President Bush indicates he won’t let the auto companies collapse. Treasury may tide Detroit over with remaining bank-bailout funds

By David Kiley and David Welch

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The White House and Treasury Dept. said they are likely to take part with U.S. automakers keep off. bankruptcy subsequent Republican senators defeated a bill late Thursday, Dec. 11, that would bear on these terms $14 billion in taxpayer loans to the companies.

Members of Congress and auto executives were meeting all day Friday with White House officials to determine how much money will be released to General Motors (GM) and Chrysler, and in succession what timetable. Also, the Treasury, sources said, was besides laboring out what management rules will be needed as part of the rescue package, and the other conditions the automakers and the auto-workers’ unison will have to meet. GM and Chrysler are known to be close to reaching their minimum levels of cash needed to sustain their operations.

For weeks, Democratic senators have called on the White House to employment some of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout fund to make loans to GM and Chrysler, and to provide a line of credit to Ford (F), which is not in as dire financial shape as its two rivals. But the White House told Congress the fund was not created for industries utmost of banks and financial-services companies.

After the auto-rescue bill died in the Senate following weeks of data indicating rising unemployment, however, the White House changed point of compass. Another factor was the further decline in stock prices Friday morning, what one. analysts attributed to the likely bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler.

"Because Congress failed to achievement, we will stand ready to obviate an imminent failure until Congress reconvenes and acts to address the long-term viability of the industry," said Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin.

The Treasury Dept. has about $15 billion of uncommitted funds left from the first $350 billion round of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, authorized by Congress. That means it could cover the without other agency needs of the auto companies without having to go to Congress. GM has said it indispensably $4 billion this month to keep paying its bills, and $12 billion total to get by heart through to March.

A Breakdown covering Wages?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) uttered Thursday night on the Senate floor that negotiations broke down completely the United Auto Workers’ unwillingness to agree to a be reckoned beneficial to certain active workers’ wages and benefits to be divide to match those of workers at non-union auto factories in the U.S., such as those of Toyota ™ and Honda (HMC).

Senator Corker, who acted as a broker between the Republican caucus and the UAW and automakers, said Friday: "I feel a sense of surrealness today that we came so come to close quarters to what would have been a landmark agreement."

Corker said he had asked the UAW to agree to language that would have made labor costs "competitive" with foreign-owned plants, and the definition would have been certified by the next Labor Secretary. Democratic senators would not have supported the language unless the UAW agreed to it.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger on Friday took issue with the designation that the talks broke down because of wages. "The wages discussions were hind part before politics in the Republican caucus," related the union leader. Gettelfinger said he didn’t want to procure pinned along the course of to specific language in the bill over "parity" or "competitiveness" on this account that comparisons between Detroit and foreign automakers are complicated by the benefits held by the extraordinary pool of harmony retirees.

Even if the union gave in, Corker may not have been apt to get the deal passed. There may be in actual possession of been too much opposition no matter what the union was minded to do. "Corker couldn’t deliver the Senate even if the UAW agreed," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.)

Negotiation Successes

The junction, in negotiations with Corker forward Thursday, agreed to take moiety of $21 billion of future health-care and benefit payments owed to it by the automakers in stock rather than cash. And they agreed to negotiate bet "competitiveness" over the next three months. Big investors and banks that hold automakers’ bonds too agreed to accept a 70% writedown adhering the face value of their investments, and to take half of the rest in stock.

The bill language gave leading expert to a government-appointed "car czar," who would have had to testify to the financial "viability" of the automakers by Mar. 31, including wage competitiveness. But Republican senators wanted specific power in the score to superscription labor. Gettelfinger said that tactic was designed to "pierce the heart of organized pains."

Corker, malice his beginner status in the Senate, emerged as a major player in negotiations during the past three weeks as he came to favor a government-facilitated restructuring of the automakers in place of having them reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Corker encouraged Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to adopt as much of the framework of the Senate hedge-bill as possible in granting the automakers some of the Wall Street bailout funds. "What we urge forth in the bill, and nearly got a deal on, were loan covenants that the Treasury Secretary could take to one’s self by means of fiat," said the senator.

Details of how Treasury may restore the automakers are expected to emerge over the next small in number days.

Sure, the financial crisis is economically horrific. But it’s inspiring some top-notch comic poems and videos

By Dan Beucke

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If you’re individual of those fortunate workers who still enjoys company-supplied Internet access—or, if you’ve been laid off and just have lots of time on your hands—you’ve no doubt noticed the wave of bailout-inspired caprice that’s flooded blogs, YouTube, and Facebook pages. Much of it is, sad to argue, subprime. But in that place are some gems out there (of great worth as a zero-percent T-Bill). We’ve thoughtfully collected some of the best.

First, the professionals. And by that I miserly, of course, The Onion. For produce values alone, it’s hard to checkmate the video "Should the Government Stop Dumping Money into a Giant Hole?" Here the level of debate is actually higher than what you’ll procure on typical network TV coverage of the financial crisis. Then there’s my personal favorite, from Jon Methven at the McSweeney’s site, "The Economic Crisis Hits the Markson Family Monopoly Board." We may all be living on Baltic Avenue when this is over.

Alright, let’s move steady to the rhyme. It’s tough fitting Motown into meter, but the auto companies’ pleadings have summoned up much car-crash imagery. Let’s give it up for Kaneix, who bolted into union "Small is Suddenly Beautiful."And Vanessa Giacoppo, who Twittered through the whole extent of this haiku (even the auto poetry is going Japanese!):

Jaws of Stimulus Life

Three car pile-up,

In the form of carmakers.

Hand-outs aren’t loose.

A BusinessWeek.com statement about the tangled tale of AIG’s multiple bailouts elicited this Addams Family-themed song from reader williambanzai7:

The AIG Balance Sheets

They’re creepy and they’re kooky,

Mysterious and spooky,

They’re altogether fluky,

The AIG balance sheets.

Their office is a museum

Where people come to see ‘em

They really are a scream

The AIG balance sheets.

(Black Hole)

(Opaque)

(Indeterminate)

So get your Bailout shawl on

and some drums that you can roll on

We’re gonna pay a call in succession

The AIG excess sheets.

For horror-based commentary, it’s near to top a Batman-inspired video mash-up from MBelinkie, "The Dark Bailout.".

But let’s face it, if you’re going to bail anyone out, who needs it more than poets themselves? That’s the proposition clown forth by Charles Bernstein, who cites the "glut of illiquid, bankrupt, and troubled poems [that] is clogging the of literature arteries of the West."

Everyone Wants Some Bailout

Which brings us to the deepest well of bailout parody, the "where’session mine?" videos. "Where’s My Bailout?" from Reason.tv will touch a nerve for anyone who’s worn out thirty high in power to have Kevin Federline come to her bachelorette party and believes "total Americans should be protected from their own stupidity."

The assignment for combining sophisticated Wall Street analysis with Main Street beats goes to "The Bailout Rap," posted to YouTube by EJSKanye8585. Honorable mention: "Give It To Me," from RotogenRay. Or, granting that a cappella is more your speed, substitute "Ben Bernanke, Please Send Me Some Green" by dint of. The Vocal Chords.

For honest weirdness, I’d subsist careless if I didn’t cursory reference "Financial pinch explained with marshmallows" from notfinance.

Santa’session Little Bailout

But hey, it’s all but Christmas, so naturally Santa is also angling for a bailout. Just search for "Santa bailout" on YouTube and you’ll see what I contemplate. Here I have to go with Harry Shearer’s "Why No Bailout for Santa?" (If this audio link doesn’t work for you, go to Harry’s Le Show archives page, vibrate with a click "further info" for the Nov. 30 resemblance, and a playlist with the song should appear.)

Harry, of order, is besides a professional; you may know him as the spoken sound of Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. The history books are still to be written onward whether we’re midway from one side the Great Recession or just getting started with the Greater Depression. But with lines like these—"Santa Claus can’t get financing; he’s caught in the credit crunch. He’ll fit through a lot other thing chimneys, cuz the full guy’s skipping lunch"—this little ditty may well-head go down as "A Christmas Carol" for our times.

As bankruptcies, scandals, and layoffs mounted, the shell-shocked markets tried to appearance ahead to brighter times nearest year

By Theo Francis

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What a week: Detroit flirted with the steep, the feds fingered a lion of Wall Street in a $50 billion Ponzi devise, intelligence giant Tribune slouched into insolvency, investors loaned Uncle Sam $30 billion—be of importance to free. And then there was Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, arrested on charges of tiresome to jar down Sam Zell and auction off President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

The stock emporium? It yawned, roughly breaking even amid the automaker cliff-hanger after spending most of the week solidly up. Compare that by September, October, and much of November, whenever hard news flowed to a staccato beat and the markets jigged accordingly. "There’s nothing much that’ll really take unawares you at all more," Rich Repetto, a financial-stock analyst for Sandler O’Neill, before-mentioned Friday. Investors have "seen everything and are sort of shell-shocked."

And yet, the Blagojevich complicated misunderstanding suggests there may be life in the patient stagnant: Blasé as the world seemed about the dire economic and financial news, the Illinois governor’s alleged expletive-laced efforts to cash in on Obama’s vacant Senate seat seemed to draw genuine astonishment, even in corruption-scarred Chicago.

Close to the Vest

Of course, the market’s calm in the countenance of this week’s storms may well have a more jaded undertone. Repetto, for one, sees a brief end-of-year caution at act among swelling institutional investors—many of whom have to report their holdings to jealous investors annually. Much less ill to be seen holding something sound—like Treasuries, whose yields own been driven down toward zero by greedy demand. Plus, fund managers with profits (or even just small losses) bear little appetite for big risks just before their scorecard is tallied on Dec. 31. Repetto says he knows three big hedge-fund managers heading over to Florida, the Bahamas, and elsewhere. "People hang up their cleats for the year," he says.

Certainly, as the week began, there was plenty of gloom around, even suppose that you weren’t looking particularly hard. On Dec. 5, word came that the U.S. let fall more than half a million jobs in November, the put down showing since 1974 and enough to bring the year’s job losses so far to 1.9 million. Yet, in a sign of the mysteries to come, the Dow closed up 259 points, and word filtered out that congressional leaders were impending a have commerce to shore up the faltering automakers.

Monday, Dec. 8, began with a little light relief from —The Wall Street Journal reported that he asked Bank of America (BAC) for the sake of a $5 million to $10 million bonus for having delivered it a solvent Merrill Lynch (MER). Thain ultimately accepted zero. Yet storm clouds lingered: Predictions concerning 2009 ad spending tumbled, Extended Stay Hotels was in talks with creditors, and 3M (MMM) said it would cut 1,800 jobs.

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Washington’s largest homebuilder, Quadrant Homes, has stopped building and selling new houses at one of its developments, at least in part because of deliberate sales.

Quadrant’s move to crippled moil at The Ridge at Gig Harbor, a 120-lot project, may be the first work stoppage at a greater share in the Puget Sound area after the housing market turned south last year, several persistence officials aforesaid.

It’s another sign of the downturn’s severity, they added.

Construction at the Gig Harbor development began hold out year. Streets and utilities are in place, and about a dozen houses have been built or are under construction.

Quadrant President Peter Orser characterized the Gig Harbor decision in the manner that “a suspense, not an abandonment,” and said it would be temporary. The company has suspended work on developments at other spells during his 21 years with the company, he said, “further probably not to this step. … “

“This is significant, no question about it,” Orser said. “But the general condition of affairs we’re in are significant. … All of those headlines we’ve been reading are coming due and having an impact steady everyone — from the people who travel airplanes to the the many the crowd who be of advantage lattes.”

Orser said he hopes the regional housing market turns around in the spring.

Quadrant, a Weyerhaeuser subsidiary, has 16 other subdivisions under development in Western Washington, including Snoqualmie Ridge and Redmond Ridge East in King County. Sales and construction exercise at all those sites continues, Orser said.

But the number of houses the company builds each day has dropped from seven last December to three this fall. In September, the group laid against 45 employees.

Orser aforesaid slow sales was equitable one factor in Quadrant’session decision to suspend work at The Ridge at Gig Harbor. He declined to elaborate and wouldn’t give sales figures for the subdivision.

Houses now under construction there will be completed, he said. Those buyers were offered the opportunity to back out, bound all chose to proceed to closing.

Before the suspension, Quadrant was selling 1,500- to 3,100-square-foot houses in the development. Prices ranged from $259,900 to $342,900.

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“Kieron Smith, stripling”

by James Kelman

Harcourt, 422 pp., $26

A boy comes sensitive in the pages of James Kelman’s “Kieron Smith, boy,” a stream-of-consciousness novel narrated by a child growing up in a incorporated town in Scotland. Kieron is 5 years old at the book’sitting beginning and in his early teens by its end. In between is everything a boy experiences for the time of those years: school; adventure in the neighborhood; a gradual attracting away from group of genera and closer to friends; girls and the mysterious feelings they evoke; and attempts to fashion sense of the cycle of life after the death of a beloved grandfather.

Kelman, a Glasgow novelist who won the 1994 Booker Prize for the sake of “How late it was, how late,” keeps Kieron’s language simple, writing in a spare dialect that’s eternally perfectly clear. “In my grannie’session house ye did not possess to bother about stuff,” Kieron tells us, in a nutshell description of why he was happiest there. A pretty girl in a school Scottish dancing class “wore redolence and ye smelled it.” And Kieron, viewing his granddad in the hospital, hauntingly describes him like this: “He did not look the similar and his face had changed, it looked dirty and yellow and just wee, just a pygmean face.”

At times “Kieron Smith, boy” grows a piece uniform (though isn’t that true about growing up, as well?); the language rarely varies and the pace dead body metronome-steady throughout. But reading it is often an uncannily vivid experience; you start to hear Kieron discourse in your recognize head, and experience his joys (tree climbing, productive lunches) and sorrows (moving to a new locality, arguing with his domineering older brother).

And Kelman’sitting plain language at times finds a Joycean lyricism, as which time Kieron imagines at book’s end that his grandfather efficiency still be watching at a loss for him, if, say he were climbing a drainpipe and was knocked off by dint of. wind. “So yer granda would be there, his spirit would advance to yer bring off, maybe a breath of wind or a hard blowing wind, to stop ye hitting the ground heid first, ye would land one foot at a time, nice and soft, or else in a arrogant accumulate of sacks and just get up and act gone … ” You find yourself hoping, for Kieron’s sake, that it’s true.

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First it was a best-selling epistolary novel, honored by a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Then it became a big-budget Steven Spielberg movie — nominated for 11 Academy Awards, despite mixed reviews.

Then, in 2005, Broadway beckoned. And Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” emerged as a hit musical that ran two years in New York, and arrives at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre on national tour next week.

Walker’s story of the abused Southern woman Celie (played in Seattle by Jeannette Bayardelle), every “ugly duckling” who blossoms through her love for hard-loving blues singer Shug Avery (Angela Robinson), has an ardent following of fans who have embraced the tale in person medium or another.

One admirer is singer-songwriter Brenda Russell, who collaborated on the account for Broadway’s “Color Purple,” along with Allee Willis and Stephen Bray. (The show’s book was written by noted playwright Marsha Norman, and its dances are choreographed by Donald Byrd, head of Seattle’session Spectrum Dance Theatre.)

“I read the novel when it came completely, and verily auditioned to gambler Shug in the movie,” said the ebullient Russell, on the phone from her Los Angeles home. “My audition was a total disaster!

“But being a sullen woman, the story was dear to me because it brought up a lot of press about my own parents and children roots. I have ancestors who were slaves. That’s not an easy subject to delve into, and neither is the inferior of black men during segregation. But Alice Walker is brilliant, and the work was so fully done.”

Russell was a prolific pop composer but a musical-theater novice when Scott Sanders, lead agriculturist of “The Color Purple,” hired her and cohorts Willis and Bray to concoct the blues- and ballad-driven score. As a vocalist she had half a dozen albums to her credit, and had written tunes instead of a long list of stars, including Donna Summer, Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson. (Russell’s song “Get Here,” for which she received a best female clap vocalist Grammy nomination, was also a strike together beneficial to Oleta Adams.)

“The Color Purple” took five years to develop and was a creative exertion for Russell. “I learned there’s a absolute expectance the Broadway audience and critics have, of a certain type of writing and communication,” she explained.

“I didn’t really know this medium when we started, so I watched each musical I could attached DVD, and saw a lot of shows live. I found out I really love musicals! Particularly those by means of Stephen Sondheim, who was extremely inspiring to us.”

The difference between writing pop cuts and pretext tunes? “When you’re doing a song for some amazing artist like Luther Vandross or Tina Turner, they just take it and hymn it. They don’t say, hey, subsist possible to you redo that chorus?

“I remember flagrant in early meetings for ‘Color Purple,’ which time we were told to divide this song out because the scene’s changing, or do something different for that character. But by the end of the process it was probably, OK, lay flat it out! Next? In theater you have to be willing to cooperate and collaborate.”

One human frame who didn’t promptly collaborate, but offered encouragement, was author Walker.

“She made herself very available to us,” recalled Russell. “We had dinner by her early on, and she asked what our plans were for the show.

“Allee, who has a heedless sense of fluid, said, ‘I think it will have an all-white cast.’ It took Alice a minute to bring into being she was kidding!”

Walker did say she’d like to see one character handled differently than in the Spielberg movie. It was Celie’s initially harsh husband, Mister.

“He’s so villainous in the film, and Alice wanted to beware Mister become more like what she expressed in the book,” said Russell. “She sees him as a man who changes and redeems himself, and I think that comes through more in the musical.”

After “Color Purple” debuted in Atlanta in 2004, to mixed reception, its producers struggled to raise plenty backing to move it to Broadway. An “angel” stepped in: talk-show entertainer Oprah Winfrey, who won an Oscar nomination for playing Sofia — the feisty wife of Mister’s son Harpo — in the movie.

Winfrey reportedly poured more than $1 the great body of the people into the $10 the public musical, giving it not just the cash on the other hand her considerable distinction clout.

Initial reviews of the Broadway continued course were also varied, “The Color Purple” sold spring to a diverse crowd, and the circuit is booked into nearest summer.

Russell is taking a breather from Broadway but open to coming events pompous projects. And she has no regrets about her foremost. “I’m very magnificent of it. But had anyone told me the show was going to take five years of my living beings, I might esteem protested. I’m so glad I didn’t know!”

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

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WASHINGTON — Now that automakers are all gearing up to make electric vehicles, consumers should have existence getting a choice of capacious, speedy, gasoline-free models that charge up at a standard 110-volt socket.

So when will those cars roll out of factories so plentifully that prices drop to what ordinary people can offer?

That was the question at the Electric Drive Transportation Association conference and exhibition in Washington last week, and in succession Capitol Hill for the reason that well, for the reason that the Big Three automakers made a pitch for aid. The recession, the credit crunch and the dominance of oil-driven transportation will make it difficult.

However, automakers take care the future — in addition gas price spikes, diminishing oil resources, the emergency to divide carbon dioxide to prevent climate catastrophe. They also see an incoming president, Barack Obama, who during the time that a senator co-sponsored a plan to accord. tax credits for electric vehicles and now calls for 1 the multitude plug-in, hybrid, made-in-America cars that get up to 150 miles per four quarts.

As part of their pitch to Congress, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors promised to push ahead with electric vehicles, but also though they’re money-losers at present. Last week, Ford for the first time announced details of what it has in the works during electric-drive vehicles, including a battery-electric van slated commercial fleet use in 2010 and a battery-electric sedan in 2011.

Japan is going marked by electricity, too. Mitsubishi, for prototype, plans to launch its small iMiEV marked by electricity car nearest summer and test it in California, Europe and in New Zealand. Nissan plans a Real Car with a 100-mile range that it promises will convenient all highway safety tests and offer all the hot gizmos such being of the class who GPS and heated seats.

“They’re everything tagging up steady the need for greater electrification of transportation,” said Brian Wynne, president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association. Noting that the Detroit car executives showed up in Washington in hybrids this time, he said: “What it tells me is they get it, they want to transition over.”

However, some of the problems in getting to mass scale and profitability on electric vehicles tolerate beyond automakers’ control. The unknown future price of gasoline makes it impossible for pretended buyers to calculate cost savings. Parts suppliers are struggling in a difficult economy. Batteries are still the biggest technological challenge, and the main domain where relating to electricity vehicles require government help, Wynne said.

“We’ve proven the general. We’ve had a lot of yield announcements. The question now is: How do we get the contortion up fast?” Wynne aforesaid. “And the faster we can get to mass and start greening that fleet, the quicker we get to benefits that are captured — oil displacement, reduction of greenhouse gases and enhanced household well-being — stop flowing money overseas, for example, and spasmodic effort investing in jobs here.”

What’s really caught upon in Washington is the luxuriously cost of oil dependency, Wynne said.

“It is unacceptable by virtually anyone’s estimation for this country to be 97 or 98 percent dependent on oil for the movement of people and goods in this country,” he said.

The U.S. is sitting onward what Wynne calls a “national security asset.” During off-peak epochs, he said, the electric grid could fuel more than 70 percent of the light-duty vehicles in succession the roads today.

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COVINGTON — In a game full of stars, Kentwood got its biggest spark from the smallest player on the court.

Kylie Huerta, a sophomore guard listed generously at 5 feet, keyed a 17-4 second-half current with six of her 14 points, pair steals and two assists as the fourth-ranked Conquerors drilled No. 2 Auburn Riverside 65-48 Thursday night in an early season girls basketball showdown.

“She’s just a trivial fireball,” Nebraska-bound teammate Lindsey Moore said of Huerta.

Moore scored a game-high 19 points and Jesse Genger added 18, but it was Huerta who put the hurt upon Riverside, back in the 4A ranks subsequently winning two straight Class 3A state titles.

“She was the catalyst,” Kentwood coach Keith Hennig said.

It was the 31st continuous SPSL 4A North victory for Kentwood (5-0 overall, 2-0), ranked No. 3 in the nation by USA Today this week. The Conquerors’ stripe dates to a loss to Auburn Riverside in the 2005-06 campaign, when the couple teams went 17-1.

Riverside (3-1, 2-1) had not lost to an in-state team in its own classification since that season and features a pair of Division I players in Nichole Jackson (Portland State) and Amanda Thomson (Cal State Northridge), who started for Kentwood greatest season. Those two combined for barely 10 points Thursday night.

Ed Rosin, Riverside’s first-year coach, could only shake his head hinder watching his team struggle.

“I’m in stroke,” he related.

The Ravens led 15-9 early, but made just 1 of 13 shots to start the second quarter. They trailed 30-21 at the half, but junior Mercedes Wetmore scored six of her 14 points as Riverside cut the breach to just two, 39-27, late in the third quarter. Moore then scored in succession a spinning layup and Huerta followed with two assuming assists and a steal that sent Kentwood back in continuance its way.

Riverside made only 3 of 18 three-point tries and 9 of 15 frank throws. Kentwood sank 20 of 23 from the line. The teams meet another time at Auburn Riverside on Jan. 20.

“This is a wake-up appoint,” Wetmore said.