Rescue Plan

With pressure growing for government action to stem foreclosures, the White House moved up to next week the unveiling of President Obama's housing rescue plan, while major banks said they would freeze seizures of homes for at least three weeks pending the rollout of the initiative. For months, Congress has been pressing the executive branch -- first the Bush administration, now its successor -- to come up with a program to curtail the growing wave of borrowers forced to give up their homes.

Stock markets around the world roared higher Friday after European policymakers made their latest move to ease the continent's debt crisis. Lawmakers agreed to pump money into troubled banks directly from the continent's bailout fund rather than from the debt-laden governments themselves. Officials also agreed to set up a continent-wide bank regulator to create tougher and more uniform banking standards throughout the euro region. As of 11:25 a.m. PDT, the Dow Jones industrial average soared 232.84 points, or 1.9%, to 12,835.10.

In these uncertain times, you take your certitude where you find it. Platoons of academic economists and business commentators spent all weekend griping about the emerging details of the Obama administration's latest attempt to mount a bank bailout. Then Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner unveiled the plan in detail Monday morning, and the stock market delivered a decisive thumbs-up, with the Dow Jones index rocketing nearly 500 points higher.

One day later, and markets already are having second thoughts about Europe's plan to end its government-debt crisis. In a particularly troubling sign, yields jumped Friday on Italian and Spanish government bonds. Those are the Eurozone countries that the rescue plan is meant to save from Greece's fate. A key element of the plan is the expansion of Europe's $600-billion rescue fund for member states and banks. The focus is on boosting the firepower of the fund -- known as the European Financial Stability Facility -- to $1.4 trillion by leveraging it. The fund is expected to eventually issue guarantees on bonds issued by deeply indebted countries, particularly Italy.

The Obama administration's long-awaited plan to cleanse banks of rotten investments tied to bad home loans scored a big win on Wall Street on Monday as investors bet that the government may have finally found a way to fix the nagging problem at the core of the financial crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average soared nearly 500 points after Treasury Secretary Timothy F.

Gov. Gray Davis said Friday that in seven days he hopes to finish the framework for a rescue plan to enable the state's two largest private utilities to avoid bankruptcy. Davis had said a rescue plan needed to be in place by Monday, when a federal judge in Los Angeles will consider Southern California Edison's request to lift 4-year-old rate caps that are keeping it from passing on its multibillion-dollar debt to ratepayers.

The success of Gov. Gray Davis' plan to end California's energy crisis rides on assumptions that, if wrong, could lead to billions of dollars in runaway costs for taxpayers. Davis, who signed a historic $13.4-billion bond measure Thursday to finance the plan, has refused to release key data and presented a single model for how California will buy electricity--and pay for it--over the next 15 years.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness . . . who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts . . . --Allen Ginsberg, "Howl" The Espresso Bar is a funky holdover from Old Town Pasadena's pre-scrubbed days, a 1950s-style coffeehouse caught in a time warp and surrounded by carefully planned, upscale nostalgia.

A senior Edison International executive said Tuesday that the company's insolvent Southern California Edison utility can work around limits in a rescue plan now being debated in the state Legislature. The rescue bill, under consideration in the state Assembly, would let SCE issue as much as $2.9 billion in ratepayer-supported bonds to pay off debts that built up when wholesale energy prices spiked last year and earlier this year.

A group of independent bankers called on Congress Monday to revise President Bush's savings and loan rescue plan by limiting a proposed increase in premiums on bank deposits while broadening the types of deposits to be assessed. Directors of Independent Bankers Assn. of America, meeting in Anaheim for a three-day conference, adopted four recommendations as "interim positions" on the Bush Administration's proposal.

The Obama administration has stepped up efforts to help homeowners refinance their mortgages, potentially bringing relief to millions of those who owe more than their homes are worth. It's an overdue step that should boost consumer spending, even if it may not avert a huge number of foreclosures. The latter problem requires more aggressive and effective loan modifications, which banks and investors have been reluctant to do — to their own detriment. The collapse of the housing market has left an estimated 11 million Americans owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

Afghan officials plan to sell part of troubled Kabul Bank, the country's biggest financial institution, in hope of clearing the way to resume international aid temporarily suspended last year after the bank's loan scandal. The head of the country's central bank announced Wednesday that his institution had placed Kabul Bank in receivership and plans to have a government commission collect on its problem loans, then privatize what's left of the bank within three months. "All those who violated law and committed fraud in Kabul Bank, whether they are shareholders or employees, will be prosecuted strictly," said Abdul Qadir Fitrat, head of the central bank, which took over day-to-day operations of Kabul Bank after the scandal.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke made clear Friday that he's committed to keeping long-term interest rates suppressed. Now, if only the bond market would get the message. Long-term rates haven't followed the Fed's instructions since the central bank on Nov. 3 announced its plan to ramp up Treasury bond purchases by $600 billion through mid-2011. Interest rates are up, not down. In some cases, they're up dramatically. This week, yields in the municipal bond market rocketed to their highest levels by some measures in more than a year.

When the space-age planned community of Century City displaced much of 20th Century Fox's backlot in the 1960s, the centerpiece of the office, retail and residential complex was an elegantly curved luxury hotel designed by a rising architect named Minoru Yamasaki. Now, plans to level the Century Plaza and erect two 50-story mixed-use towers have galvanized neighborhood groups and preservationists, whose determination to rescue the hotel has led to quiet negotiations with its owners.

The Bankruptcy Court auction of auto parts maker Delphi Corp. has been delayed for a second time as creditors consider their own rescue plan to counter one by a Beverly Hills investment firm. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain postponed Tuesday's scheduled auction until Friday. It was originally to have been last week. Beverly Hills investment firm Platinum Equity has the only bid on the table for Delphi.

They're being forced to live on crumbs, so nuns at a Hollywood convent famous for its pumpkin bread are warning that they may have to slice up the place for development. The threat of a shutdown of the 75-year-old Monastery of the Angels below the Hollywood sign has prompted neighbors and supporters to mount a campaign to save the four-acre religious retreat.

Southern California Edison executives said Friday that they will continue to push for implementation of a rescue plan devised by Gov. Gray Davis despite the California Public Utilities Commission's failure to meet a deadline to make regulatory changes called for in the agreement. Executives at the financially troubled utility also said they have entered into sensitive negotiations with small power generators owed a combined $1.

The Swiss parliament approved the government's $1.2-billion contribution to a rescue package for part of national airline Swissair Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month. Both houses backed the plan to save as much as two-thirds of Swissair's fleet by shifting it to regional carrier Crossair. The assembly met for an extraordinary two-day session after the government stepped in last month to forestall the airline's collapse.

In these uncertain times, you take your certitude where you find it. Platoons of academic economists and business commentators spent all weekend griping about the emerging details of the Obama administration's latest attempt to mount a bank bailout. Then Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner unveiled the plan in detail Monday morning, and the stock market delivered a decisive thumbs-up, with the Dow Jones index rocketing nearly 500 points higher.

Wall Street stands to get richer off the latest installment of the financial system rescue. But this time, some individual investors might be offered a piece of the action. Two of the country's biggest money managers -- Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co., known as Pimco, and New York-based BlackRock Inc. -- say they may launch funds that would allow individuals to have a stake in some of the bad assets to be purchased from banks.