Countrywide Financial Corp., stuck with tens of billions of dollars in “alternative” mortgages it can’t sell, is pushing customers to refinance into traditional loans that can be easily unloaded by the struggling lender. The home-loan giant seeks to have $12 billion of these exotic loans refinanced into uncontroversial mortgages and has told its sales force to pull out all the stops to get borrowers to go along, internal documents show. Read more

Born in 1950s Oklahoma, Peter Mui says he never felt proud of his ancestry. Afraid of ridicule, his Chinese immigrant father would ask Mui’s mother not to speak Mandarin in public so that the family wouldn’t stand out. Read more

California lawmakers today took an early step toward trying to ease the state’s worsening sub-prime mortgage crisis, approving a bill in committee requiring lenders to repeatedly notify borrowers with adjustable-interest-rate loans about upcoming increases in their monthly payments. The bill by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) mandates notifications to start 120 days before the loan resets. Read more

Sun Microsystems Inc.’s deal to buy open-source software company MySQL for $1 billion deepens Sun’s bet that its road to prosperity lies in distributing free software that generates hefty maintenance fees and could sell more servers. The acquisition, announced before U.S. markets opened Wednesday, gives Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun a foothold in the rapidly expanding market for database software for Web-based companies. Read more

How much should a company’s culture reflect its chief executive, especially one who prides himself on being a blunt and innovative – some might say abrasive – businessman? If you’re new Tribune Co. Read more

Real estate Join the discussion and keep up with current information on the Southern California housing market and related issues. latimes.com/laland Writers strike Read The Times’ full coverage. Read more

California Small-Business Advocate Name: Marty Keller Appointed: May 2007 Staff: 1 Mission: Serve as the voice of small businesses in state government, ensure their participation in economic policy development, connect them to government resources and reduce unnecessary regulatory obstacles. The advocate also serves as an ombudsman for small firms that have problems with any of the state’s 90 agenci Read more

The stock market staggered through another volatile session Wednesday before finishing mixed. Technology and energy shares helped send the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to its lowest close in 14 months. Read more

Warner Bros. issued layoff notices Wednesday to about three dozen employees at its Burbank studio, citing the effect of the 2-month-old strike by Hollywood writers. Read more

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Wednesday that its fourth-quarter profit fell 34% after its exposure to sub-prime mortgages devalued its portfolio by $1.3 billion. Read more

Notching another conquest in its push to create a one-stop shop for business software, Oracle Corp. is snapping up rival BEA Systems Inc. Read more

Shares of Ambac Financial Group Inc. plunged 39% on Wednesday after the bond insurer slashed its dividend by two-thirds, replaced its chief executive and said it would take a $5.4-billion write-down on its investment portfolio. Read more

The companies that make Scrabble are trying to shut down Scrabulous, an online version of the game that is one of the most popular applications on the social-networking website Facebook. Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to the crossword game in the U.S. and Canada, and Mattel Inc., which owns the rights elsewhere, believe that the Facebook game infringes their copyrights and trademarks. Read more

The state agency that prints tax forms said a mistake on some of them could cost California taxpayers. The Franchise Tax Board said Wednesday that early versions of Schedule CA (540), California Adjustments, tells filers to enter information from the wrong federal tax box. Read more

Dear Karen: My new business completed a $1,000 contract but my client ignored my bills and avoided my calls and e-mails. Should I pursue this claim in court or chalk it up to experience? Read more

California’s small firms may be key to helping the state weather a potential economic downturn, says Marty Keller, the state’s small-business advocate. That makes his job as chief spokesman for the state’s estimated 3.3 million small firms especially vital in 2008. Read more

U.S. shoppers faced moderate price rises in December, but that capped a year in which prices soared at the sharpest rate in 17 years, pressuring households also dealing with a steep housing downturn and tighter credit. The Labor Department said Wednesday that its consumer price index rose 0.3% in December, less than half November’s 0.8% jump. Read more

Former Brocade Communications Systems Inc. Chief Executive Gregory Reyes, the first CEO convicted by a jury for manipulating stock options, was sentenced Wednesday to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay a $15-million fine. Read more

Boeing Co., citing unresolved production problems, said Wednesday that it would be unable to deliver its first 787 Dreamliner passenger plane until early 2009 – more than nine months later than it had promised airlines. The latest holdup marks another embarrassing setback for Boeing, which had insisted even as recently as last month that there would be no further delays after having pushed back delivery of the first 787 by six months in October. Read more

Time Warner Cable Inc. will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday. Read more

WASHINGTON – Google Inc. arrived here in 2005 like a newly elected congressman, eager to change the world but first needing a little help locating the restrooms. Read more

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach remained the nation’s busiest seaport complex for cargo containers in 2007, even though they saw a decline in traffic for the first time in at least 20 years. But in a shift, exports grew as the dollar’s declining value helped U.S. companies ride into new markets and to record-breaking sales. Read more

Wells Fargo & Co. ended 2007 with its smallest quarterly profit in six years, dragged down by declining home values and the mortgage mess that’s tormenting most of the banking industry. Read more