Debts

It was billed as a "shocking tell-all" and a "world exclusive," but the National Enquirer's March 26 cover story landed with a thud. TMZ, Page Six and other major players in celebrity gossip ignored the article in which a masseur claimed John Travolta offered money for sex. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article used the term "masseuse"; it should have said "masseur. " Five weeks after the issue left the checkout aisle, a DUI attorney from Pasadena put the anonymous masseur's tawdry tale in a lawsuit and it became an overnight pop culture sensation, topping Google News, trending on Twitter and meriting a segment on "Good Morning America.

New home sales are up. The unemployment rate is falling. Companies are buying one another, signaling confidence in the economy. But investors are turning their back on positive economic signs, looking nervously at Europe's seemingly never-ending debt troubles and Facebook's flat IPO, wondering whether the global economy is beginning yet another deep dive. "Although better economic data did not go unnoticed, investors look forward and not backward," said David Dietze, president and chief investment strategist at Point View Wealth Management in Summit, N.J. "All eyes are looking across the pond and seeing a bit of a meltdown in terms of the European sovereign debt crisis.

The alarm over potential bank runs in Greece and Spain this week has highlighted an often-overlooked fact: Europe's debt crisis is also, in many ways, a major banking crisis. In capitals such as Athens, Madrid and Rome, large portions of the sovereign debt racked up by spendthrift governments are owed to the countries' own banks, locking governments and the banks in an embrace so tight that disaster for one would almost certainly spell doom for the other. International bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal have helped to keep not just their governments but also their banks afloat, as well as financial institutions in other parts of Europe with large exposure to those nations' debts.

Motel 6 and Studio 6, the no-frills budget hotel chains that once offered rooms for $6 a night, are being sold by French parent Accor for $1.9 billion. The new owner, an affiliate of private equity firm Blackstone Group, already owns Hilton Worldwide. Blackstone said it plans to "accelerate the expansion of the franchise base" for Motel 6 and Studio 6. Accor will use proceeds from the sale to slash its debt and grow its luxury Sofitel and Novotel hotels in Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Clarence Ayers was baffled. At 73, he was raising his great-granddaughter in rural Fresno County. He relied on $334 a month in public assistance to help cover the teenager's expenses: new shoes when she outgrew her old ones, transportation to the after-school activities she enjoyed. But last summer, county officials said they were slicing his CalWorks payment by 10% and for the most perplexing of reasons: Over the years, they had mistakenly sent $10,000 to the girl's mother and grandfather.

Is it only a coincidence that most of the article ("Default on Debts Would Hurt O.C.--but How Much?" May 30) on a possible Orange County debt default is adjacent to the obituaries? JANICE H. HILL San Clemente

To hear Summer Brown and Briana Biddle talk about it, their upcoming wedding and civil commitment will be a fairy tale, complete with happily ever after. But fairy tales can turn dark pretty quickly, and a look at the couple's finances shows that the poisoned apple in this story could be money. Let's start with the wedding: Brown has a $986 wedding dress and a $2,600 engagement ring, both bought on credit. Then there are older debts: a $20,000 time share on which Biddle is not making payments and $17,000 in student loans for Brown, among others.

I read Column Right (March 12) by Charles Krauthammer and had to respond. Krauthammer claims that trying to protect Social Security Trust Funds is just a smoke screen for Democrats to defeat the balanced-budget amendment. He contends that it isn't possible to run up a federal budget deficit and also have a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund. While the Social Security issue may be a smoke screen, there is no logic to the argument that money can't be saved even while in debt. Many of us have a mortgage and a retirement account.

His mother visited him hours before he twisted the edges of his blanket into a rope. "You'll be out soon," she told him. "We paid bail. " "There's a problem," he said. "I owe more. " He hadn't been in his village in months, a scrap of a place tucked amid fields that stretch past the canal to the paved road. The boys on this land learn early to sharpen plow blades and make scarecrows out of grain sacks. It's cold when the rain blows and tough to make a living on, even for a man who cuts furrows.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan says she has $1.76 million in assets — mostly in bank accounts and retirement funds — and no debts or liabilities, according to her financial statement released Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kagan sent nearly 200 pages of material to the committee in response to its standard questionnaire. She included dozens of articles she wrote for the Princeton school newspaper, a detailed list of her speaking engagements and copies of academic articles she wrote over the last two decades.

Last year's tussle over increasing the federal debt limit showed Congress at its worst, paralyzed by dueling ideologies and incapable of striking a grand bargain. The eventual compromise by lawmakers and the White House raised the debt ceiling enough to last until the end of 2012 or early 2013, giving voters a chance to shuffle the deck in Washington before the next round of negotiations. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), however, has been calling on Congress to take up the issue before the election, saying Congress shouldn't wait He's got a point, but the debt ceiling bill is the wrong place for that debate.

CAMP DAVID, Md. - In a significant political victory for President Obama, the leaders of Germany and other European nations endorsed a policy of economic growth over austerity and emphasized that Greece, which is trying to battle its way out of a crippling debt crisis, should remain in the Eurozone. Meeting on the cloistered grounds of the presidential retreat here, the leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations said in a joint statement that Eurozone economies should work to narrow deficits through "fiscal consolidation" and that each country must decide for itself the best mix of policies for promoting economic recovery.

College graduation is typically a time to tally accomplishments and to look ahead. But for many graduates, it is also a time to tally student loans and figure out how to repay them. About two-thirds of college graduates have some student loans to pay off, and their average debt is about $25,000 to $28,700, according to estimates by education experts and organizations. (About 10% of those with loans owe more than $50,000 or so.) Many college seniors say they had not thought much about their debt until they received summaries just before graduation.

WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress are heading into summer much the way they did last year - instigating a showdown with the White House by demanding massive federal budget cuts in exchange for what used to be the routine task of raising the nation's debt limit to pay the government's bills. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) is doubling down on the strategy that ended in mixed results last year after the country came to the brink of a federal default before a deal was struck with President Obama.

The alarm over potential bank runs in Greece and Spain this week has highlighted an often-overlooked fact: Europe's debt crisis is also, in many ways, a major banking crisis. In capitals such as Athens, Madrid and Rome, large portions of the sovereign debt racked up by spendthrift governments are owed to the countries' own banks, locking governments and the banks in an embrace so tight that disaster for one would almost certainly spell doom for the other. International bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal have helped to keep not just their governments but also their banks afloat, as well as financial institutions in other parts of Europe with large exposure to those nations' debts.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - Vice President Joe Biden and unofficial Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney skirmished over the economy and their ability to improve it in swing-state appearances Wednesday that underscored each side's positioning on the key issue in November's general election. Biden and other Democrats are seeking to disqualify Romney in the minds of voters as an alternative to President Obama. Polls consistently have found that voters give Romney better marks for his potential handling of the economy than they give Obama for dealing with it. Romney and other Republicans have long criticized the president's moves on the economy.

On the heels of so much bad news about the state's budget woes and the cuts proposed for education, I was astonished to read "Dormitory Debts Soar to $2.8 Million" by Sam Enriquez. How could one of our highly touted institutions of learning have such inadequate--no, uncaring--control? Do they teach business majors to function in this manner? Boy, are we in trouble. Is the attention all being given to attaining increased NCAA status at the expense of job responsibilities?

An Atlantic City casino plied former Philadelphia Eagle owner Leonard H. Tose with free drinks and forced him to gamble while drunk, causing him to lose millions of dollars at the blackjack table, his attorney said Friday. Now Tose is asking a federal judge to absolve him of more than $1 million in debts amassed at the Sands Hotel Casino. Between June 1981 and April 1986, Tose lost $14.6 million at the casino, records show.

WASHINGTON -- Ready for another debt-ceiling standoff in Congress? House Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday he will insist on spending cuts in exchange for a vote in Congress to raise the nation's debt limit, forewarning a year-end showdown that could resemble the standoff that resulted in a gridlocked Congress and the nation's first ever credit rating downgrade. “We shouldn't dread the debt limit. We should welcome it. It's an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction,” Boehner is expected to say Tuesday afternoon in remarks released by his office ahead of his talk at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's 2012 Fiscal Summit in Washington.