In performing our quarterly checkup of the financials of OnPoint Community Credit Union — a Portland institution that we watch as a gauge of the local economy — we picked up on some news that shows the disturbing state of money institutions nationwide: On OnPoint’s third quarter profit and loss statement, it took a $3,557,068 hit for an “NCUSIF Stabilization Expense.” This charge appears to be of a similar nature to the much larger loss that OnPoint took in the last quarter of 2008, all attributable to the shaky condition of the national credit union deposit insurance system. Since that system has had to bail out a few large “commercial” credit unions that got into serious trouble about a year ago, all members of the insurance pool have had to show losses on their books, and this time around, pay special premiums announced in late September.
And that’s not the end of it — the insurance folks have warned:
Further credit losses are expected for the corporates, and insurance losses will rise, but NCUA is not giving specific estimates for 2010 and beyond, largely because such information may lead to credit unions having to recognize them when they are stated.
Boy, doesn’t that just say it all about our nation’s financial house of cards? “We aren’t going to say how bad things are, because then the credit unions would have to tell the truth in their financial statements.” The same thing is going on with the banks; they’re carrying commercial real estate loans on their books as “performing” even though the underlying properties are under water, with no sign of ever resurfacing. Balance sheets have never been more misleading.
OnPoint currently shows an asset with a book value of $20,093,864 called its “NCUSIF Deposit.” This past spring, the book value of that class of asset was suddenly slashed by nearly 67 percent to account for the “commercial” credit union failures up to that point. The big profit that the OnPoint brass had bragged about on their shiny annual report was turned into a loss overnight. One has to wonder whether something bad like that may happen again, not just locally, but throughout the credit union system.
Aside from that alarming news, at least on paper, OnPoint appears to have muddled through the quarter without too much further slippage from where it’s been left after the freefall of a year ago. Still, the picture on delinquent debt isn’t pretty:
| Item |
9/30/08 |
6/30/09 |
9/30/09 |
Quarterly increase (decrease) |
12-month increase (decrease) |
| Total investments |
$246,342,512 |
$449,482,460 |
$431,120,688 |
(4.09%) |
75.01% |
| Federal agency securities |
$140,786,482 |
$274,981,426 |
$267,096,828 |
(2.87%) |
89.72% |
| Total reportable delinquency – total delinquent loans |
$14,302,884 |
$26,526,766 |
$25,324,131 |
(4.53%) |
77.06% |
| Total reportable delinquency – indirect lending |
$977,090 |
$5,096,962 |
$5,360,245 |
5.17% |
448.59% |
| Total outstanding loan balances subject to bankruptcies |
$9,979,220 |
$13,911,518 |
$17,031,887 |
22.43% |
70.67% |
| Ratio of delinquent loans to total loans (percent) |
0.63 |
1.23 |
1.16 |
|
|
| Ratio of total delinquent loans to net worth (percent) |
5.74 |
10.67 |
10.05 |
|
|
Delinquent loans are those delinquent for two months or more.
Over on the profit and loss side, after taking the special deposit insurance hit into account, OnPoint’s year-to-date net income through the quarter ended September 30 was $21,965,019, up 34.51% from the year-to-date figures in the same quarter last year ($16,329,466). For the third quarter alone, however, net income was $3,378,247, down 45.42% from last year’s $6,189,580. In the third quarter of 2009, deposits fell from $2,411,602,745 to $2,373,916,394 — a 1.56% decrease — after two straight quarters of increases. Deposits a year earlier were $2,221,206,727, however, and thus for the 12-month period ended September 30, deposits were up 6.88%.
Written by Travel News on November 5th, 2009 with no comments.
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Sabina Lohr visited Salalah, Oman, just after monsoon season. While there, she got a unique taste of the region.
In Salalah, Oman, the annual khareef, or monsoon season, brings cool relief from the oppressive summertime temperatures felt throughout the rest of the country. Each year, many Middle Easterners travel to this town of 180,000 in the Dhofar region of Oman, on the Arabian Sea northeast of Yemen, from late June through September, when its desert skies fill with a drizzle that turns its brown landscape a temporary green. But after the khareef, during the autumn and winter, when the skies dry out and temperatures hover in the low- to mid-eighties, this little part of the earth becomes an ideal escape for Westerners craving a wintertime respite.
For my first visit to Salalah I wait until just after the end of the monsoon season, arriving in late September to find rolling hills blooming with grass, flowers, and foliage. The desert, starkly beautiful itself, is still visible through the greenery. My guide, Ali Amer Al-Mashani, leads me to a roadside stand where strips of camel meat hang to dry before being wrapped in foil and cooked over coals (above). I eat some, tangy and delicious. We make our way to another stand where we buy coconuts, drink the fresh milk inside and peel and eat the soft, wet and sweet coconut meat.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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There’s so much going on here at National Geographic headquarters that it’s hard for us to keep track. Here’s a roundup of events happening in November.
Terra Cotta Warriors, National Geographic Museum
Our eagerly anticipated special exhibition opens November 19 at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC, and will run through March 31, 2010. The crated warriors arrived the other night and the museum staff is getting the statues in place right now. Timed tickets are required and they’re going fast. You can buy them here. Save your ticket stub to get 20% off in our newly redesigned and expanded National Geographic Store. For directions on how to get to the museum, click here.
Glimpse Correspondents Program
If you plan on working, studying, or volunteering abroad, apply for the Glimpse Correspondents Program. Each semester, the Glimpse Foundation picks a team of talented young writers and photographers between the ages of 18 and 34 and rewards them with a $600 stipend, career training in writing or photography, and publishes their work on Glimpse.org. All entries are due by November 8.
National Geographic Expeditions
Want to go on a warm-weather trip? National Geographic Expeditions is hosting a free online webinar on Monday, November 9 at 8 p.m. about its upcoming expeditions to Costa Rica and the Panama Canal. To register for the webinar click here, or learn more about the expedition here. Best of all, those who book a trip between January 1 and March 31, 2010 will get a $500 airfare credit.
National Geographic Image Collection
Stop by our DC headquarters and take a stroll around our courtyard to see LED lightboxes showcasing some of the best (and some never-before seen) National Geographic photography. The exhibit is free to the public, and is based on our new book, National Geographic Image Collection (hint: makes a great present!). A video preview of the book is here. The New York Times recently profiled Bill Bonner here, the keeper of our photo archives, which contains more than 11.5 million images.
National Geographic Channel
Admit it: you love IKEA and all of its fashionable, cheap goodness. On November 5 at 8 p.m., National Geographic Channel’s Ultimate Factories series takes viewers inside IKEA’s largest plant in Zbaszynek, Poland, and shows just how IKEA makes its wood furniture. Here’s a video preview of the show.
All Roads Film Project
On November 4, the Society will hold a special screening of Unconquered: Allan Houser and the Legacy of one Apache Family, a documentary about Native American art and traditions. There will be a discussion with the director, producer, and Allan Houser following the screening. Tickets are $8.
National Geographic Traveler Seminars
Our fall-winter schedule is available now, and lists one-day seminars in travel photography taught by National Geographic photographers. The next seminar is December 6 in Seattle, with our lively team of Jim Richardson and Catherine Karnow, who share with you their secrets on how to make photos “that tell a story.” Video preview here. For more info and online registration, click here.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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National Geographic Magazine’s International Photo Contest has just ended, and there are some great submissions, like this one taken in India’s Ganges River.
Says photographer Jenay Martin, “The Ganges is the holiest river in India. Every morning and every evening Hindus bathe in the holy river. However, it is very polluted, and in this very location there is no living oxygen and is pure sewage. Even in the filth of Varanasi, life goes on. People still bathe, and animals still manage to find things to eat. This goat is eating a holy garland that was offered to the river during a funeral procession.”
For more images, visit the weekly galleries on National Geographic Magazine’s site and vote for your favorite images. Viewer’s Choice winners will be announced in early December. Check out the gallery of last year’s Viewer’s Choice favorites. Voting closes November 8.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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Managing Editor Scott Stuckey has just returned from Turkey and got an insider’s look at Istanbul’s famous Whirling Dervishes.
I first heard the term “Whirling Dervishes” as a young child and, reasonably enough, surmised that they were dervishes who loved to whirl. What a dervish was, exactly, remained a mystery to me until last Friday, when I stepped into a 500-year-old Turkish bathhouse (repurposed as the Hodjapasha Culture Center) in the Sirkeci area of old Istanbul. Here, monks of a mystical Sufi order of Muslims–known traditionally for their spirituality, self denial, and tolerance–perform a centuries-old dance ritual for the admission price of 40 Turkish lira, beverage included.
My tour group streamed into the circular brick room, and we took our seats just a few feet from the Plexiglas stage, lit from beneath with colored lights, where the dervishes would spin. A worry crossed my mind: What if a dervish got dizzy and landed in my lap? We were that close.
Soon, musicians took their place in an alcove and began playing and chanting classical Turkish music, using traditional drums and stringed instruments. In time, five dervishes appeared, walking around the perimeter of the stage. Their every movement–crossing their arms, laying a sheepskin on the floor opposite the door, bowing, saluting one another–followed established traditions lost on most of us in the audience, though we sensed there was meaning to it all.
Click below for a video of the Whirling Dervishes.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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Last week, National Geographic Traveler assistant editor Janelle Nanos got to chat with legendary actor and World War II enthusiast Tom Hanks, who has “perhaps done more than anyone in Hollywood today to help tell the stories of the war with the film Saving Private Ryan and HBO series Band of Brothers” and who just helped produce the interactive film Beyond All Boundaries for the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Hanks’s goal of the film–which premiers on November 8–was to make an impression: to give the viewer a chance to
look beyond the familiar black-and-white portrayal of WWII and see that
these were real people, living their lives in a period that would
change them forever.
A trailer of the movie can be seen here. For the complete interview and insiders look at the film, click here.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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Photo: BenjaminB99 via Flickr
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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Friend of IT (and author of delightful Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia) Roff Smith is just back from biking the Welsh national cycling route, and shares with us some tips on traveling in the area.
So how do you keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? You got me. It’s not easy. Since I’ve returned from cycling the Lôn Las Cymru–the Welsh national cycle route–I’ve thought of little else but going back and doing it all again. Stretching more than 250 picturesque miles from the ancient castle town of Chepstow in the south, to windswept Holyhead in the north, (home to the Holyhead Harpies Quiddich Team, if you happen to be a Harry Potter fan), this is said to be the most beautiful of Britain’s long-distance cycling trails and having cycled a good many of them myself, I’d be hard put to disagree.
Those five days I spent travelling its length were like a step out of time, a harkening back to a slower, gentler oil-painted world of leafy country lanes, old market towns, World Heritage castles and the romantic 11th-century ruins of Llanthony Priory–and yes, there’s plenty of utterly unpronounceable Welsh names along the way, not least of which is the aforementioned town on the isle of Anglesey, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the U.K.’s longest place name. Locals shorthand it to Llanfair P.G.
The route itself is cobbled together of quiet lanes, cycle paths, even a stretch of ancient coaching road. It is superbly signposted and so easy to follow that you don’t really need any maps, although the excellent ones published by Sustrans are well worth having since they can help you plan your day, and offer up interesting alternatives–you can, for example, start off from Cardiff if you wish. There are plenty of B&Bs and pretty little inns along the route, so you needn’t rough it or carry a lot of gear–a point worth considering since the Lôn Las Cymru meanders through the Brecon Beacons, the Cambrian Mountains and Snowdonia National Park, making it one of Britain’s more challenging rides as well.
Of course, you don’t have to cycle the whole thing in one go. Good rail connections and bicycle-hire shops mean that the Lôn Las Cymru is very do-able in weekend-sized bites, say, between Chepstow and Hay-on-Wye, sixty miles of the very same countryside for which William Gilpin, the 18th century traveler and essayist coined the word “picturesque”. There are still the hills of course, but then, isn’t that what those hearty B&B breakfasts are for?
Photo: George Borrow Photography
Roff Smith’s October article for National Geographic magazine, about the shipwreck of a 16th c. Portuguese ship carrying more than 100 million carats of diamonds, can be found here.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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Going to the World Series this year? Whether you’re a Phillies or Yankees fans (I’m just upset my hometown Nationals forgot how to play ball this year), here are some tips on traveling in both cities.
Getting There
Call it the Amtrak Series, but the cheapest way to get from city to city is by bus. Budget buses Megabus and BoltBus both offer inexpensive fares between Philadelphia and New York.
Philadelphia
I Heart My City: Philadelphia
Albert Lee serves as concierge at the Independence Visitor Centerhttp://www.independencevisitorcenter.com/, and tells us what to do, see, and where to eat in the City of Brotherly Love.
Philadelphia On Foot
One of the best ways to explore the city is by foot. Print out our map of Philly’s Northern Liberties neighborhood, and check out more tips on visiting the historic neighborhood from IT.
Family Vacation Planner: Pennsylvania
Get cool tips on all the places to take your kids in and around Philadelphia.
Philadelphia’s Italian Market
Philadelphia is home to America’s longest-operating outdoor market, and writer Jeff DiNunzio shares some insider tips on the best spots to visit.
Click below for tips on traveling in New York City.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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Forget the white sheets this Halloween and go on a hunt for some real ghosts. And what better places than abandoned prisons and hospitals? The following include some of the most haunted asylums and penitentiaries in the country. Many of them offer tours… are you brave enough?
Waverly Hills Sanatorium – Louisville, Kentucky
Opened in 1910, this treated tuberculosis patients during the TB epidemic of the early 1900s. Fresh air and bed rest were the main treatments during this time – patients were kept outside on porches for most of the day, even during the winter (this led to the invention of electric blankets). Heliotherapy, or “sun treatment”, was also used, as it was believed the sun helped kill the bacteria that cause TB. Other treatments included ways to temporarily restrict a portion of the lung in order to “let it rest”. One of these treatments, the “shot bag” method, included placing a one pound bag of shot on both collarbones of the patient. The amount was increased by four or five ounces each week until the patient would carry 5 pounds on the upper part of each lung. More permanent treatments involved various methods of collapsing one of the patient’s lungs.
Visitors to the Sanatorium can take a 2-hour guided historical tour or spend a half-night (4 hours) or a full night (8 hours) hunting ghosts. One common spot to have paranormal encounters is in the Body Chute, or Death Tunnel, which was once used to transport the bodies of deceased TB patients down the hill to waiting hearses or trains. Many patients died each day during the epidemic and the staff preferred to use the Body Chute rather than carry them through the main hall in an effort to keep morale up. Unusual experiences at the Sanatorium include seeing shadows, smelling food from the abandoned kitchen and hearing voices screaming and moaning. During the month of October, visitors can brave the Terror on the Hill, a haunted house at Waverly Hills.
Written by Travel News on November 4th, 2009 with no comments.
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