Loans

Chrysler's chief says the automaker has received an initial $4-billion loan from the Treasury Department. Chief Executive Robert Nardelli said Friday that the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based company's talks with the federal government about the bridge loan had been completed. Nardelli said the initial loan would allow Chrysler to continue its restructuring and pursue "our vision to build the fuel-efficient, high-quality cars and trucks people want to buy, will enjoy driving and will want to buy again."

Bell's director of administrative services testified Monday that she did not realize until the city's salary scandal erupted last summer that city officials could be breaking the law by lending $1.9 million in public funds to colleagues, municipal workers and a local car dealer. Lourdes Garcia, who was given limited immunity in exchange for her testimony, said former City Administrator Robert Rizzo directed her to draft loan agreements for city employees using only their vacation and sick days as collateral.

Accusing Wells Fargo & Co. of discriminating against minority borrowers by steering them into subprime mortgages, Illinois' attorney general sued the San Francisco bank, asking a state court to negate the loans and to fine Wells, the nation's largest home lender. "The dreams of many hardworking families have ended in foreclosure due to Wells Fargo's illegal and unfair conduct," Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan said in filing the lawsuit Friday in Cook County Circuit Court.

Small businesses that are having trouble obtaining loans may be eligible for assistance under a new program organized by a San Fernando Valley economic development group. The loan program is designed to provide capital to existing businesses throughout Los Angeles to help offset the effects of the economic downturn and the credit crunch, said Roberto Barragan, president of the Valley Economic Development Center. "This program is specifically a job-saving and job-creation program," he said.

Anyone who has purchased or refinanced a few homes has probably learned to dread the closing statement, which all too often included a pile of new or inflated fees that your lender had never before mentioned. By the time you saw them, you were committed to a loan -- and probably a house -- and objecting to those fees would mean walking away from a much-anticipated deal. Most borrowers have just grumbled and paid up. Those days are nearly gone forever, thanks to new government rules on real estate settlement that go into effect in January.

Los Angeles Opera asked for and received a $14-million emergency loan from Los Angeles County on Tuesday to keep it afloat through the middle of next year. The loan "is needed now, literally next week," Stephen Rountree, chief executive of both the opera company and its landlord, the Music Center, told the Board of Supervisors at its Tuesday meeting. The company is $20 million in debt, Rountree said. FOR THE RECORD: L.A. Opera: An article in Wednesday's Calendar about L.A. Opera getting a $14-million bailout from Los Angeles County quoted County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky as saying, "For all they have built up . . . this is almost no price for us to pay. We'll make money on the interest rate, and we'll save the opera."

Deutsche Bank will shell out $202 million to settle claims it deceived the U.S. government about the strength of home loans it was approving under a taxpayer-backed mortgage program. The government endured $368 million in losses after a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank approved more than 39,000 borrowers for the Federal Housing Administration's Direct Endorsement Lender program. The FHA, which helps fuel the mortgage market by providing loans that are insured by the federal government, had to pay claims on more than 3,200 mortgages that the subsidiary, MortgageIT, approved for that program.

EMB Mortgage Corp. said Tuesday that it has received a new loan commitment of $500 million from Impac Funding Corp. The money will enable EMB Mortgage, a wholly owned subsidiary of EMB Corp. in Costa Mesa, to meet its goal for its current fiscal year of funding $750 million in new home loans. EMB Mortgage uses interactive video conferencing to help it originate home loans from any location in the United States to one of its national processing centers.

Here’s a postscript to the UCLA survey in which college freshmen gave themselves low grades for their emotional health. The big stressors for the students might be the same big stressors parents face: how to pay for college. The survey of more than 200,000 students revealed that 4.9% said their fathers were unemployed and 8.6% said their mothers were unemployed -- two variables that could easily ratchet up the anxiety level when tuition payments are due. And more than half report having taken out loans to pay for college.

A college education can be an investment in your future. But if you can't land a decent-paying job, that investment can leave you saddled with debt. So a small Christian university in Michigan, Spring Arbor University, is offering a sort of money-back guarantee. "Money-back" as in you won't have to give all the money back if you don't get a good gig. The school's program guarantees that students and their parents will receive help in repaying loans if a graduate's income fails to meet certain benchmarks.