Financing

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

GREENSBORO, N.C. — For a fourth day Wednesday, the jury in the John Edwards trial deliberated without reaching a verdict in a case focused on an illicit affair and federal campaign finance laws. The jury of eight men and four women must decide whether Edwards violated election laws when payments from two wealthy donors were used to cover up his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter during Edwards' failed run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Prosecutors contend that Edwards solicited $925,000 in illegal contributions from the donors in order to hide the affair and keep his campaign from collapsing in scandal.

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.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a long-awaited federal financing agreement that will help ensure a vital transportation corridor doesn't become a drain on the finances of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The vote — 13 to 0 in favor, with two council members absent — allows the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority to accept $83.7 million from the Federal Rail Administration to help fund operations of the Alameda Corridor, a 20-mile freight rail expressway linking the ports to transcontinental rail lines.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

In a bid to fight childhood obesity and change eating habits on the local level, First Lady Michelle Obama is expected to announce a healthful food financing initiative Wednesday that aims to draw grocery stores into so-called food desert areas in California. The $200-million program, dubbed the California FreshWorks Fund, is a joint effort by the California Endowment and a team of grocery industry groups, healthcare organizations and leading Wall Street banks. Modeled after similar funds launched in New York City and Pennsylvania, the idea for the California fund was hatched about 18 months ago by the California Endowment, a private, statewide health foundation.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, NBA Commissioner David Stern and Sacramento Kings ownership are scheduled to gather at All-Star Weekend in Orlando to discuss terms for the financing of a new arena to submit to the city council on March 6. In a joint news release by Johnson and Stern, the sides expressed confidence about meeting the NBA-imposed March 1 deadline to produce a plan to pay for a new $387-million arena downtown. "Our approach makes good on the principles that have guided us throughout this process: protecting the taxpayers, creating jobs, and pursuing an open and transparent process," Johnson said in the statement.

In an era when movie capital is tough to come by, David Ellison, the 27-year-old son of Oracle Corp. co-founder and Chief Executive Larry Ellison, has raised $350 million to co-finance films with his studio partner Paramount Pictures. The funds — $150 million in equity and a four-year, $200-million revolving credit facility led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. — will enable Ellison to step up production at his movie label Skydance Productions. Ellison's father, ranked by Forbes magazine as the sixth-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $28 billion, provided an undisclosed portion of the equity, according to people with knowledge of the deal.

Leo Trombatore's (state director of transportation) letter (Aug. 14) reveals the un-Republican, anti-Adam Smith philosophy of the Deukmejian Administration's bond proposal for highway financing. It does not provide the "more balanced approach to highway finance" promised by Trombatore. It continues and exacerbates the present imbalance--sales taxes, property taxes and businesses pay the public cost for motorists and truckers, particularly the latter. It is this imbalance which has gotten us into this mess in the first place.

General Electric Co. told dealers that it would no longer offer the financing they use to buy manufactured homes for their showrooms beginning next month because of the fallout from the global credit crunch. The company said the suspension of financing was temporary, without providing a date for when it would be restored. Dealers use the credit to buy the factory-built homes from companies such as Riverside-based Fleetwood Enterprises Inc.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - A third day of jury deliberations in the campaign finance trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards passed without a verdict Tuesday, with the jurors due back in federal court Wednesday morning. The jury of eight men and four women requested two more prosecution exhibits, bringing to more than a dozen the number of exhibits sought by jurors since deliberations began Friday. The documents requested Tuesday were letters to or about Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, now 101, a billionaire heiress and Edwards supporter who gave $725,000 that was used to help hide the candidate's mistress during his failed campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

WASHINGTON - Effectively clinching the Republican presidential nomination last month allowed Mitt Romney's campaign to marshal larger checks and chip into President Obama's huge lead in the money chase heading into the general election. Romney still has a long way to go. According to campaign finance records filed with the Federal Election Commission during the weekend, Obama maintains an expansive advantage in cash on hand. His reelection effort ended April with $147 million in the bank, compared with $61.4 million for Romney and the Republican National Committee.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Both sides in the John Edwards trial gave detailed closing arguments Thursday to a federal jury that will decide whether the former presidential candidate knowingly violated campaign finance laws in a scheme to hide an extramarital affair. Prosecutors told jurors that testimony and evidence in the nearly four-week trial prove that Edwards solicited and orchestrated secret payments of $925,000 from two wealthy benefactors to save his campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination from scandal.

Gov. Jerry Brown is testy. He's defensive. He's very frustrated. He's only human, after all - not a demigod, not the all-wise, powerful supergov he portrayed himself to be when running for the office. It's hard to know who believed that portrayal the most: the voters, the Sacramento insiders or the candidate himself. Regardless, it hasn't panned out the way most people had hoped, and certainly not the way Brown had envisioned. So on Monday, he was in the governor's press conference room - built by his father, incidentally - trying to explain why the state budget hole had grown 71% deeper since January, expanding from $9.2 billion to $15.7 billion.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - His political career is wrecked, his reputation is destroyed. He poisoned his marriage, and his martyred wife died knowing he cheated on her and lied about it to the world. And yet Johnny Reid Edwards has behaved as if he owns the courtroom where the Justice Department has been prosecuting him the last three weeks. He strides into court, his face tanned, his hair perfectly in place, his suit crisp. He grabs his counsel's arm and orders him to object to a prosecutor's question.

The ratings agency Standard & Poor's warned on Tuesday that it could downgrade California's financial outlook if lawmakers don't pass a credible budget plan this year. A final budget is due June 15, and lawmakers' task has become increasingly difficult as the state's deficit has swelled to nearly $16 billion. "We could change the outlook to negative or lower the rating if we believe the state's credit quality weakens through the budget process," said a report from Standard & Poor's.

The sum of $10 million in first mortgage financing has been obtained for the Douglas Oil Building in Los Angeles, through Sonnenblick-Goldman of California from a California savings and loan association. The Douglas Oil Building is a 13-story, 142,000-square-foot office tower at 530 West 6th St. in Los Angeles. The financing was obtained on behalf of Kellogg Properties/AYCO of New York.

Permanent financing of $60 million for the Arco Tower complex in downtown Long Beach has been arranged through the Denver office of L. J. Melody & Co., Houston-based mortgage banker and investment concern. The financing for the complex, owned by Pacific Tower Associates, was provided by the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. The twin 14-story towers in the Arco complex at 200-300 Ocean Blvd. contain more than 473,000 square feet of office space.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - After weeks of riveting and often salacious testimony about an extramarital affair and the elaborate lies that once kept it hidden, testimony in the John Edwards trial turned Monday to a more prosaic topic: campaign finance law. As Edwards' legal team opened his defense, the finance director for his failed 2008 presidential run testified that more than $900,000 from two wealthy benefactors was not reported as campaign contributions...

The Minnesota Vikings moved to within a governor's signature of getting a new $975-million stadium on Thursday after the state Senate approved a plan that relies heavily on public financing. Gov. Mark Dayton has said he'll sign the measure, meaning the Senate's 36-30 vote was effectively the final barrier for the stadium. The House had passed it overnight. The team chased a new stadium for more than a decade but had little leverage until its lease expired last year on the 30-year-old Metrodome.