connected world, see Page B3.
www.bendbulletin.com/business
THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
MARKET REPORT
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2,532.15 NASDAQ CLOSE CHANGE +37.06 +1.49%
STOC K S R E P O R T For a complete listing of stocks, including mutual funds, see Pages B4-5
B U S I N E SS IN BRIEF
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11,105.85 DOW JONES CLOSE CHANGE +44.73 +.40%
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1,172.87 S&P 500 CLOSE CHANGE +10.60 +.91%
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BONDS
Ten-year CLOSE 1.99 treasury CHANGE +2.05%
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$1826.80 GOLD CLOSE CHANGE +$16.90
Deschutes GDP lagged U.S. average in 2010
Oregon jobless rate stays flat in August PORTLAND — Oregon’s unemployment rate remains well above 9 percent, and both employment and index numbers are reflecting weakness in the state’s economy. The State Employment Department reported Tuesday that the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent for August. Statistically, that’s essentially unchanged from the month before.
The Deschutes Economic Alliance will present a 2011 report, “Enterprising States: Recovery and Renewal for the 21st Century,” co-authored by Delore Zimmerman, president of the Praxis Strategy Group, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday at 9 a.m. at the Riverhouse Hotel Convention Center in Bend. The event is free and open to the public. The report focuses on how states rank in their ability to come out of the recession based on factors such as regulation, investment in public universities and entrepreneurship. In his speech, Zimmerman will discuss the findings and how Oregon compares to other states. The event is sponsored by the alliance, a volunteer nongovernmental group of 100 business and community leaders formed in 2010 to identify and help launch initiatives to help stabilize and grow the region’s economy, according to the press release. — From staff and wire reports
Crowded flights Passenger occupancy on international and domestic flights by U.S.-based airlines has risen as carriers adjust schedules to fit demand.
The Bulletin ile photo
Jose Perez of AM-1 Siding cuts new pieces of siding for Crest Butte Apartments in Bend, while other AM-1 personnel and workers from L Scott Goodrich Construction work on the building last year. Construction is among the sectors that declined in the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area in 2010.
Region saw 0.7 percent drop as many metro areas grew
GDP for Oregon metropolitan statistical areas Four of six MSAs in Oregon showed negative Gross Domestic Product growth for 2010. Two showed positive. Positive growth
U.S. MSA average
Negative growth
By Tim Doran
2.5 percent
100 percent
80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2002 ’04
’06
’08
’10 ’11
Note: 2011 figure based on AP analysis of data provided by airlines. Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics AP
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro 4.7 percent Salem -1.2 percent Corvallis 6.8 percent Bend -0.7 percent
Forecasters see bigger economic role for Washington
-0.2 percent
Medford -0.3 percent Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Andy Zeigert / The Bulletin
By Katharine Q. Seelye
New York Times News Service
College graduates are the fastest-growing group of consumers who have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past five years, according to a new study by a financial nonprofit group, which underscores the broad reach of the Great Recession. The survey by the Institute for Financial Literacy, slated for release Tuesday, found that the percentage of debtors with a bachelor’s degree rose from 11.2 percent in 2006 to 13.6 percent in 2010. The group tracked similar but smaller increases in consumers with two-year associate and graduate degrees. Meanwhile, the percentage of debtors with a high school diploma or who did not finish college declined. See Bankrupt / B5
WASHINGTON — Just weeks ago, economists and financial analysts were dismissing Washington as largely irrelevant to the economy’s course in coming months, if only because it chose to be. They are not dismissing it anymore. The possibility of major parts of President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill becoming law, and of further steps next week by the Federal Reserve, have forecasters saying that the decisions Washington makes in the weeks ahead could have a substantial effect on economic growth and unemployment. At a minimum, the stimulus could be insurance against the headwinds blowing from Europe’s debt crisis and the impact of the recent government spending cuts in this country. The jobs package of tax cuts and spending initiatives could add from 100,000 to 150,000 jobs a month over the next year, according to estimates from several of the country’s best-known forecasting firms; the potential Fed actions could add 15,000 more jobs a month over two years. While those estimates are difficult to verify, the nation’s economy since April has added an average of only about 40,000 jobs a month, raising concerns about a doubledip recession. It remains uncertain, of course, what Congress or the Fed will do and, if they do act, whether their actions will have the intended effects. Many businesses and consumers remain sufficiently scarred by the financial crisis and long economic slump that they are awaiting clear evidence of a recovery before beginning to spend and hire at a healthy pace again. See Economy / B5
EugeneSpringfield
College Affected by bears, geography, graduates Idaho’s Internet speeds suffer increasingly among ranks of bankrupt The Washington Post
85.7%
90
While many of the nation’s metropolitan areas experienced some economic growth last year, the Bend area declined, with the value of goods and services produced dropping slightly less than 1 percent over 2009, according to federal data released Tuesday. In 2010, the gross domestic product for the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area, which covers all of Deschutes County, fell 0.7 of a percent from 2009, to $6 billion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The numbers did not surprise Carolyn Eagan, regional economist with the Oregon Employment Department. They confirmed what area residents felt last year. “We hadn’t come out of recession yet,” she said. The Bend area’s 0.7 percent drop in GDP in 2010 represented an improvement over the previous year’s results. In 2009, GDP for the Bend MSA plummeted 7 percent over 2008. However, in 2009 Bend’s decline mirrored the rest of the state and nation, which saw a 2.5 percent decline. See GDP / B2
By Ylan Q. Mui
Passenger occupancy rates for August of each year
$41.123 SILVER CLOSE CHANGE +$0.959
New York Times News Service
The Bulletin
Economic alliance to present report
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By Jackie Calmes and Binyamin Appelbaum
Panda Express going up in Bend The builder of a new Panda Express restaurant in Bend has scheduled a groundbreaking for 11 a.m. Thursday at the site, 63447 N. U.S. Highway 97 near Target. It is expected to open around mid-December. The restaurant, the second Panda Express to be built in the region, will be about 2,450 square feet and have a drivethru, according to city of Bend planning documents. A Panda Express opened in Redmond in 2009. The company, based in Rosemead, Calif., owns and operates 1,375 restaurants in 41 states and Puerto Rico, according to its website. Double R Development of Bend has been selected as the general contractor, said Alan Rombach, owner. The company expects to employ 16 to 18 subcontractors, he said.
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POTLATCH, Idaho — Barry Ramsay, who owns a small manufacturing company here between two mountains, remembers the day his Internet connection crashed for several hours. Work crews had to ride up in snowmobiles to discover the problem. “They said that bears had been rubbing against the towers,” Ramsay said. In this mountainous state, where some connections depend on line of sight, even snow and fog can disrupt the signals. “These are the kind of problems you probably don’t have in an urban area,” he said. And, according to a new study, they are among the problems that have earned Idaho an unfortunate distinction: It had the slowest Internet speeds in the country earlier this year for residential customers who were downloading things like games — a “dismal” average of 318 kilobytes per second. Translation: In Idaho, it would take you 9.42 seconds to
Rajah Bose / New York Times News Service
Barry Ramsay, who owns a small manufacturing company, checks the internet from his phone outside his office in Potlatch, Idaho. According to a new study, Idaho has the slowest Internet speeds in the country. download a standard music file compared with 3.36 seconds in Rhode Island, the state with the fastest average speeds, at 894 kilobytes per second. The slowest city, by the way, was also in Idaho: In Pocatello, it would take nearly 12 seconds to download that music file, according to the study by
Pando Networks, a company that helps consumers accelerate downloads. In the nation’s fastest city, Andover, Mass., an affluent Boston suburb, it would take just more than 1 second. Such speed distinctions might seem insignificant. See Idaho / B2
Injured guest seeks $403K from Sisters Movie House By Ed Merriman The Bulletin
A pretrial hearing is scheduled Nov. 10 in a civil lawsuit filed against the Sisters Movie House Inc. by Phyllis Saunders, 87, of Sisters. The lawsuit, filed Aug. 10 in Deschutes County Circuit Court, seeks $403,885 in medical expenses and damages stemming from injuries the lawsuit alleges occurred June 4 when Saunders fell over an “unmarked and unlighted step with no railing or other protective barrier” in the theater. The suit alleges the Sisters Movie House was negligent for failing to remove the alleged unsafe condition or to provide sufficient warning, railing or illumination to prevent falling off the step. The theater is located at 720 Desperado Court, Sisters. Saunders’ attorney, Bruce Brothers of Brothers, Hawn & Coughlin in Bend, said the step is part of a six-inch-high platform on which a row of four seats is mounted at the back of the theater where Saunders sat to watch a movie on June 4. Lisa Claussen, an owner of the Sisters Movie House, said she opened the only theater in Sisters six years ago with a goal of providing high-quality entertainment to Sisters so residents and guests staying in town wouldn’t have to drive to Bend or Redmond. See Lawsuit / B2