FDIC to add 140 workers to bank-failure division
(AP) Anticipating a surge in troubled financial institutions, federal regulators will increase by 60% the number of workers who handle bank failures.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. wants to add 140 workers to bring staff levels to 360 workers in the division that handles bank failures, John Bovenzi, the agency's chief operating officer, said Tuesday.
"We want to make sure that we're prepared," Bovenzi said, adding that most of the hires will be temporary and based in Dallas.
There have been five bank failures since February 2007 following an uneventful more than two-year stretch. The last time the agency was hit hard with failures was during the 1990-1991 recession, when 502 banks failed in three years.
Analysts see casualties rising, but don't believe they will reach early-1990s levels.
Gerard Cassidy, managing director of bank equity research at RBC Capital Markets, projects 150 bank failures over the next three years, with the highest concentration coming from states such as California and Florida where an overheated real estate market is in a fast freeze.
To cushion against losses from bad loans, banks likely will raise additional capital and cut dividends this year, said Tony Davis, a senior bank analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co. However, he said, "we're not looking at a massive number of bank failures."
The FDIC provides insurance for deposits up to $100,000. While depositors typically have quick access to their bank accounts on the next business day after a bank closure, winding down a failed bank's operations can take years to finish. That process can include selling off real estate, investments and dealing with lawsuits.
There are 76 banks on the FDIC's "problem institutions" list which would equate to about 10 expected bank failures this year, though FDIC officials declined to make projections. Historically, about six banks fail per year on average, FDIC officials said.
Good God - taken over by a bank from North Dakota. Talk about insult to injury. S'pose they'll make the employees wear green and face west toward 'The Ralph' every morning for 'devotionals'*. We truly are near the end times!
Well if that doesn't straighten those bankers out & put fear in their hearts - nothing will!!!
*Serious Minnesota-No Dak hockey rivalry insider jokes involved, just ignore & move on.
BTW - any one here ever even been to Staples? Other than me of course who's been there like a gazillion times on my way to snowmobile plants in the 'North West'.
We're talking major league rural nowhere [which means 'yes' I'd probably live there though I'd not tell the locals its MLRN - kinda insulting, folks get touchy about that sorta stuff]. Its where farms meet northwoods - you could shoot deer, catch fish AND have a pretty good garden. Doesn't sound like they focused on the 'banking' part too much though.
The transaction is the least costly resolution option, and the FDIC estimates that the cost to its Deposit Insurance Fund is approximately $2.3 million.
FDIC loss is estimated at $2.3 million? Isn't that like what the FDIC leaves for tips after dinner when they close real [big city] banks?
I think 4 banks would be closer to 20-30 if the new TAF "AAA" (sarcasm off) lending facility wasn't open for all the sinners.
The federal church of the united states of america where we take your wounded paper and give you some new federally backed paper to help and heal all those terrible people shorting are beloved market....Hallelujah!
IMO, there will be more to come. You all probably know this but anyone interested in purchasing failed bank assets should get in touch with DebtX or FFN, the loan sale advisors under contract with the FDIC (disclosure - I run the trading/placement team at DebtX)
Friend of a friend is putting 20% down, under 2000/month payments on a 30 year fixed loan in the east bay, at a price 200K below the peak 2005 price of 600K. According to zillow, this seems to be a 2004 price point.
They can actually afford this on their current income, even though I suspect they are overpaying/knife catching, but they certainly won't be in foreclosure danger unless they hit both (1) a drop big enough to wipe out their 20% down and (2) job/income loss.
So a downpayment laden very high
income (double the median) low bidder former renter is not reaching for the
top of the market, but headed for what
they can actually carry at the low end.
If this is all they can afford at that income,
I presume it's going to be a dry summer.
There will be more. Quite a few. It takes a while for the rug to be yanked out, to be honest. It's a war of attrition. Hopefully some of the biggies will sell out before the debacle, but there certainly will be a nice crew of mid to smalls.
FFEIC release the 2008 "Distressed or Underserved Tract List" today. Basically a check list of which counties are in poverty / unemployment / population loss. Lots of poverty across the bible belt ( AR, MS, AL, GA and North FL).
Things have come to a pretty pass here in the realm of crisis and woe. A few months ago it was Armeggedon, now the best you can do is a $ 54 mil bank in Podunk?
My condolences to you folks.
I think the new season of Monk is starting soon, so Friday night won't be a total write-off.
I once worked at a Cat House which had to be closed, so I can relate and feel the pain of THE FDIC and other Fed agencies which were unaware that problems below the surface would rise and surface where radar would pick up on this type of reality. This is a little like allowing The Fed to allow a meth lab to run for a few years and then step in to shut it down, i.e, people know, the banks know, The Fed knows and these dirty little whorehouse-banks that are falling into trouble are just buying time to crank out more dope, more johns, more tricks, and in the meantime, people will look away and ignore reality!
I've seen snow drifts out there in west-central Minnesota big as barns. Not much snow in this picture though - but looking at the sky reflection in the windows & how 'dry' the snow is - I can for sure as a Native Minnie tell you it was MF cold when that photo was shot.
Give this thing time. It is still only a few months in the making. How many banks have failed? 3-4? Lets not forget a little bank called Bear Stearns. You sebastian, and O-Joe are great to have around and i hope you guys stick around for the show.
Staples looks like a lot of the Central Valley (Colusa, Williams, Oakdale, etc). Hell even Lodi and much of Fresno looked like that not long ago.
People think all of CA looks like LA or SF. The state is huge and the interior reminds me of places like Ames, IA, or OKC. No disrespect to Ames or OKC, I really enjoyed both cities (mostly because the CA posers were nowhere around).
Hell, Tater Knob, outside of Lexington is one of my favorite places in the US. Now I have to go find some whiskey and listen to John Prine.
Don't laugh at First Integrity. The western North Dakota banks are awash in cash because of the oil boom in the area, Those farmers leave their royalty checks in their checking accounts!
Tim: I'm not sure I should be lumped in with Sebastian and O-Joe, as I am neither bullish nor bearish. I see the economy as mixed right now, with pockets of strength and pockets of weakness.
The way forward, IMO, will involve the US making a serious commitment to cut energy usage down to European per-capita levels. This will require a serious investment in energy generation (wind, solar, nukes), transportation infrastructure (rail) and the development/rehab of urban centers. All of that is doable; all that's lacking is will. $4/gallon gas seems likely to provide the will even though common sense hasn't done so yet. I can tell you that we WON'T get there by pissing and moaning about how bad things are, especially when the "bad" hasn't even passed the threshold of a mild recession.
It's time to roll up the old sleeves and get to work.
The way forward, IMO [...] This will require a serious investment in energy generation (wind, solar, nukes), transportation infrastructure (rail) and the development/rehab of urban centers. All of that is doable; all that's lacking is will.
No. What's also lacking is the administrative capacity to choose a good solution and implement it. Don't minimize this, administrative mechanism is an essential capital good in state-scale endeavors like this.
Also, vast capital investments managed to a successful conclusion.
Just because you can come up with an elevator pitch framing the problem does not mean the solution is as easy as all that.
Let me frame it like this: This is a problem that should never have happened, yet, here it is, this ghastly situation of mismanagement.
So who is going to find the solution?
The current crop of regulators? Not much of a track record there. Their political rivals? Nope, creatures of the same context, with the same problems. The yearnings of the common people to have this situation end are certainly not going to make a solution, QED.
Someone has to envision, plan for, implement and evaluate the project. Someone has to maintain it as a going concern. The easiest problems in the world can go unsolved for lack of a path to implementation that doesn't end in sandbagging, hijacking, co-optation, bad plannning, or a failure to frame the problem at sufficiently broad scope that you don't just waste your resources treating the symptoms.
Also, there's the issue of massive physical capital investments in a world where I really don't think you have contemplated the future shape of the aggregate demand curve for base industrial inputs. America is not a populous nation, and nations that are populous are undergoing primary industrialization in the context of a declining resource base.
I can tell you that we WON'T get there by pissing and moaning about how bad things are, especially when the "bad" hasn't even passed the threshold of a mild recession.
We also won't get there by being a bunch of Pollyannas who refuse to admit the scope of the crisis. The megabank crisis is "over" in that they are all mostly undead now, raised from the dead at the cost of major and ongoing value destruction of the USD. I have not seen any movement toward a real "solution" -- meaning banks that can both lend and lend prudently. Further, I don't think I shall, because it would require systemic reform beyond the framing capability of the current administrative milieu.
It's time to roll up the old sleeves and get to work.
Best you make sure to dig the trenches to the fields and lay out the gates and bridges before you divert the river, Yellow Emperor.
byzantine: I have no more faith than you in the current crop of American leadership. But other countries have made and are making the type of investments that are needed here. I lived in France for a while, so I'll take that as an example. They have superb high speed trains and their cities are easily navigable by subway and commuter trains. And they get 80% of their power from nukes. So Chirac must have been a brilliant statesman? Hardly; more like a corrupt hack. And Sarko? Don't get me started. So French bankers must be orders of magnitude smarter than their American counterparts? Soc Gen answers that. So the French must be a nation of brilliant geniuses? In the kitchen maybe, but otherwise, no. They simply took to heart the oil crises of the 70s and made a national commitment. Americans didn't. Now the oil crisis of the 00s is here. Is it late? Yes. Too late? There we may disagree.
The only thing the current crop of Americans have made a national commitment to is cheap gas, ever rising home values and pushing out all our problems to the next generation.
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Lawyerliz writes:
Couldn't the good people of staples plant a few trees, or have some firs in pots. Charmless. No pride in their town.
Lawyerliz | 05.31.08 - 9:20 am | #
Liz - they got woods all around them - unlike a lot of America they don't have to manufacture the look - from a picture on weather underground of area just north of Staples:
Its like that for a 100 miles in almost every direction.
The reason the downtown is so 'tight' is it was built around the rail road - Great Northern Pacific 'Empire Builder' line originated by James J Hill (one of the big tycoons of the robber baron era) - it was in effect a planned community laid out for commerce - get the timber & crops out, get merchandise in - efficient. 120 years later the layout still 'works' - if you want your own personal 'cutesy' sprawl then buy one of the gazillion acreages on lake frontage outside of town - they too surround the place for 100 miles in every direction.
Also - 'cute' costs money - go to that original link it provides other links about Staples demographics - the ave family income is quite low as is the cost of housing. These folks are no nonsense - tearing up a perfectly good functioning downtown at great expense for cute would not make sense to them.
As for potted firs - they would die - too cold in winter. Nothing survives in pots outside in Minnesota winters.
FIst Integrity ? Fancy name. Small change podunk bank...
4 banks so far this year is hardly any.
4? not even one a month, wait until this thing really gets rolling.
No sign of it rolling yet... all just pure speculation.
According to the google cache of their home page, they've been around since 1919.
Must've had a change in management since those old fuddy-duddies that weathered the Great Depression.
1) Loans get made which cant be paid back
2) Banks fail
The banks seem to be managing to stay afloat. There has been no increase in failures.
FDIC to add 140 workers to bank-failure division
(AP) Anticipating a surge in troubled financial institutions, federal regulators will increase by 60% the number of workers who handle bank failures.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. wants to add 140 workers to bring staff levels to 360 workers in the division that handles bank failures, John Bovenzi, the agency's chief operating officer, said Tuesday.
"We want to make sure that we're prepared," Bovenzi said, adding that most of the hires will be temporary and based in Dallas.
There have been five bank failures since February 2007 following an uneventful more than two-year stretch. The last time the agency was hit hard with failures was during the 1990-1991 recession, when 502 banks failed in three years.
Analysts see casualties rising, but don't believe they will reach early-1990s levels.
Gerard Cassidy, managing director of bank equity research at RBC Capital Markets, projects 150 bank failures over the next three years, with the highest concentration coming from states such as California and Florida where an overheated real estate market is in a fast freeze.
To cushion against losses from bad loans, banks likely will raise additional capital and cut dividends this year, said Tony Davis, a senior bank analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co. However, he said, "we're not looking at a massive number of bank failures."
The FDIC provides insurance for deposits up to $100,000. While depositors typically have quick access to their bank accounts on the next business day after a bank closure, winding down a failed bank's operations can take years to finish. That process can include selling off real estate, investments and dealing with lawsuits.
There are 76 banks on the FDIC's "problem institutions" list which would equate to about 10 expected bank failures this year, though FDIC officials declined to make projections. Historically, about six banks fail per year on average, FDIC officials said.
Good God - taken over by a bank from North Dakota. Talk about insult to injury. S'pose they'll make the employees wear green and face west toward 'The Ralph' every morning for 'devotionals'*. We truly are near the end times!
Well if that doesn't straighten those bankers out & put fear in their hearts - nothing will!!!
*Serious Minnesota-No Dak hockey rivalry insider jokes involved, just ignore & move on.
DSL can't be far behind. smashed to the downside today by over 9% and accelerating.
sorry. DSL down 10.04% today
Hey will, if you are going to repost an entire article (which you shouldn't), maybe you could try to make it less than two months old.
So, how does that phrase go? "A rising tide sinks all boats"? Something like that.
I thought the numbers were relevant, next time I will edit more for you, because I like you.
Merrill's Fleming Says Banking M&A to Accelerate in Six Months - Bloomberg.com
BTW - any one here ever even been to Staples? Other than me of course who's been there like a gazillion times on my way to snowmobile plants in the 'North West'.
We're talking major league rural nowhere [which means 'yes' I'd probably live there though I'd not tell the locals its MLRN - kinda insulting, folks get touchy about that sorta stuff]. Its where farms meet northwoods - you could shoot deer, catch fish AND have a pretty good garden. Doesn't sound like they focused on the 'banking' part too much though.
Oh well we can't do everything well.
The transaction is the least costly resolution option, and the FDIC estimates that the cost to its Deposit Insurance Fund is approximately $2.3 million.
FDIC loss is estimated at $2.3 million? Isn't that like what the FDIC leaves for tips after dinner when they close real [big city] banks?
I think 4 banks would be closer to 20-30 if the new TAF "AAA" (sarcasm off) lending facility wasn't open for all the sinners.
The federal church of the united states of america where we take your wounded paper and give you some new federally backed paper to help and heal all those terrible people shorting are beloved market....Hallelujah!
IMO, there will be more to come. You all probably know this but anyone interested in purchasing failed bank assets should get in touch with DebtX or FFN, the loan sale advisors under contract with the FDIC (disclosure - I run the trading/placement team at DebtX)
DebtX, The Debt Exchange
DebtX :: Home
617-531-3400
First Financial Network
First Financial Network Inc. - Home
405-748-4100
FDIC: Loan Sales Announcements
FDIC loss is estimated at $2.3 million? Isn't that like what the FDIC leaves for tips after dinner when they close real [big city] banks?
It's probably about the cost of a locker full of frozen turkey. No big deal.
Calculated Risk: A Story: Write Your Own Moral
New SF Bay Area anecdote:
Friend of a friend is putting 20% down, under 2000/month payments on a 30 year fixed loan in the east bay, at a price 200K below the peak 2005 price of 600K. According to zillow, this seems to be a 2004 price point.
They can actually afford this on their current income, even though I suspect they are overpaying/knife catching, but they certainly won't be in foreclosure danger unless they hit both (1) a drop big enough to wipe out their 20% down and (2) job/income loss.
So a downpayment laden very high
income (double the median) low bidder former renter is not reaching for the
top of the market, but headed for what
they can actually carry at the low end.
If this is all they can afford at that income,
I presume it's going to be a dry summer.
It's probably about the cost of a locker full of frozen turkey. No big deal.
LOL - they got lots of those up there too.
There will be more. Quite a few. It takes a while for the rug to be yanked out, to be honest. It's a war of attrition. Hopefully some of the biggies will sell out before the debacle, but there certainly will be a nice crew of mid to smalls.
FFDIC called it on a thread a few days ago. I remember spending a few minutes looking through Minn. based banks to try and figure out who it would be.
-Jaso
FFDIC called it on a thread a few days ago. I remember spending a few minutes looking through Minn. based banks to try and figure out who it would be.
Ya me too - but some how 'Integrity' in Staples just didn't jump out at me.
FYI - Downtown Staples
From a man of few words, Warren Buffet: "You've got a lot of leeway in running a bank to not tell the truth for quite a while."
OT (kinda),
FFEIC release the 2008 "Distressed or Underserved Tract List" today. Basically a check list of which counties are in poverty / unemployment / population loss. Lots of poverty across the bible belt ( AR, MS, AL, GA and North FL).
2008 Distressed or Underserved Tract List
err.. FFIEC (my bad)
I'm waiting for the CA banks to come fast and furiously.
Things have come to a pretty pass here in the realm of crisis and woe. A few months ago it was Armeggedon, now the best you can do is a $ 54 mil bank in Podunk?
My condolences to you folks.
I think the new season of Monk is starting soon, so Friday night won't be a total write-off.
FYI - Downtown Staples
dryfly | 05.30.08 - 7:54 pm | #
What year was that photo taken?
Nevermind, it says on the photo, 2006.
Wow.
elvis,
Their has to be a candidate in central valley, riverside, inland empire, san diego, orange county and high desert...
FFDIC thread had me leaning towards BNC..
Auto sales numbers will be bad again. Some bright spots but based off credit app flow...slow...
Speaking of bank failures, the Fed's Frederic Mishkin is quitting in August
after serving 2 years of his 8 year term as a Fed governor, to return to Columbia University.
san leandro ain't montclair. 400k is still floodplain alameda or behind the latest named incarantion of oakland stadium.
Geeze, Dryfly. That pic of Staples looked like a lot of towns in GA.
Actually, that looks like the town in PA in which I grew up.
But the liquor store would be run by the state. Wait a minute, isn't Rendell's nickname "Lefty"?
Oops. Nope, that would be "Lucky".
My bad.
Yeah, we're open.
I once worked at a Cat House which had to be closed, so I can relate and feel the pain of THE FDIC and other Fed agencies which were unaware that problems below the surface would rise and surface where radar would pick up on this type of reality. This is a little like allowing The Fed to allow a meth lab to run for a few years and then step in to shut it down, i.e, people know, the banks know, The Fed knows and these dirty little whorehouse-banks that are falling into trouble are just buying time to crank out more dope, more johns, more tricks, and in the meantime, people will look away and ignore reality!
FYI - Downtown Staples
dryfly | 05.30.08 - 7:54 pm |
Looks identical to the small Ohio town I grew up in...
Chris
It's still happy hour folks, just stop on in at Lefty's. No eclairs, though.
Geeze, Dryfly. That pic of Staples looked like a lot of towns in GA.
MaxedOutMama | Homepage | 05.30.08 - 9:43 pm | #
For MOM...
The not-looks-like-Georgia-Staples-pic...
HERE
I've seen snow drifts out there in west-central Minnesota big as barns. Not much snow in this picture though - but looking at the sky reflection in the windows & how 'dry' the snow is - I can for sure as a Native Minnie tell you it was MF cold when that photo was shot.
stop on in at Lefty's. No eclairs, though.
also Lefty's top-shelf tequila is low-grade rat piss.
Aheadofthecurve,
Give this thing time. It is still only a few months in the making. How many banks have failed? 3-4? Lets not forget a little bank called Bear Stearns. You sebastian, and O-Joe are great to have around and i hope you guys stick around for the show.
Staples looks like a lot of the Central Valley (Colusa, Williams, Oakdale, etc). Hell even Lodi and much of Fresno looked like that not long ago.
People think all of CA looks like LA or SF. The state is huge and the interior reminds me of places like Ames, IA, or OKC. No disrespect to Ames or OKC, I really enjoyed both cities (mostly because the CA posers were nowhere around).
Hell, Tater Knob, outside of Lexington is one of my favorite places in the US. Now I have to go find some whiskey and listen to John Prine.
Several days after I first heard the rumor The Street.com released this chart listing First Integrity Bank, NA, Staples MN in an article titled 'These Banks Need to Raise Capital Quickly' dated 5/27/08. I linked it in a prior CR thread. The FDIC has a team in Arkansas now.
Chart:
http://images.thestreet.com/tsc/common/images/storyimages/052608_banks.gif
Article:
These Banks Need to Raise Capital Quickly | Innovation Update | Financial Articles & Investing News | TheStreet.com
FFDIC,
I expect the team in central valley, CA in about 6 mos. If I'm still in town, I'll keep the light on for y'all.
I think the Arkansas team is for a wrap up of the failed Bentonville bank and not another impending failure in that state but it is not confirmed yet.
Jane
Polish up the biggest bong!
Don't laugh at First Integrity. The western North Dakota banks are awash in cash because of the oil boom in the area, Those farmers leave their royalty checks in their checking accounts!
Jane, polish up the biggest bong!
Hey, FFDIC, Jane's not that kinda girl.
Tim: I'm not sure I should be lumped in with Sebastian and O-Joe, as I am neither bullish nor bearish. I see the economy as mixed right now, with pockets of strength and pockets of weakness.
The way forward, IMO, will involve the US making a serious commitment to cut energy usage down to European per-capita levels. This will require a serious investment in energy generation (wind, solar, nukes), transportation infrastructure (rail) and the development/rehab of urban centers. All of that is doable; all that's lacking is will. $4/gallon gas seems likely to provide the will even though common sense hasn't done so yet. I can tell you that we WON'T get there by pissing and moaning about how bad things are, especially when the "bad" hasn't even passed the threshold of a mild recession.
It's time to roll up the old sleeves and get to work.
Couldn't the good people of staples plant a few trees, or have some firs in pots. Charmless. No pride in their town.
I think the Arkansas team is for a wrap up of the failed Bentonville bank
They're going to need a whole league of bank closers, not just a team or two.
California and Florida would get multiple franchises, i.e. the Sacramento Shutdowns, the Miami Meltdown, etc.
Aheadofthecurve writes:
The way forward, IMO [...] This will require a serious investment in energy generation (wind, solar, nukes), transportation infrastructure (rail) and the development/rehab of urban centers. All of that is doable; all that's lacking is will.
No. What's also lacking is the administrative capacity to choose a good solution and implement it. Don't minimize this, administrative mechanism is an essential capital good in state-scale endeavors like this.
Also, vast capital investments managed to a successful conclusion.
Just because you can come up with an elevator pitch framing the problem does not mean the solution is as easy as all that.
Let me frame it like this: This is a problem that should never have happened, yet, here it is, this ghastly situation of mismanagement.
So who is going to find the solution?
The current crop of regulators? Not much of a track record there. Their political rivals? Nope, creatures of the same context, with the same problems. The yearnings of the common people to have this situation end are certainly not going to make a solution, QED.
Someone has to envision, plan for, implement and evaluate the project. Someone has to maintain it as a going concern. The easiest problems in the world can go unsolved for lack of a path to implementation that doesn't end in sandbagging, hijacking, co-optation, bad plannning, or a failure to frame the problem at sufficiently broad scope that you don't just waste your resources treating the symptoms.
Also, there's the issue of massive physical capital investments in a world where I really don't think you have contemplated the future shape of the aggregate demand curve for base industrial inputs. America is not a populous nation, and nations that are populous are undergoing primary industrialization in the context of a declining resource base.
I can tell you that we WON'T get there by pissing and moaning about how bad things are, especially when the "bad" hasn't even passed the threshold of a mild recession.
We also won't get there by being a bunch of Pollyannas who refuse to admit the scope of the crisis. The megabank crisis is "over" in that they are all mostly undead now, raised from the dead at the cost of major and ongoing value destruction of the USD. I have not seen any movement toward a real "solution" -- meaning banks that can both lend and lend prudently. Further, I don't think I shall, because it would require systemic reform beyond the framing capability of the current administrative milieu.
It's time to roll up the old sleeves and get to work.
Best you make sure to dig the trenches to the fields and lay out the gates and bridges before you divert the river, Yellow Emperor.
byzantine: I have no more faith than you in the current crop of American leadership. But other countries have made and are making the type of investments that are needed here. I lived in France for a while, so I'll take that as an example. They have superb high speed trains and their cities are easily navigable by subway and commuter trains. And they get 80% of their power from nukes. So Chirac must have been a brilliant statesman? Hardly; more like a corrupt hack. And Sarko? Don't get me started. So French bankers must be orders of magnitude smarter than their American counterparts? Soc Gen answers that. So the French must be a nation of brilliant geniuses? In the kitchen maybe, but otherwise, no. They simply took to heart the oil crises of the 70s and made a national commitment. Americans didn't. Now the oil crisis of the 00s is here. Is it late? Yes. Too late? There we may disagree.
The only thing the current crop of Americans have made a national commitment to is cheap gas, ever rising home values and pushing out all our problems to the next generation.
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Lawyerliz writes:
Couldn't the good people of staples plant a few trees, or have some firs in pots. Charmless. No pride in their town.
Lawyerliz | 05.31.08 - 9:20 am | #
Liz - they got woods all around them - unlike a lot of America they don't have to manufacture the look - from a picture on weather underground of area just north of Staples:
PIX
Its like that for a 100 miles in almost every direction.
The reason the downtown is so 'tight' is it was built around the rail road - Great Northern Pacific 'Empire Builder' line originated by James J Hill (one of the big tycoons of the robber baron era) - it was in effect a planned community laid out for commerce - get the timber & crops out, get merchandise in - efficient. 120 years later the layout still 'works' - if you want your own personal 'cutesy' sprawl then buy one of the gazillion acreages on lake frontage outside of town - they too surround the place for 100 miles in every direction.
Also - 'cute' costs money - go to that original link it provides other links about Staples demographics - the ave family income is quite low as is the cost of housing. These folks are no nonsense - tearing up a perfectly good functioning downtown at great expense for cute would not make sense to them.
As for potted firs - they would die - too cold in winter. Nothing survives in pots outside in Minnesota winters.
Hope that helps...