Bonds

Transportation planners today approved an agreement with Lehman Bros. and others to evaluate whether the bond debt for the 91 Freeway toll lanes in Orange County needs to be refinanced. The action was prompted after the bond insurer for the 91 Express Lanes debt was downgraded by several credit agencies. As a result, the interest rates on the bonds have increased and are now costing the Orange County Transportation Authority, which operates the toll lanes, $30,000 a week, an OCTA official said.

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to place a $7-billion bond on the November ballot. It would be the largest local school bond ever -- by far -- and would allow officials to tax property owners for building and repairing schools for the next 10 years. The funding package enshrined ambitious new goals, but critics questioned the need for the bond -- as well as a price tag that more than doubled in the last two weeks.

The Orange County Performing ArtsCenter suffered an unprecedented $13-million deficit during the recently ended 2007-08 fiscal year, officials reported Thursday -- not because ticket sales or donations went sour, but because of a blowback effect from the subprime mortgage crisis that vastly increased interest and other costs of the bonds the Costa Mesa center had issued to build the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. The bulk of the deficit came from $8.

Bond rating service Standard & Poor's on Friday placed a "credit watch with negative implications" on California's credit rating ahead of the planned upcoming sale of $4 billion of short-term securities. In all, the state says it needs to borrow $7 billion -- $4 billion next week and $3 billion later -- to give it the cash to pay for routine expenses before tax revenues pick up early next year. S&P says it's not worried about California's raising enough money to pay back a loan.

Normally, losing 5% in a bond mutual fund in a quarter would be considered a terrible performance. But with double-digit stock market losses so widespread in the three months ended Sept. 30, the bond market's red ink seemed much easier to bear. That story line has continued in spades in the fourth quarter, just 12 days old. Many bond funds again are in the red, but far less so than stocks, which have been brutalized by relentless selling.

These tables rank the top-performing stock and bond mutual funds for the third quarter of 2008 for each of the main investment categories as defined by research firm Morningstar Inc., which provided the data for these tables. The tables of top-performing funds are followed by individual performance figures for 5,400 mutual funds, organized by fund company. Stock funds Most of the mutual funds that invest in the stocks of U.S. companies are sorted by Morningstar into nine broad categories.

As flocks of disenchanted Californians streamed across the border in the last decade, drawn by central Oregon's crystal-clear skies, ski slopes, small-town charm and affordable homes, Redmond has been hastily assembling portable classrooms and scrambling to build another high school. Voters here are notoriously testy about new taxes, though, and it wasn't until May that they approved a $110-million bond issue to build a high school on the south side of town, along with an elementary school.

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles has an ambitious vision for its new building: ceilings decorated with happy images, playrooms on each floor, beds for parents to stay overnight in rooms with their ailing kids. Some of that $548-million project is being funded through borrowing that California voters approved in 2004 to help expand and update the state's 13 public and private children's hospitals. But all the hospitals say they need more. They are returning to the ballot Nov.

The case for $7-billion Measure Q, the largest local school bond in state history, goes something like this: Now that the school district has built dozens of new campuses, it needs and deserves more dollars to fix up the old ones. Exhibit A for this argument is brand-new Helen Bernstein High in Hollywood, with a pool, dance studio, energy-efficient windows, the latest in computers, ceiling-mounted projectors, up-to-date science labs and a sprinkler-cooled artificial turf playing field.

If Long Beach voters reject a $571-million bond measure devoted to infrastructure projects, Mayor Bob Foster warns, the state's fifth-largest city could face some serious long-term consequences. "The streets are still going to be in bad shape," Foster told 17 members of the El Dorado Park West Neighborhood Assn. this month at Keller Elementary School. "The water quality will still be in bad shape. Our fire stations won't be fully functional."