Mini review: 2010 Bentley Continental GT Supersports

There are many ways in which the Bentley Continental GT Supersports is appalling. 

There is the price, of course: $274,000. 

There’s the fact that when you roll down the windows and turn up the mega sound system, traffic helicopters fall out of the sky.

There’s the absolutely unavoidable truth that, in the interests of extracting a total of 241 pounds out of the car, Bentley engineers have removed the Continental GT’s lovely front seats and replaced them with cruel Sparco carbon-fiber racing seats that feel as if you are reposing in the jaws of an upholstered crescent wrench. Other weight-saving measures include a back-seat-ectomy (the space behind the front seats is now a cargo bench trimmed with diamond-quilt Alcantara, and a carbon fiber crossbar transects the cabin); 16.5-inch carbon-ceramic brakes instead of steel brakes; and new ultra-light, ultra-enormous 20-inch alloy wheels and specially developed tires.

You could likewise abhor the sheer unreasonable power of the thing: For this last model iteration of the now-familiar GT, the twin-turbo W12 engine has been dialed up to produce 621 hp and 590 pound-feet of torque, unleashed -- like the Colorado through a Hoover Dam spillway -- through a six-speed ZF tranny and all-wheel-drive system. So configured, this 4,950-pound chunk of Gilbraltar rockets to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and 100 mph in 8.9 seconds. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a war crime of torque; a sinister conspiracy of grip and tire adhesion; a crime of accelerative passion. Top speed: 204 mph. The horror. The horror.

I spent a couple of days with the Supersports -- which looks like it means to suck you into its brake ducts any second -- and, let me tell you, this car is quite sporty. Between the valvetrain articulation and the variable boost logic of the turbos, the torque curve is essentially flat so that, when you stomp the throttle, the initial chiropractic concussion in the back is just the beginning. Given enough room the car will just continue to rush forward, gathering speed and momentum and squeezing you ever more violently into the seat like it’s trying to make rich-guy juice.

The carbon-ceramic brakes -- the largest ever fitted to a passenger car -- are likewise over-scaled and breathtaking. It’s like throwing the 16-mm film of your life into super slo-mo.

However, the most odious, heinous, galling part of the Supersports is that Bentley is using this car to make an environmental statement. This car will be E-85 capable, Bentley says, and using said biofuel will reduce the car’s per-mile carbon emissions up to 70%. That’s assuming you can find biofuel and assuming that biofuel is made from something other than corn. Other caveats and asterisks must be invoked as well to make the statement even notionally valid. To say the least, it’s a bit of a stretch.

Oh no, Bentley. No you didn’t.

-- Dan Neil

Photo credits: Dan Neil

A second look at those housing starts

It’s Friday and it’s slow, so let’s dig a little deeper into those housing-starts numbers that got investors running scared this week.

If you will recall, the Commerce Department reported that housing starts unexpectedly fell 10.6% to a seasonally adjusted 529,000 annual rate in October compared with the previous month. That was a 30.7% drop from October 2008.

Analysts said the drop probably had to do with trepidation from the building industry in October as uncertainty remained over whether Congress would extend its $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers beyond its Nov. 30 deadline. Congress this month extended that credit through April and expanded it to include people who already own a home.

Certainly, fear that the popular but controversial subsidy could end had a part to play in the pullback. Starts of single-family homes dropped off 6.8% from September to a seasonally adjusted rate of 476,000, not a pretty statistic by any stretch.

But multi-family units (apartments and other big buildings) saw a much bigger drop, falling 33.3% from September to a seasonally adjusted rate of 48,000.

“When you break it down, actual starts were bad on both sides," said Weiss Research analyst Michael Larson. But clearly multi-family units were hit harder, he said.

Though economists describe those multi-family numbers as highly volatile, the plunge probably reflects the woes of the commercial real estate market as financing for apartments and other such properties has dried up as a result of the credit crunch.

It’s also a bad time for the rental market, with family members doubling up to live with each other and potential renters with good credit and steady jobs now able to purchase an entry-level home at a discount.

-- Alejandro Lazo

Photo: An apartment building under construction in Hollywood. Credit: Reuters

How Twitter plans to make money

A $1-billion valuation creates big expectations, especially when the company doesn't yet have a clear plan for how it plans to generate cash. That's certainly the case with Twitter, the microblogging site that boasts tens of millions of users (including this reporter) but not much in the way of revenue.

To mollify skeptics, Twitter's chief operating officer, Dick Costolo, dropped a few crumbs this morning about how his company plans to make money. The short answer: ads. To read more, click here.

-- Alex Pham

Gold market disconnect: Record prices, but not demand

Gold remains in a powerful bull market as measured by prices in the futures market, where speculators can run rampant.

But third-quarter supply and demand data from the World Gold Council show that the surge in the metal’s price to record highs ($1,146.40 an ounce as of Friday) hasn’t been accompanied by record demand for the real thing.

The recent peak in demand for physical gold, in fact, was in the third quarter of 2008 -- before the financial-system meltdown accelerated.

The World Gold Council’s report on supply and demand in the quarter ended Sept. 30 put total global demand for gold at 800.3 tons, down 34% from the 1,205.6 tons purchased in the same quarter a year earlier.

Demand in the recent quarter also was below the 1,029.8 tons bought in the first quarter of this year, though 10% higher than the 724.8 tons of the second quarter.

Gold demand was down in the third quarter versus a year earlier in every major category of consumption, including jewelry (the biggest single source of demand), industrial use, official coins and purchases by exchange-traded funds.

The drop in physical demand partly reflects simple price-sensitivity: As gold goes up, some buyers back away.

Jewelry demand, for example, reached 673.3 tons in the third quarter of 2008, when gold’s price was mostly below $900 an ounce. In the third quarter of this year, with the price mostly above $900 and on its way to $1,009 by the quarter’s end, jewelry demand totaled 473.5 tons.

The global recession also has played a role in depressing jewelry demand this year compared with 2008, of course.

So how can the price of gold be flying when demand for the metal itself is well below recent peaks?

"This has been a speculative fund-driven futures rally," says Jon Nadler, a veteran analyst at Kitco Metals Inc. in Montreal. In other words, traders who play in the futures markets are betting on higher gold prices. But they aren’t interested in owning the actual metal.

This kind of disconnect can happen at any time in commodity markets. Remember oil in 2008?

Besides, in any market the price is set by the last buyer, whether the trade is for a huge sum or a tiny sum.

In the case of gold, it could work out that speculative demand in the futures market will be followed by a big revival in physical demand if more people around the globe decide that they must own the metal as a hedge against paper currencies, inflation, financial calamity or other reasons.

Interestingly, the Austrian government mint is betting otherwise, at least in the near term: The mint, the world’s biggest marketer of gold coins, recently said it planned to cut production by 32% in 2010, figuring that an improving global financial system will slash gold demand from investors.

The U.S. Mint, however, is siding with the bulls: On Dec. 3 it plans to resume production of American Eagle gold coins in half-ounce, quarter-ounce and tenth-of-an-ounce sizes to supplement its production of one-ounce coins.

Production of the smaller coins was suspended in 2008 because the Mint couldn’t get enough blanks from its fabricators, but that supply problem has been solved, said spokesman Michael White.

-- Tom Petruno

Photo credit: Kim Jae-Hwan / AFP/Getty Images

Ex-Google employees break away to make their own things at Thing Labs

What do you get when you put five former Google Inc. employees together with a few other talented programmers in a small office in San Francisco?

Some very interesting things.

Jason Shellen, founder of Thing Labs, launched Brizzly today after two months of the application spreading virally thanks to an invitation-only sign-up system similar to Gmail and Google Wave.

Brizzly is a well-executed "cloud" software that merges users' Twitter and Facebook profiles onto one page.

Unlike TweetDeck, which requires users to download two applications in order to make it work, Brizzly can be accessed from any computer that has a Web browser, and accounts stay in sync.

Brizzly has tens of thousands of users even before its official launch -- well, not so fast: it's still in beta; sound like Google?

You'll find a lot of Google mentality in Brizzly, which was built by a few of the engineers behind Google Reader, the dominant news feed aggregator.

To read our full story on Thing Labs, hop over to the Technology Blog: Betting that Brizzly will be huge, ex-Googlers are working on things.

-- Mark Milian

Photo: Chris Wetherell, left, and Jason Shellen, right, are the brains behind Thing Labs. Credit: Mark Milian / Los Angeles Times

Real estate fix: Foreclosure report spurs housing recovery debate; FHA loans for high-end property

Home prices may be showing signs of stabilization in hard-hit markets such as Southern California but foreclosures will nevertheless likely be a major problem in the near term as the tough economy makes it harder for people to keep up on their payments.

The Mortgage Bankers Assn. said Thursday that the level of delinquencies and foreclosed homes in the U.S. had jumped to their highest levels since 1972, when the Washington-based lenders group began reporting the statistic. Check out our story here.

Combine that news with a report earlier this week from the Commerce Department that builders pulled back their construction of new homes in October, and the housing pessimists are out front and center arguing that residential real estate is headed for more trouble.

From Bloomberg News:

“I don’t think the housing crisis is over,” Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Economy.com, said in a telephone interview. “I think we’re going to see another leg down.”

And Calculated Risk quotes Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius in a note to clients: A Renewed Sag in the Housing Market:

"Our current working assumption is a 5%-10% drop in home prices through the middle of 2010. ... house prices and credit quality ... to weigh on the US financial system, the availability of bank credit, and ultimately the pace of the economic recovery."

Plenty of others, of course, argue that the government’s efforts in propping up the market -- including Congress’ extension and expansion of the home-buyer tax credit and the Federal Reserve’s campaign to keep interest rates at rock-bottom levels -- along with the increase in affordability of homes will continue to stabilize the real estate market. But the debate is certainly stirring.

In more news, the (other) Times has an interesting tale of how the Federal Housing Administration is helping to prop up the market. It's a story about how one San Francisco man and a couple of his buddies went from broke to buying a two-unit apartment building that cost nearly a million dollars with a government-backed loan.

-- Alejandro Lazo

Consumer Confidential: Shopping, spending, driving

Here's your foolishly Friday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

--Black Friday's already looking pretty dark, and that's a good thing for shoppers. As more details of Black Friday sales leak out from major retailers, Wal-Mart has confirmed that it will be offering deep discounts on toys and games, and selling much-wanted electronic goodies, such as high-def TVs, for way under usual prices. Scout around online for the best deals before getting up at the crack of dawn the day after Thanksgiving. Chances are, you'll be able to come up with a serious action plan for your shopping.

--And bring your cash, because it looks like fewer of us want to run up debt on our plastic this holiday season. The National Retail Federation says most of us will be favoring cash or debit cards this year, rather than splurging with credit cards and spending the rest of the year trying to pay down our balances. Let's call this one of the better lessons learned from the never-ending recession.

--And if you're in the mood to spend some money, Chrysler wants your business -- really. The formerly bankrupt carmaker is offering zero-percent financing or up to $4,000 in cash back for almost all its 2010 models. But don't dawdle: The sweeteners last only until Jan. 4.

-- David Lazarus

California unemployment rate reaches 12.5%

California's unemployment continued its upward march in October, reaching a post-World War II high of 12.5%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this morning. But don't roll your eyes at the never-ending stream of bad news just yet. California actually added 25,700 jobs in October, making this the first month since April of 2008 that the state has gained jobs.

California still has the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the nation, yes, and its unemployment rate is a whopping 4.5 percentage points higher than it was in October 2008. But the job gains are a significant part of a trend that's seen the pace of job loss slow as the economy pulled itself back together again.

The state has lost 687,700 jobs over the last year.

Los Angeles County also saw some gains from last month. The government sector added 19,300 jobs and information, led by motion picture and sound recording, added 2,500.

Still, don't expect much to change in the day-to-day life of people looking for jobs, especially in the Southland. Los Angeles County's unemployment rate climbed to 12.8% in October, with job losses in manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, and construction. The unemployment rate in Riverside and San Bernardino counties reached 14.6% in October, up from a revised 12.3% in September. That region has been particularly hard hit by the construction bust.

-- Alana Semuels

As if interest rates weren't low enough . . .

Uncle Sam is getting yet another break on his borrowing costs.

Suddenly, cash is again fighting to get into the haven of shorter-term Treasury securities, driving yields down to levels last seen after the first stage of the financial-system meltdown a year ago.

It may look like another fear-driven panic, but this time is different: In large part the latest decline in shorter-term yields just stems from moves by banks and other financial firms to bolster their balance sheets with highly liquid assets as 2009 ends, says Tom di Galoma, head of U.S. rates trading at Guggenheim Capital Markets in New York.

"They’re dressing up the books for year-end," he said. The more liquid you can look to your regulators, the better.

Late last year the hunger for Treasuries reflected a deep-seated dread that the financial system would continue to implode. That kind of sentiment is mostly absent this time around.

The annualized yield on three-month T-bills fell to a barely positive 0.01% on Wednesday, down from 0.07% at the beginning of the week and the lowest level since last December.

The two-year T-note yield slid to 0.70%, compared with 0.81% a week earlier and also the lowest since December.

Traders said some T-bills were trading at slightly negative yields -- meaning buyers were in effect paying to keep their money in the securities, as opposed to earning a return on them.

Another factor pushing T-bill yields down: Growing demand is facing a smaller supply of new debt, as the Treasury winds down some of the deficit-financing programs that had pumped up T-bill issuance. The Treasury was selling as much as $33 billion a week in three-month bills in August. This week’s auction was for $30 billion.

Meanwhile, the Treasury continues to boost sales of longer-term securities.

As for the drop in the two-year T-note yield, that shows that buyers at these levels believe there’s no risk in locking in a yield of well under 1% on those securities. In turn, that implies growing faith that the Federal Reserve won’t be raising its benchmark short-term rate from near zero anytime soon -- maybe not even in the second half of 2010, which had seemed like a reasonable window for a Fed hike.

The view that the central bank could stay on hold for longer has been buttressed by recent comments from Fed officials including Janet Yellen, James Bullard and Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

"Fed-speak lately has been pretty dovish" on rates, notes Jim Galluzzo, a Treasury trader at RBS Securities in Stamford, Conn.

Just what the short-term end of the Treasury market loves to hear.

-- Tom Petruno

Ron Paul wins a key battle in war to open Fed's books

Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who is perhaps the Federal Reserve’s most implacable enemy, scored a big win Thursday on Capitol Hill: The House Financial Services Committee approved adding to a financial-system reform bill Paul’s provision to begin federal reviews of the central bank’s operations, including its interest-rate decisions.

The vote on the audit provision amendment was 43-26.

Paul has for years asserted that the Fed, which by design is independent of  the federal government, was corrupt and that its monetary policy would drive America to ruin by debasing the dollar.

He has sought to abolish the Fed entirely, but because that almost certainly would never fly in Congress, Paul has worked for Plan B: He wants the Government Accountability Office to have full power to audit the central bank’s operations -- a measure the Fed bitterly opposes.

"If we get the audit and get the books open, make them answer the questions, I am convinced that the American people will be so outraged that then we will have reform of the monetary system," Paul has said.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress in June that Paul’s audit provision "would effectively be a takeover of policy by the Congress . . . [and] would be highly destructive to the stability of the financial system, the dollar and our national economic situation."

Paul contends that the Fed is overreacting. Here's how he describes what the provision would do:

--- Removes blanket restrictions on GAO audits of the Fed;

--- Allows the audit of every item on the Fed’s balance sheet, all credit facilities, all securities purchase programs, etc.;

--- Retains limited audit exemption on unreleased transcripts and minutes;

--- Sets a 180-day time lag before details of Fed’s market actions may be released;

--- Provides that nothing in the amendment should be construed as interference in or dictation of monetary policy by Congress or the GAO.

The audit-the-Fed measure is part of the financial-system-overhaul bill that the Obama administration has sought. It remains to be seen whether Paul’s Fed provision can make it through the full House and the Senate.

A note to clear up any confusion: The Obama administration wants the financial-overhaul bill, but it isn't clear that it would support the addition of Paul's audit-the-Fed provision.

-- Tom Petruno

Image: Ron Paul's latest book, "End the Fed"

Wal-Mart reduces the cost of money transfers

Wal-Mart has had the giant scissors out lately, cutting the price of toys, books, DVDs, flat-screen TVs and the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner, among other things.

The company announced today that it's reducing the fees it charges to send money during the busy holiday season.

Consumers can send up to $200 anywhere in the U.S., or internationally, at a Wal-Mart MoneyCenter or customer service desk for $7. (It used to cost $11.) The transaction can be completed without a bank account or credit card, and Wal-Mart says funds are available in 10 minutes.

To send $200 from Los Angeles to Mexico, Western Union charges $14.99 for an immediate transfer and $9.99 for a next-day transfer, according to the company's website.

Sending money home is a big business that gets even bigger during the holiday season. Wal-Mart money transfers increase by 14% in the month of December, according to the retailer's internal research. Cash, after all, is always the right size and the right color.

-- Melissa Rohlin

Photo: Associated Press

California cuts bond sale over prison legal battle

California today pared back its last big tax-free bond sale of 2009, citing legal questions about funding for a prison project.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer sold $743 million in lease revenue bonds for the state Public Works Board instead of the $1.34 billion that had been planned.

The deal was slashed in size because funding was dropped for a new death-row-inmate complex at San Quentin prison. The fate of that complex is in limbo because of an ongoing legal battle between the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over certain budget items that he has vetoed.

"Legal questions arose Wednesday about whether the San Quentin facility could be funded with the bonds," said Tom Dresslar, Lockyer’s spokesman. "The state did not have enough time to address those issues and decided to drop the project from the sale."

The smaller deal size allowed the state to slightly trim the interest rates on some of the bonds. For example, the Series I bonds maturing in 10 years will pay a tax-free annualized yield of 5.10%, a sliver less than the 5.12% the state had preliminarily set.

It helped the state that yield-hungry individual investors put in orders for $447 million of the bonds. That was 61% of the final total sold. A hefty number of individual-investor orders gives the state more leeway in negotiating the final interest rates on its bonds with institutional investors.

The state now has borrowed more than $21 billion since late September via short- and long-term debt for budget-related reasons and to finance voter-approved infrastructure projects. That supply glut has helped to push up tax-free muni bond yields across the board as investors have demanded higher returns to absorb all of the debt.

Fundamentally, tax-free munis remain appealing compared with taxable bonds, as I noted in this earlier post. The jump in yields over the last six weeks should reinforce that appeal.

The state’s borrowing binge is nearly over for the year, which could put downward pressure on California muni yields in the near term.  Lockyer has just one more sale of tax-free bonds planned for 2009: a $200-million issue for the University of California on Dec. 3.

-- Tom Petruno

Photo credit: Ben Margot / Associated Press

California home prices inch up in October

California home prices edged higher last month as first-time buyers took advantage of a federal tax credit and foreclosure properties made up a smaller slice of the market.

The median price paid for a home was $257,000 in October, up 2.4% from September and down 7.6% from October 2008, according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego.

It was the narrowest annual monthly decline for the statewide median home price since September 2007. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half sold for less.

About 41,280 homes were sold statewide last month, a 2.6% increase from September and a 2.4% decrease from October 2008.

Foreclosures made up 41.2% of all previously owned homes on the market, the lowest part of the resale market since May 2008, when it was 39.8%. Foreclosures hit a peak as a percentage of the market in October 2008, when they constituted 52.4% of all previously owned homes sold.

-- Alejandro Lazo

Photo: A Burbank home that found a buyer. Credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

First look at Google's new Chrome OS operating system

 

Remember when Google was just a nifty search browser with a funny name?

Now this tech giant that seems bent on taking over the world (remember when we used to say that about Microsoft?) has given the first public demonstration of its home-grown-operating system -- Chrome OS -- that's due out next year.

No surprisingly, it looks like ... well ... a search browser.

Read all about it on The Times Technology blog.

-- David Colker

Photo: Google has posted a YouTube animated video about Chrome OS. Credit: YouTube.

Average 401(k) rebounds to $60,700, Fidelity says

For what it’s worth: Fidelity Investments says the average 401(k) account balance of the 11 million investors for whom it keeps records rose to $60,700 as of Sept. 30, surpassing the $58,400 average of a year earlier -- which was just before the financial-system meltdown accelerated.

Although financial markets have rebounded sharply this year, the Fidelity figure doesn’t mean that the investments in the typical account more than recouped what was lost in the meltdown. The totals include all employee and employer contributions to the accounts, so the money coming in would have offset some of the prior losses.

Still, psychologically it always feels better to look at a higher 401(k) total than a lower one.

Fidelity’s average balance now is well above the recent low of $47,500 reached at the end of the first quarter, but remains 13.3% below the recent peak of $70,000 in the third quarter of 2007.

The average is skewed by the large accounts of people who are nearing retirement. Fidelity’s median 401(k) account balance was $19,500 as of Sept. 30, up from $17,300 a year earlier.

The median is the middle of the pack -- meaning that half the accounts were above that figure and half were below.

-- Tom Petruno

Jerry Brown's office snipes with other states' regulators over who sealed Wells Fargo deal

Who deserves credit for forcing Wells Fargo & Co. to buy $1.4 billion in troubled securities from small investors?

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and a group of regulators from other states announced separate deals Wednesday requiring the banking giant to repurchase so-called auction-rate securities that had been frozen since the credit crunch struck early last year. Half the total will go to California residents.

But Brown’s office and the regulator group, the North American Securities Administrators Assn., each says it led the way.

A spokeswoman for Brown said the attorney general's office hammered out a legal settlement with the banking giant a day before NASAA agreed to a nearly identical pact.

“We forged the settlement with Wells and they just piggybacked on it,” said Christine Gasparac, the Brown spokeswoman. “I don’t want to get into a war with NASAA, but it’s our settlement.”

That’s not the way Denise Voigt Crawford, president of NASAA and commissioner of the Texas State Securities Board, sees it.

“He had nothing to do with our settlement,” Crawford said of Brown. “This is crazy. He’s not the securities regulator in California and he wasn’t involved in our negotiations. ... Now he’s claiming credit for one of our settlements.”

The good news for investors in the troubled securities is that they’ll get their money back regardless of who spearheaded the settlement.

-- Walter Hamilton

Photo: California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown. Credit: David McNew / Getty Images

San Francisco Bay Area home prices inch toward stability with fewer foreclosure sales

Home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area registered year-over-year gains last month for the first time in nearly two years.

The gains marked a move back toward stability for the region’s real estate as fewer distressed properties were sold and homes costing more than $500,000 accounted for a larger portion of sales.

The median price paid for all homes reached $390,000, up 6.8% from $365,000 in September and up 4% from $375,000 in October 2008, according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego. The last time the nine-county area  booked a year-over-year gain was in November 2007.

Last month’s median was the highest since hitting $395,000 in July this year. But the October median was still 41.4% below the $665,000 peak reached during the height of the Bay Area’s boom in June and July of 2007. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more and half sold for less.

A total of 7,933 homes were sold last month, up 0.7% from 7,879 in September and 4.2% from 7,613 in October 2008. Sales in the region’s pricier areas – Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo – made up 42.2% of October sales, up from 35.3% in October 2008.

Sales of homes that cost more than $500,000 constituted 36% of sales in October, up from 34.9% in October 2008 and well up from a low of 22.7% in January.

Last month’s increase in the median sales price also came as foreclosure properties made up a smaller portion of the resale market. Sales of homes that had been foreclosed upon in the prior 12 months made up 31.9% of all previously owned homes sold in October, DataQuick said.

That was down from 32.3% in September and 44% in October 2008. Foreclosure sales peaked at 52% of the resale market in February.

The drop in foreclosure sales came as banks and loan servicers increasingly pursued alternatives to the foreclosure process such as loan modifications and short sales -- where a lender agrees to sell a home for less than the value of a mortgage, DataQuick said.

-- Alejandro Lazo

Photo: A house for sale in San Francisco. Credit: Associated Press

Consumer Confidential: AOL, mortgages, cheap flights

Here's your threadbare-Thursday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- Remember when AOL was, well, AOL? Now the former online giant is struggling to find its place in a cyber-world it once dominated. The company, which is being spun off by Time Warner Inc., is offering buyouts to 2,500 employees -- more than a third of its workforce -- and says it wants to trim costs by about $300 million. So what will the leaner-and-meaner AOL look like? The company hopes to be a content-rich destination, like Yahoo. And look how well that's working out for Yahoo.

-- A record number of homeowners are behind on their mortgage payments. That's the word from the Mortgage Bankers Assn., which says about 4.5 million borrowers are now delinquent. "Job losses continue to increase and drive up delinquencies and foreclosures because mortgages are paid with paychecks, not percentage point increases in GDP," says Jay Brinkman, the association's chief economist. In other words, things won't improve until the employment picture brightens -- and that probably won't happen any time soon.

-- But we'll always have Paris (or wherever). And our friends at JetBlue are offering a one-day sale on international and domestic fares, with prices running between $29 and $129. Not surprisingly, though, there are a few catches. Tickets will be good only for flights between Dec. 2 and Dec. 16, as well as on Jan. 14, 15, 18 and 19. But if that's when you'll be wanting to travel, get 'em while they're hot.

-- David Lazarus

Photo: Henny RayAbrams/AFP/Getty Images

Mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures, hit a new high

One in seven U.S. home loans were past due or in foreclosure during the third quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. said today – the highest level since the trade group started tracking troubled loans in 1972.

Consistent with recent quarterly delinquency surveys from the trade group, today’s report blamed job losses, not tricky adjustable-rate loans, for causing most of the pain. And four Sun Belt states -- California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona -- continued to account for a disproportionate amount of the pain.

Prime loans – those made to the borrowers with the best credit -- continued to make up a growing percentage of troubled mortgages. In terms of sheer numbers, soured prime loans far outpaced troubled sub-prime loans to credit-challenged borrowers.

You can read a news release on the statistic-heavy report for yourself at the Mortgage Bankers Assn. website.  But here's just one fact to consider: In California, 4.62% of fixed-rate prime mortgages, considered the safest home loans of all, were in foreclosure or 90 days delinquent, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. said. That appears to work out to about 157,000 homes in the Golden State.

Overall, 14.41% of all U.S. home loans were in foreclosure or at least 30 days past due – one in seven. To illustrate how things are getting worse, back in the fourth quarter of last year, the number was one in 10.  The mortgage bankers' group's chief economist, Jay Brinkmann, said he expects the delinquencies to keep rising until the unemployment rate peaks in the first or second quarter of next year.

Normally, foreclosures would continue rising for two quarters past the peak in unemployment. However, given the extreme decline in home prices, Brinkmann expects the foreclosure rate to continue going up longer than usual this time.

--E. Scott Reckard

Despite fiscal woes, muni bonds' appeal stays strong

The good news in the sell-off that has clipped California tax-free municipal bond prices over the last six weeks is that the market now should be harder to shock.

So for muni investors, the report Wednesday that Sacramento already may be facing a $21-billion budget gap over the current and next fiscal years was more a firecracker than a bomb.

After rallying sharply in August and September, the California muni market has given back some of those gains since early October. Amid a flood of new bond sales by the state investors have demanded higher yields, which in turn has pushed prices of existing bonds down.

California is back in the market this week with a $1.34-billion revenue bond offering from the Public Works Board to finance infrastructure projects. Yields on those bonds will be set today.

All in all, though, the damage to the market from the supply glut has been relatively modest, at least for muni mutual fund investors who have the benefit of wide diversification. Case in point: The per-share net asset value of the Franklin California Tax-Free Income fund, which holds $14.2 billion of state and local debt, was $6.90 on Wednesday, a drop of 4% from the 52-week high of $7.19 on Oct. 5.

That’s unfortunate for anyone who bought near the high, but year-to-date the fund’s total return (share price gain plus interest earned) still is a hefty 15.6%. And that’s even better than it looks, given that the interest earned is exempt from state and federal income tax.

The muni market nationwide has been suffering a bout of indigestion since September, driving yields higher. But nationally and in California the market has been stabilizing over the last week or so.

Despite the dire fiscal outlooks for many state and local governments, there are three main reasons to believe that the muni market is unlikely to fall off a cliff from here and wipe out all of its recovery from the worst of the credit crunch:

--- Big investors just don’t buy the idea that actual defaults by muni issuers in 2010 will match the doomsday predictions that are out there.

"There is going to be a lot of ‘headline’ risk in the market over the next 12 to 18 months," said Chris Sperry, co-manager of the Franklin California fund. But local governments of any size know, he said, that the decision to default would make it impossible to get the basic credit they need to function. The market clearly believes that the vast majority of politicians will get out the cleaver and hack expenses further, not bond payments.

--- Muni yields still are historically high versus yields on taxable bonds. A 10-year California state general obligation bond now yields about 4.55% tax-free, compared with 3.36% for a 10-year U.S. Treasury note that is federally taxable. Muni bond yields normally are below Treasury yields.

"In order for muni yields to get a whole lot [higher] you’re going to have to see the Treasury market sell off," said John Carbone, manager of the Vanguard California Long-Term Tax-Exempt bond fund. That could happen, of course, but it probably would require the backdrop of a robust economic recovery or an inflation surge -- neither of which seems likely in the near term.

--- Many muni investors figure that tax rates at the federal, state and local levels can only go up as governments struggle to close deficits. That would boost munis’ appeal for yield-hungry investors. "Munis are going to become more attractive from a pure income standpoint," Sperry said.

Yes, he’s talking his book. But raise your hand if you think taxes are more likely to go down than up.

-- Tom Petruno