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Antonio Stradivari, the master violin maker whose instruments sell for millions of dollars today, has been dead for nearly three centuries. Only 650 of his instruments are estimated to survive.

But the forest where the luthier got his lumber is alive and well. And thanks to the surprising teamwork of modern instrument makers and forest rangers, Stradivari's trees are doing better than ever.

These spruce trees have been growing for hundreds of years in the Fiemme Valley, the same corner of the Italian Alps where Renaissance luthiers such as Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati hand-picked the trees that would be turned into some of the world's finest instruments. Thanks to a serendipitous combination of climate and altitude, these have come to be called "Il Bosco Che Suona" — The Musical Woods.

Marcello Mazzucchi, a retired forest ranger with an uncanny knack for spotting timber that's ideal for instruments, walks among the trees, tapping on their trunks.

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Luthier Cecilia Piazzi crafts a violin in her Northern Italian workshop. It takes months to complete a single instrument that can cost more than $10,000. A Stradivarius including wood from the same forest can go for more than $10 million.

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Graziano Panfili for NPR

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Like a sculptor, Piazzi lathes away fine layers of lumber to eventually reveal a finished violin.

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The Fiemme Valley is home to spruce trees, some over 300 years old. Due to a serendipitous combination of climate and altitude, it has been called "Il Bosco Che Suona" — The Musical Woods.

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Graziano Panfili for NPR

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Marcello Mazzucchi has an uncanny knack for spotting trees that are ideal for instruments. He goes from tree to tree, crossing flawed candidates off his list in search of the perfect timber, and the perfect violin.

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Forest rangers look for saplings before chopping down a tree for instrument lumber. The practice ensures the livelihood of the forest, and the future of musical instruments from the valley. Today, these woods are healthier than in Stradivari's day, according to the forest service.

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Marcello Mazzucchi, who's known as "The Tree Whisperer." "I've felled one million trees in my career," he says. "But in their place, 100 million more have grown up."

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Graziano Panfili/Graziano Panfili for NPR

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Sunlight is key to a tree's health. Before chopping one down and turning it into an instrument, forest rangers must make sure there's a sapling nearby. With the old tree gone, the new tree can come out of the dark and thrive.

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Once a forest ranger marks a suitable tree, lumberjacks chop it down and cart it to a lumberyard like this one in the Fiemme Valley, where the spruce is milled into sections.

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Once the lumber has been milled into sections, experts can tell how a piece will resonate just by flicking it.

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The Fiemme Valley is one of Italy's most prosperous areas, thanks in large part to these Musical Woods.

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Mazzucchi's skill has led some to call him "The Tree Whisperer," but he laughs off that nickname. "I'm really more of a tree listener," he says. "I observe, I touch them, sometimes I even hug them. Look carefully and they'll tell you their life story, their traumas, their joys, everything. Such humble creatures."

He goes from trunk to trunk, crossing flawed candidates off his list.

"This one over here was struck by lightning," he says. "Who knows what kind of sound its violin would make?"

Then he finds a contender: "It shoots up perfectly straight. It's very cylindrical. No branches at the bottom. If you ask me, there's a violin trapped inside."

Mazzucchi takes out a manual drill called a borer, and twists it like a corkscrew through the bark. He listens carefully to the knocking sound the borer makes each time it hits a new tree ring.

Pulling out a core sample shaped like a pencil, he concludes the tree is an excellent specimen. A lumberjack chops down trees like this one and carts them to a lumberyard nearby, where the spruce is milled into sections.

Local instrument maker Cecilia Piazzi examines a piece of that milled wood, and declares it "magnificent."

"We use it for making the table — that's the beautiful part on the front of a violin or cello, with the soundholes on the surface," Piazzi says. "Yes, this piece is the right piece. I can tell just by flicking it."

It takes months to complete a single instrument, which can cost over $10,000 — a bargain, when you consider a Stradivarius that came from the same forest can go for over $10 million.

But it's enough to keep this community humming. The Fiemme Valley is one of Italy's most prosperous areas, thanks in large part to these musical woods. And it's going to stay that way because people like the Tree Whisperer take care of it.

"I've felled one million trees in my career," Mazzucchi says. "But in their place, 100 million more have grown up."

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Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri made the world's most prized violins and cellos with wood from Italy's Fiemme Valley. Graziano Panfili for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Graziano Panfili for NPR

Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri made the world's most prized violins and cellos with wood from Italy's Fiemme Valley.

Graziano Panfili for NPR

Before a tree hits the chopping block, Mazzucchi looks around to see if there are any tiny saplings struggling to grow nearby. If so, removing an adult tree will let more sun in and actually help the babies mature.

Bruno Cosignani, the head of the local forest service, explains that light is the limiting factor on tree growth.

"As soon as a tree falls down, those who were born and suffering in the shadows can start to grow more quickly," he says.

And centuries from now, those trees, too, might become musical instruments.

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Imagine you're sitting back one evening, planning your holiday shopping list, knowing that every day you wait to get to the shops, the value of your money will be losing ground.

That's what's happening in places like Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria and other nations that rely heavily on oil exports.

Oil was more than $100 a barrel at the start of the summer. Now it's around $70 a barrel, and many forecasts say it could go lower still.

Falling oil prices have been good news for consumers and businesses here in the U.S. and in the many countries around the world that import oil. But it's having a domino effect in oil-exporting nations. Government budgets are strained. Economies are struggling. The currency is crashing.

The Russian ruble was trading at around 35 to the U.S. dollar this summer. But the ruble has been heading south ever since oil prices started tanking. Now it takes more than 50 rubles for a dollar.

The swift drop in oil prices caught many producers off-guard, says Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Over the last few years, oil producers had gotten used to a situation where oil was above $100 a barrel," she says. "So what had happened in these countries is they just had money to burn, so they're spending money on handouts to the public, keeping people happy, exploiting their resources even more ... and that's now on the decline."

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People walk past a display with currency exchange rates in Moscow on Wednesday. Falling oil prices have contributed to a number of economic problems, including a currency that has fallen from 35 rubles to the dollar this summer to more than 50 rubles to the dollar now. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

People walk past a display with currency exchange rates in Moscow on Wednesday. Falling oil prices have contributed to a number of economic problems, including a currency that has fallen from 35 rubles to the dollar this summer to more than 50 rubles to the dollar now.

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Freund says oil producers with large populations used to government subsidies are being hard-hit. So too are those countries without the financial cushion to ride out the price crash.

"It's hardest for these countries that don't have reserves, really high reserves, like a Venezuela or an Iraq or an Iran, as compared with a Saudi Arabia or a [United Arab Emirates] or Kuwait, where they've really piled up the reserves and can hold out for quite some time," she adds.

Part of the reason oil prices are so low right now is oversupply, which is linked to slowing demand in countries such as China. It's also due to a strong dollar, says Donald Dony, an energy analyst in Victoria, British Columbia.

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"At this point right now, the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy is definitely hands and feet over top of just about anybody else out there, certainly better than Europe, and is stronger than most of the Asian economies," he says. "So as the U.S. dollar goes up, other currencies start to go down."

And commodities like oil are linked to the U.S. dollar. So countries with a weakened currency are likely to buy less oil, which in turn affects the exporting nations.

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While the current price of oil is at its lowest level since 2010, it's been much lower in the past three decades, says Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert and visiting professor at Georgetown University. Even when compared with today's prices, oil-dependent nations have always managed to get by.

"These countries, they've seen it when it's been up, when it's been down. Even President [Vladimir] Putin himself has been president of Russia in every type of oil price — the low, the high, the crisis," Shaffer says. "I think it's nothing new for these governments."

Still, Shaffer says countries that depend on a certain oil price to balance their budgets could be vulnerable to instability. But Shaffer says it's premature to think that nations will fundamentally change their foreign policy behavior.

"Things like Russia pulling out of Crimea, or Iran changing its stance on the nuclear program, things that these countries see as national interest, they're not going to give up because of the oil price," Shaffer adds.

She says there's an intricate relationship between oil prices and geopolitics: It's like a kaleidoscope, where one change can set off unintended consequences. She says Washington may take satisfaction that Russia is feeling a financial pinch, but low oil prices could also signal a slowing in the global economy.

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As the holiday buying season approaches, retailers remain open to the same attack — called a "point of sale" attack — that hit Target and Home Depot, security experts say. Those analysts say that retailers have their fingers crossed, hoping they're not next.

And leading companies are keeping very tight-lipped about what, if anything, they're doing to protect customers.

Is This Store Hackerproof?

It's easy to spot a scratched face on a watch. It's much harder to tell if the checkout machine that you swipe to pay for that watch is defective.

But Davi Ottenheimer knows how. He's a security researcher at EMC, a Hopkinton, Mass.-based data storage company. He's been auditing retail for a decade. And we're looking at how "hackerproof" stores are this holiday shopping season.

We walk into a Rolex Store in San Francisco, and the diamond-studded watches don't catch Ottenheimer's eye. A tablet that's sitting by the counter, with a little square card reader plugged in, does.

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"They're not even looking at us," he says as a sales representative walks away. "We could replace the card reader with our own card reader. I have several of those at home."

Never mind that an armed guard is patrolling the door. This store is ripe for a microscale cyberattack. Sure, it would just get a few dozen customers. But, Ottenheimer says, "they spend a lot of money, so if I want to get high-value cards, this would be a place where I could get them."

Rolex and Tourneau, the company managing the store, did not respond to NPR's request for comment about on-site security.

Over at Macy's, Ottenheimer wanders over to an empty corner and stares at a lonely register. He points to a little green icon that's blinking on the hard drive. "It has a network light on the front," he says.

That means it's speaking to other machines that are grabbing card numbers.

Ottenheimer is concerned that crooks could use this unprotected machine to try to break in. "They came over to help us with the jewelry but not with the fact that we're standing and staring at a PC in the corner," he says.

NPR reached out to Macy's to ask what it's doing to protect the customer information feeding into these machines. Is the retail chain scrambling and encrypting card numbers? Is it cordoning off the financial data, so that people with access to one point of entry can't break into others?

Macy's declined to provide a single detail about the most general security measures it's taking.

'Security By Obscurity'

Orla Cox, a security expert at Symantec, helps retailers behind the scenes. And while she can't name her clients because of nondisclosure agreements, she criticizes companies for acting like they can achieve "security by obscurity."

"A lot of times, a lazy approach to security is just to make information difficult to get," she says. "Just because you're not talking about it isn't actually making you any more protected."

According to a recent Symantec report, hacks have gotten bigger and more frequent. Cox and other security insiders say that just about every retailer remains open to the exact same attack — a point-of-sale attack that lifts information from credit card readers — that got Target and Home Depot.

“ Just because you're not talking about it isn't actually making you any more protected.

- Orla Cox, a security expert at Symantec

It's not clear if or when that'll change. NPR contacted two dozen of America's largest retailers — which include Sears, Kohl's, Best Buy, Dollar General, the TJ Maxx company — and none of them would indicate whether their budget for online security has increased in this last year of megabreaches.

"I would think that it's fairly innocuous information anyway," Cox says. "Giving a number out there shows that you're taking it seriously."

A Lack Of Incentives

Visa and MasterCard are nudging retailers to take on a bit more liability. By October 2015, merchants who don't have the more up-to-date EMV chip card readers could have to pay for certain credit and debit card theft in stores.

"There is no silver bullet," says Ellen Richey, Visa's chief risk officer, who's on a national campaign to get retailers to invest.

But, many say, there aren't enough incentives for retailers to address the issue.

Retailers make tiny margins — say 2 percent. They don't want to spend on IT support. When credit card data are stolen, they don't typically have to pay. Even if the retailers' lax network security is at fault, financial institutions typically pick up the bill.

That includes credit unions, like LGE Community Credit Union in Georgia. Its president, Chris Leggett, says he is tired of paying for replacement cards after a hack. "It sure would be nice if the merchants would be willing to share in the cost of cleaning it up due to their lax security," he says. "The issuers are paying the brunt of the expense."

The Credit Union National Association is asking lawmakers to intervene, so that retailers are held to stricter security and disclosure rules.

Card Thefts Become Routine

Among victims, a kind of fatalism has set in. People have come to expect the theft.

Kate Anderson in Minnesota has had to replace her cards five times in the past year. "It always seems to happen on a Friday or a Saturday. So usually that's kind of when I kind of really get like, 'Well, should I really go shopping or not?' " she says.

Now, she and her husband know the drill: "Reset all of our passwords and our PIN numbers and every place that we do auto debits from."

Texas resident Hunter Hargrave has replaced his cards twice following hacks. "I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again," he says.

The 25-year-old is turning away from the world of plastic and using old-school money a lot more. "Whenever I get paid, I take out the vast majority in cash, and then I put the rest on a debit card. But the debit card's only for emergencies," he says.

Even if people ditch their cards, they're not ditching the stores. While the cost of cleaning up a hack is climbing, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute, the cost of doing nothing — and hoping for the best — is not.

Sales at Target and Home Depot have been exceeding expectations. Experts say that as long as we're spending, retailers don't have to spend on protecting us.

The fallout from the housing crisis isn't over.

According to Moody's Analytics, there were 700,000 foreclosures last year. And some of those people probably didn't need to lose their homes. Even now, more than six years after the housing crash, lawyers for homeowners say mortgage companies are still making mistakes and foreclosing on homes when they shouldn't be.

Ocwen Financial Corp. is facing an investigation by regulators and a new lawsuit over its treatment of homeowners facing foreclosures. The class-action suit alleges that Ocwen has been charging marked-up, illegal fees and unfairly pushing homeowners into foreclosure.

Ocwen, one of the nation's largest mortgage servicers, collects mortgage payments from American homeowners.

'Helping Homeowners Is What We Do'

There's some irony in Ocwen's case because for years the company claimed to be better than the country's biggest banks at avoiding foreclosures. Ocwen even trademarked the slogan "Helping homeowners is what we do!"

As a "specialty servicer," the company's executives said it had computer systems and policies that were specially designed for working with homeowners who had fallen on hard times and were having trouble paying. Since the housing crash, Ocwen's chairman, William Erbey, has become a billionaire as the company has grown.

But now regulators are investigating Ocwen — not for helping homeowners, but for hurting them.

New York state's top financial regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, recently expanded an investigation into the company. One issue: thousands of back-dated letters that made it appear that homeowners had missed their window to get help avoiding foreclosure.

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Ocwen has pledged to work with regulators and fix the back-dated letter problem. But the investigation has sent Ocwen's stock price swooning — down more than 60 percent year to date. And now there's this new lawsuit on behalf of homeowners.

'It's Robbery'

The lawsuit alleges that Ocwen has been charging marked-up and illegal fees as well as engaging in deceptive business practices.

Phyllis Nugent is one of the plaintiffs, and the lawsuit says Ocwen has been unfairly pushing her into foreclosure. "They just keep sending us bills with erroneous amounts on there and then charging us all these different fees," she says.

Nugent lives with Chad Hopkins and their two children in their house in Lewistown, Ill. He's a roofing contractor. She's a nurse. And the couple says they've always made their mortgage payment — at least until things went haywire back in 2011.

They bought the house in 2002 for about $100,000. Chad Hopkins says they could afford that. "We've lived here 12 years. We've raised our two daughters here along with two of Phyllis' sons," he says. "Not only have we lived here and paid our bills, we have dumped a bunch of money into this place."

But then in 2011, Ocwen discovered that there'd been a paperwork mix-up where some property taxes hadn't been paid a number of years back.

Documents show that Ocwen then added fees and demanded a lump sum payment of $18,000. The couple says they couldn't pay that. And they say they couldn't tell how much of that was taxes and how much was fees tacked on by Ocwen.

At that point, Ocwen refused to accept their normal monthly payments. And Nugent says the company started charging them additional fees that didn't seem to make any sense.

"They charged us fees for property preservation" when the couple was clearly still living in the house and taking care of it, she says. And Nugent says Ocwen also charged them for "force-placed insurance when we always paid our insurance with my insurance man that I've had since 1996."

When taken all together, these fees were not small. In fact, Ocwen claims the couple now owes more than they borrowed in the first place. They borrowed $98,000. But an Ocwen bill cited in the lawsuit claims the couple now owes $150,000 despite a decade of making their mortgage payments.

When they'd call to try to sort all of this out, Nugent and Hopkins say, Ocwen routed them to a call center in India. They say they couldn't get their questions answered. And they were told to just pay the bill.

"We still get bills saying we owe outrageous amounts," Hopkins says.

Meanwhile, Ocwen is now moving to foreclose on their house. "Oh, yeah," Hopkins says, "they've sent foreclosure notices and they've filed here at the federal courthouse in Peoria, Ill."

Gary Klein is one of the lead attorneys representing the homeowners in the case, which has been filed in a federal court in Florida and is seeking class-action status.

Klein says there's a pattern. It usually starts with a small, fixable problem — a mix-up with an escrow account, or a homeowner misses a few payments.

"People have a relatively small and manageable default, something that they could correct, but because Ocwen adds charges in such large amounts, the problem becomes almost unsolvable," Klein says.

The lawsuit alleges that some of those fees Ocwen is charging are illegal. It says Ocwen charged Nugent and Hopkins late fees that it wasn't permitted to charge under the terms of the mortgage. The suit says Ocwen also forced upon the couple a second insurance policy through one of its own affiliates. And it alleges that the company has been improperly steering profits to itself through this affiliate company.

Meanwhile, Ocwen has been asking for larger and larger sums of money from the couple. One exhibit in the lawsuit is a recent monthly statement asking for a payment of $73,000.

"It's robbery," Chad Hopkins says. "Every day you think about ... am I going to have to pack up my stuff and lose all this investment?

"When you have small children and stuff, this is the only home they've ever known," he says. " ... [It's] very frustrating. And I know if it's happening to us, I know it's gotta be happening to other people."

Back-Dated Letters

Benjamin Lawsky, the top regulator at the New York State Department of Financial Services, recently released documents about his department's investigation.

Those documents show that regulators are looking into thousands of loan-modification letters that likely caused homeowners "significant harm" because Ocwen back-dated them. Back-dating the letters made it look like the homeowners had missed their chance to try to avoid a foreclosure.

On an investor conference call, Erbey, Ocwen's chairman, pledged to work with regulators. "One of our goals is to keep people in their homes whenever possible," he said. "Ocwen is creating a review and remediation process for borrowers potentially impacted by the letter-dating mistake the company has made."

As far as the homeowner lawsuit, Ocwen offered the following statement: "Ocwen is currently reviewing the lawsuit and will vigorously defend itself against the claims asserted. Because the litigation remains pending, Ocwen declines to comment further at this time."