Dispatch from the Northwest

Special guest post by Jason Weill, New Depression Era Seattle Bureau Chief.

In Seattle, we thought we were special. We had great companies like Microsoft, Washington Mutual, Boeing, and Weyerhaeuser. I've lived here for just under three years. Since 2006, Boeing and Microsoft have stopped renewing contracts and have started to cut full-timers. Weyerhaeuser has cut back too as its timber isn't needed to build as many houses anymore. WaMu's name graces two skyscrapers downtown but the bank occupies neither of them, having been seized and sold to JP Morgan in the biggest bank failure in history.

Me? I work at Amazon.com, now the biggest company headquartered in Seattle according to Fortune magazine.

Ever since Microsoft turned the world's smartest engineers into millionaires and even billionaires, Seattle and its eastern suburbs (such as Redmond, Microsoft's home) have been forever transformed. Last generation's farmland is now a premium-brand housing development complete with a pretentious name and an upmarket shopping center. Closer to downtown, near where I live, venerable local bars and restaurants have been fighting losing battles with developers who promise bigger, better, more modern developments targeted at young affluent professionals.

Consider how many techies in Seattle grew up outside the country — many in India, where the American dream is seen through the lens of the American TV and movie camera. Consider coming to the U.S., getting a great job, and staying on a visa where if you lose your job, you pretty much have to leave the country a month later. Can you blame even the newest software engineer for taking his signing bonus and catching a ride to the nearest BMW dealer? Amazon.com is famously frugal as a company, but take a stroll through the parking lot and you'll find that many of its employees are not.

As the economy sours, Seattle is starting to face reality. We've lost the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper in print although young tech-savvy Seattleites can still read it and untold hundreds of Seattle blogs on their smartphones. Some of our promised new condominium projects are just holes in the ground. Others sit completed and vacant until 70% of their owners secure financing, a goal that might take years to achieve. Some of these buildings have converted to apartments (or in some cases, back to apartments) driving rents down to their lowest prices in years as supply grows and demand flags. On the once-confident east side, signs on every residential corner plead for buyers to take cul-de-sac homes off their owners' hands before foreclosure proceedings start.

Seattle is getting a reality check that it sorely needs. I won't miss the huge waits for tables at restaurants that charge $10 for a bowl of olives. Instead, we have lighthearted lines for locally-made $3 gourmet ice cream and for tacos that sell based on taste and price, not on attitude and decor. My local farmer's market is even bigger this year and the crowds are still out in force. Now that homebuyers have some time to look before they leap, values of pressboard townhomes and hasty condo conversions are falling back into line with their real competition. Seattle's innate value is still in its stunning natural beauty that's visible just an hour's drive from the center of town. One can only stay in Seattle as an optimist today; there are rewards ahead.