The pricey services may get a boost as investors look for easier ways to search sources of investment info

By David Bogoslaw

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If investing newsletters were stocks, what would the monetary gurus who extend them think of their prospects? The shape of subscribers of financial newsletters has been declining steadily for the past 10 years, which "is more a phenomenon of the Internet than of bull and bear markets," according to Mark Hulbert, publisher of Hulbert’session Financial Digest, which rates the performance of paid investing newsletters. "Even at the top of the bull market in 2007, there were a great number fewer subscriptions, half of what there were in 1999."

The longer-range downturn in the pedigree market has exacerbated the decine in newsletter readership, says Hulbert. The jury is out on whether the widespread market mar brought on by the agency of the believe crisis has increased investors’ doubts hind part before the ability of financial advisors to offer valuable emporium advice—or whether that advice has become greater degree of appealing being of the kind what one. the aversion to important brokerage firms grows and more investors become aware of the many potential conflicts of interest these firms have due to their investing. banking arms.

Jeff Broadhurst, president of Broadhurst Financial Advisors in Philadelphia, says his more sophisticated clients are increasingly distrustful of the big brokerage firms like Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS). Clients of these brokerages have been moving to fee-only advisors to escape the flawed advice being dispensed by the big brokerage firms, he adds.

Steven Podnos, president of Wealth Care, a financial advisory firm in Merritt Island, Fla., doesn’t parallel the fact that the big brokerages are always trying to sell a portion. "I tend to really discount what I hear coming from any brokerage domicile spokesman. They even now may esteem an agenda," he says.

But Podnos is equally skeptical of the stock-picking admonition sold by investing newsletters, most of which he regards as not worth reading. He subscribes to a variety of newsletters more conducive to background information and opinions about the markets, the economy, and geopolitical issues that may influence different asset classes. He says he’s convinced that investors can’t use the aforethought in newsletters to cut out the markets consistently completely time and would be better off filing it away for use along with an lot of other information to make investing decisions.

It’s the place of traffic context and deep analysis that draws Podnos to certain kinds of newsletters, such being of the kind what one. one that provides a mammon of information from one place to another Canadian energy trusts that he has difficulty finding elsewhere.

The drop in newsletter readership correlates more to the long-term trend in the Nasdaq Composite index, what one. a little while ago trades at less than half the peak it hit in March 2000, than that of the broader market, says Hulbert. "That suggests that if the market takes opposite to you’d have a cyclical trend working in favor of the industry, but you would still have a secular trend working against newsletters until they figure out how to exploit the Internet in a better way," he says.

Beyond any gains that advance from a brokerage deal, investors expect more pain from souring loans to consumers, commercial real estate, and businesses

By Mara Der Hovanesian and David Henry

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There are a few reasons why intelligence of Citigroup’s (C) potential sale of Smith Barney depressed investors on Monday. It’s not just that CEO Vikram Pandit is retreating from his earlier statements that in that place would be no great deviation of strategy. It’session that the turnabout is a red-flashing notice signal that the rivage needs yet more fresh cash to make up for coming losses.

Among the culprits: souring loans to consumers, relating to traffic absolute estate investors, and assorted small and midsize businesses. The consequences of dishonest lending in those areas during the credit bubble have in addition to hit Citi, whose stock value tumbled 1.15, or 17%, in continuance Jan. 12, to 5.60. But they’re coming this year and next on a storm path taste the subprime pledge hurricane under the jurisdiction them. Also, even though the government wrote Citi a colossal insurance policy in November on $306 billion of toxic real estate assets, the bank faces a massive deductible: Citi be required to cover the first $29 billion of losses from those assets.

"We may have to come back to the issues that were at the heart of original congressional action, which was about the toxic assets," says Peter Peyser, a higher principal with Blank Rome, a government affairs firm in Washington. "The taste was made that capital purchases were greater quantity important immediately, and that may well be just. But the principal purchase has not been by the agency of itself the thing that unlocks the credit markets and gets the banks lending to one another, much less consumers and businesses."

The prejudiced auction of Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley (MS), expected to be announced after a board vote later this week, would give Citigroup an aftertax gain of up to $6 billion, according to reports from the Associated Press. But that’s likely an whit compared with what the big bank is harboring in losses in the form of souring mortgage and other real estate-related securities.

By more estimates Citi will post an eye-popping $10 billion more in losses when the numbers come in for the fourth quarter. The company elect discuss the quarterly and full-year 2008 results on the morning of Thursday, Jan. 22.

The bank has lost about $18 billion in the past four quarters. It is also sitting on a portfolio of toxic assets that have been marked in a descending course from their original value by means of some $49 billion during the sort time frame. In a influence cycle that is expected to be greater degree severe than any other in the gone by, Standard & Poor’s anticipates that the deposit elect have another tough year and possibly four other quarters of losses this year, according to a new report issued on Jan. 8.

"Of greatest concern," says the S&P report, "are the $68 billion home reasonableness lend portfolio and the high-loan-to-value loans underwritten by limited documentation, which are suffering steeply escalating losses." The report also underscores that potential losses attached other types of assets are not covered by any government guarantee, including those in the credit-card business, which the report cites decree likely surpass those recorded in previous trust downturns. Some $166 billion in foreign-consumer loans are moreover outside any implicit U.S. state guarantees.

Even though the government has pumped some $45 billion into Citi’s coffers and has backstopped the losses for poorly performing assets, the market still has yet to gain firmness in a recuperation of either the real estate sector or the overall economy. Many large, institutional investors are questioning the government’s strategy of injecting troubled institutions through for aye more cash. They see the infusions as giant sinkholes that don’t manner the enigma of dispensing with the bad assets.

A growing contingent of investors believe that far more draconian measures are required to get by heart the economy and the banking industry back put on its feet.

"Confidence and optimism have no foundation whether people and businesses have no money," says Lynn Tilton, CEO of Patriarch Partners, a private equity investor. "The U.S. banking system is insolvent. [We] need to take losses and deleverage. I am frightened by the fact that no one seems to know what to fare and that money desire get spent with no positive effect. Banks are not lending. They are using each opportunity to pull loans and press liquidations. Something must change, and quickly."

Consumer support groups dispute that mobile marketers are collecting personal premises without enough disclosure

By Heather Green

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Just as advertisers and wireless companies are hoping for the pursuit of marketing on volatile phones to adopt off, consumer groups are raising pointed questions about the business practices of these companies. On Jan. 13, the Center in spite of Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission charging that wireless ad companies need to disclose besides to their customers approximately what data are being collected about them and how those data are being used.

Mobile phones have power to get ready a gold mine of data to marketers. The devices be possible to pinpoint where a person is at in any degree given time and trace any travels for the period of the age. Mobile phones can also supply what kinds of restaurants a somebody looks for on her phone or which headlines are being read. "You’re talking about a device that can identify an individual," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the CDD, a nonprofit group based in Washington. "It’s carried with you wherever you bottom and raises the stakes in terms of consumer protection in the digital era."

Wireless marketers do have voluntary guidelines that require them to get a customer’s consent—called "opt in"—under the jurisdiction collecting data about them. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission ordered volatile marketers in 2007 to get opt-in consent from customers before carriers release intelligence they heap up to marketers. But the consumer groups argue that these permission clauses be possible to be buried in the fine print of contracts that customers agree to then they sign up to get, for example, sports updates on their phones. Consumers may not comprehend that they’re agreeing to hand over data about their tastes and location, and that the data advice may subsist used for marketing. The consumer groups want these disclosures to be much more explicit, and they want the FTC to remedy consumers understand—through, saying, public service campaigns—how targeting technologies can use the geographic location knowledge of facts gathered by marketers.

Mike Wehrs is president of the Mobile Marketing Assn., the dealing group that includes AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ), Vodafone (VOD), AOL (TWX), and Yahoo! (YHOO). He says the industry has taken proactive steps to cover seclusion, similar as creating consumer best-practices guidelines. Still, he agrees that as mobile marketing gets more sophisticated, the industry needs to do more. That’s why the MMA is already discussing putting new programs for addressing privacy concerns and providing else disclosure, Wehrs says.

These include a ailment system that consumers will be able to conversion to an act to report what they weigh to be privacy violations. Standardized privacy guidelines would provide shorthand guides to different seclusion policies. For example, when someone signs up to get pass between the wind and updates, he efficacy attend a pop-up saying that the service uses Mobile Privacy Policy 1. A search online could show that that policy entails sharing location information. "We’ve behaved responsibly, and we’ve tried to create a level of openness that consumers are comfortable with. There are an additional set of steps that we need to go quicken with," Wehrs says.

The 52-page complaint filed through the consumer groups outlines ways mobile marketers collect information. Marketers can gather location data from a service that uses a global positioning system to help the bulk of mankind stay in touch with their friends. Advertisers can garner behavioral or contextual information, such as social networks people visit or movie review services they use. Ad networks can compile gender and income provided by publishing partners or outside data partners in the same state as Acxiom (ACXM), which projects income and education levels by analyzing Zip Codes.

Most of the marketing money and new vehicles are going to Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC, while weaker brands starve

By David Welch

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Ask a General Motors (GM) executive about the company’sitting plans to breath down four of its eight vehicle brands, and the answers are circumspect. Saturn could be sold, but GM hasn’t given a firm make answer. Hummer is for sale and Saab might have being, if there is a buyer. Pontiac self-reliance still be, but maybe selling just a couple of cars at Buick-GMC showrooms.

Even if GM can’t bring itself to part with these grade weaklings, it is expressing its intentions in other ways. The company’s four "inner part" brands, which aren’face to face in strategic go over again—Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC—are getting the lion’s share of strange cars and marketing cash. And GM will continue to spend more to market those four core brands than it does the four that are under pass in review.

"Over time, the strategy is to focus our resources steady the core brands," says Mark LaNeve, GM’s vice-president of North American sales and marketing. "Those four brands will obtain higher expenditure. It’s without deductions that we can’t afford the kind of product and marketing investing. that eight brands need."

Just look at which GM showed off at the Detroit auto show this week. Chevy had its new Equinox crossover SUV that goes in succession sale this spring, simultaneously with the seven-passenger Orlando crossover and Spark subcompact that will hit the market in 2011. There was also a new Buick LaCrosse sedan and Cadillac SRX.

Hummer, Saab, Saturn, and Pontiac, in succession the other index, had nothing new to show.

Also, last year Chevy got a windfall of marketing cash. GM spent $454 million on marketing and advertising in the U.S. during the first nine months of 2008—more than the $386 million that Toyota ™ spent in succession its namesake brand, according to New York-based TNS Media Intelligence. One distended reason Chevrolet outspent Toyota, says Chevy General Manager Ed Peper, is that the company devoted a apportionment of circulating medium to the launch of its Malibu sedan. So the overall Chevy budget was unusually plentiful, Peper says. During the corresponding; of like kind period, Pontiac got rightful $83 million, and Saturn worn out $127 million onward marketing.

It worked for Chevy. The allotment spent almost $170 million in the first nine months of last year marketing the Malibu. The car’s sales grew 50% in ‘08. It struck a chord with car buyers subsequent to it replaced every outgoing model that was seen as one also-ran. And it chalked up that gain in like manner though the recently made known Malibu’session sticker price was $4,000 higher than that of the old Malibu.

"We have seen the excellent result GM has gotten with an excellent effort on Malibu," says Eric Noble, president of The CarLab, an auto industry consulting secure based in Orange, Calif.

In the past, GM typically plowed money into one or two brands at a time, while the other siblings were left to fend opposite competition with too few new products and slack marketing. In the early 1990s, for instance, it shorted Oldsmobile while investing in the new Saturn brand. But later in the ’90s GM wearied heavily on an ultimately futile effort to not including Olds, and left Saturn bereft of new vehicles. And since 2001, GM has launched a $4 billion effort to rebuild Cadillac, and spent a decent chunk on some new Buicks, while Pontiac and Saab have gone without.

What’s different now is that management is acknowledging it can’t support eight brands and is focusing resources more intently without ceasing the four divisions that it thinks will be survivors. "GM can’t afford to send all eight kids to college," says Noble. "GM is better served spending a dollar on Chevrolet than it is Pontiac."

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WASHINGTON — Last month, from his wife was nominated to be in possession of being writer of state, former President Clinton attempted to simpleton an end to supposition about his overseas fundraising by disclosing the names of some 208,000 donors to his groundwork, which has collected more than $500 million to pay for a presidential library and to combat AIDS, malaria and other scourges.

But nowhere on that list was the name Sakura Capital Management.

In 2003 Sakura, a shadowy, short-lived Japanese startup gang, paid Bill Clinton $500,000, the highest cash fee he has yet to receive for a oral communication, for a talk he in not at all degree delivered.

As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee takes up Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nomination today, she is expected to parry questions about whether she might be influenced by any of her save’s donors by pointing to his fresh openness. But as the Sakura tale illustrates, the disclosure does not answer all questions in an opposite direction Bill Clinton’s associations.

The Sakura money is shrouded in mystery. Why was the fee so to a great height, two or three times what he was paid for other speeches on the trip? Why was it canceled by Sakura, and why was Clinton paid in full anyway?

The company itself is murky. Sakura’sitting former president, a New York securities trader, says he knew only the last name of the partner who is said to have on condition the money for the speech. The Panama-based former chairman of the company was the presiding officer of a bankrupt flooring set. Another company figure, a Japanese businessman, was accused in a 1998 action of helping defraud Casio Computer of $100 million.

Bill Clinton’s spokesman at the William J. Clinton Foundation, Matt McKenna, declined to make answer greatest in quantity questions about the speech, though he confirmed the reward from Sakura to Bill Clinton. The former president then donated the money to the foundation without taking a tax deduction, the spokesman said, which he said is why Sakura’s family did not wear the appearance in last month’s disclosures.

The payment was listed in the manner that private revenue to her married man in Hillary Clinton’s Senate financial-disclosure form for 2003, he pointed out.

Clinton’s involvement with Sakura was announced in a July 2003 news release written by veteran New York publicist Ken Sunshine.

Clinton’s Sakura engagement was to have been scheduled around appearances in South Korea on Nov. 14, 2003, and in Japan on Nov. 19. His Sakura fee was double the $250,000 he was paid for the South Korea and Nisshin City, Japan, speeches and besides than three times repeated the $140,000 for a Kyoto appearance, according to Hillary Clinton’s disclosure forms.

Sunshine aforesaid he wrote the releases at the request of John Matthews, a New York securities dealer who was listed as Sakura’s president.

But Matthews said he invested no money in the firm and understood that financing came from a “Mr. Tanaka” in Tokyo. Matthews said he none met Tanaka, didn’t know his full entitle and had no phone number or other contact information.

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WASHINGTON — President Bush used the decisive news conference of his presidency Monday to dispute the form that the nation’session “moral standing has been damaged” by the agency of his actions and to summon President-elect Obama that, despite the turbulence in the economy, his most urgent anteriority must be fighting “an enemy that would like to attack America and Americans again.”

Looking back excessively the long arc of his turbulent presidency, Bush was by turns impassioned and defiant, reflective and lighthearted, even as he conceded that more things “didn’t go according to plan.”

He confessed a litany of mistakes, refused to talk all over pardons, cautioned Republicans to be inclusive and wondered aloud what it would feel preference to make coffee for his wife, Laura, at their Texas ranch on the morning after Obama takes office.

Bush showed flashes of the humor that helped elect him, as when he said — without offering specifics — that he intended to get busy quickly after leaving post.

“I just accept power to’t envision myself, you know, with a big straw hat and Hawaiian shirt, session on some beach,” the president said, adding, “particularly since I acquit drinking.”

But the most striking moment of the 47-minute, question-and-answer session, through far, was Bush’sitting rousing defense of his record on fighting terrorism and the suggestion by means of some critics that America’s moral standing has been damaged by dint of. harsh interrogation tactics, the creation of a detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the decision to go to war in Iraq without a U.N. mandate.

“It may have being damaged amongst some of the elite,” Bush replied, “but people still discern America stands for independence, that America is a country that provides similar great hope.”

Bush admonished reporters, and by expansion, his successor and the nation, not to forget the lessons of Sept. 11, 2001, and the meteorological character of fear in that his policies were forged.

“All these debates volition matter not if in that place is another attack on the homeland,” he said, his notes rising. “You remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? People were saying, ‘How come they didn’face to face see it? How come they didn’t connect the dots?’ Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do.”

Bush would not address the possibility, widely debated in legal and political circles, that he might consummation so-called pre-emptive pardons to counterterrorism agents or administration officials who could semblance criminal prosecution for a range of activities, including waterboarding or the firing off of U.S. attorneys.

“I won’t be discussing pardons here,” he said, satirical along the question. It was the only question he refused to reply.

The utmost time Bush took questions from reporters was in Baghdad, where an Iraqi journalist made international headlines by throwing brace shoes at him.

Monday’s news discourse featured only questions, no shoes, and it be inclined not have existence the final vocable from the president. The White House said Bush would set at liberty a farewell address from the White House on Thursday night.

Bush said he didn’t know he had become so divisive. “I don’familiarily know why they get angry,” he replied to a question about those who disagreed through his policies so vehemently that it became physical. “I put on’t know why they get hostile,” adding that he had erudite not to pay attention.

“I don’t see in the sort of manner I can get back home in Texas and look in the mirror and be over-weening of what I see, granting that I allowed the loud voices, the loud critics to prevent me from doing what I thought was necessary to protect this country,” Bush said.

It has been nearly eight years as Bush arrived in Washington vowing to have being “a uniter, not a divider,” with the idea that his presidency would focus upon family issues.

He leaves behind two unfinished wars and any economy in turmoil, and the wear and tear shows. At 62, he is more gray-haired and a bit more wrinkled. Yet Bush said he had “never felt isolated” and dismissed the form of the presidency as a tenor.

Bush began the news conference by thanking the reporters who covered him, grant that the relationship was often tense. He fielded a variety of questions, including whether he would require Congress to release $350 billion in bailout money — he later did for a like reason, at the petition for of Obama — and wherefore his efforts to bring respecting a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians had failed.

“I know we have advanced the conduct,” he said.

Bush has uttered he believes history will be the suppose of his presidency, and while he said so again Monday, he did deliver his assessment. Four years ago, he was asked if he had made mistakes, and struggled to come up with an answer, a moment that came to define him as unwilling to engage in critical self-analysis.

Bush was free this time. It was clearly a mistake, he said, to display the “Mission Accomplished” banner during the 2003 shipboard speech in which he declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

“It sent the wrong message,” he said. “Obviously, some of my declamation has been a mistake.”

Bush aforesaid he had “thought long and hard” about Hurricane Katrina, an iconic low point of his years in office. But he did not say what might have been rendered. differently.

He also aforesaid, in opposition to the first time, he believed he should have pressed an overhaul of immigration laws instead of focusing on Social Security after the 2004 election.

He predicted a Republican comeback but said he was “concerned that in the wake of the defeat that the temptation will be to examine inward.”

Looking ahead, Bush has said he intends to produce a book and to work on his library and public-policy institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

One thing he does not intend to do, he said, is make news.

“When I get away of here, I’m getting off the stage,” Bush said. “I’ve had my particular period in the klieg lights.”

Details about Bush’s defense

of his reign of terror policies were on condition

by dint of. The Washington Post.

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The Nation

Crime decline: The FBI says crime declined in the first half of 2008, despite an alarming spike in small-town murders. Violent delinquency nationwide fell 3.5 percent, and property crime dropped 2.5 percent, according to the bureau’session preliminary figures released Monday. Murders dropped 4.4 percent nationwide but rose nearly 10 percent in small towns — those through fewer than 10,000 people.

Salmonella traced: The salmonella bacteria that have sickened parsimoniously 400 people in 42 states have been conclusively linked to King Nut peanut butter, Minnesota health officials announced Monday. Officials found a genetic combine by the bacterial strain that has led to 30 illnesses in Minnesota and other states across the country.

Quarter cleaning: The New Orleans City Council has agreed on several amendments to the city’s 2009 budget that will keep enhanced cleaning services in the French Quarter through October. Mayor Ray Nagin warned last week the extra pressure washing and street sweeping for the tourist-rich area would have to be cut because the city had more pressing indispensably, including repaired police and emergency vehicles.

Gamer defense rejected: Ohio Common Pleas Judge James Burge Monday rejected the defense that a teenage boy opened conflagration upon the body his family as he was addicted to video games, convicting him of wounding his clergyman father and killing his mother after they fought over a game. Lawyers for Daniel Petric, 17, didn’t compete for that the male child shot his parents in October 2007 but insisted his minority and video-game addiction made him less responsible.

The World

Bombings because Biden visits: A sequence of bombings around Baghdad killed eight people and injured at least 29 others on Monday morning, a few hours before Vice President-elect Joseph Biden was reported to arrive in the Iraqi capital instead of talks with officials. Most of the bombs on Monday peep of day appeared to target Iraqi Army or Iraqi police convoys, except moiety of the dead and the tremendous majority of the wounded were civilians, according to Iraqi government officials.

Asian allies: The global monetary crisis prompted the leaders of South Korea and Japan to set aside their countries’ century of disputes steady Monday and agree to cooperate to meet immediate housekeeping challenges. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak uttered medium-size Japanese companies would dress in electronics and machinery components factories in South Korea to help master the country’s chronic trade deficit with Japan.

Odds & Ends

Pricey newspapers: Zimbabwe’s central bank released a unaccustomed $50 billion note Monday — enough to buy three newspapers in the nation’s hyperinflated economy. The new comment was worth 1.25 U.S. dollars at Monday’s black-market exchange rate. A week ago, $50 billion was worth $2.20. Two weeks ago it was worth 3.30 U.S. dollars.

Passages

Retired Lt. Gen. Harry W.O. Kinnard, 93, a paratroop officer who suggested the famously defiant answer “Nuts!” to a German demand towards surrender during the 1944 Battle of the Bulge, died in Arlington, Va., on Jan. 5.

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College football

Tebow is expected to be ready for spring practice: Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, who passes with his left hand, had surgery in succession his right shoulder Monday and is expected to be ready for spring practice in April.

The 2007 Heisman Trophy winner had surgery to remove a bone spur; it might abridge deep-seated inflammation. Tebow, who helped the Gators win the national championship last week, announced Sunday he will return for his senior season.

“The surgery went well,” team physician Dr. Pete Indelicato said. “He should be able to begin throwing in the nearest three to four weeks and a full recovery is expected.”

Rhodes student Rolle picks Oxford upward of NFL draft: Florida State preservation Myron Rolle, who won a Rhodes scholarship in November, will study at Oxford in England instead of entering this year’s NFL delineation.

Rolle plans to seek a one-year master’s literary in curative anthropology and note the 2010 draft.

Utes plan to turn pro: Utah defensive end Paul Kruger, a sophomore, and defensive back Sean Smith, a younger, uttered they will enter the NFL draft.

Staying put: Texas linebacker Sergio Kindle, defensive tackle Lamarr Houston and linebacker Roddrick Muckelroy — all juniors — said they are returning during their senior seasons with the Longhorns.

NBA

Man worked as Curry’s driver: A man who worked for three years as Eddy Curry’s driver is suing the New York Knicks’ center in treaty court, alleging sexual harassment and Curry’s failure to pay him $93,000 he contends he was owed.

Dave Kuchinsky claimed Curry, 26, owes him $68,000 in back wages and a different $25,000 for charges made on Kuchinsky’s enter upon the credit side card.

In the suit, Kuchinsky also described pair alleged incidents in which he claimed Curry dropped his pants and made lewd and suggestive remarks.

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The state and local governments be seized of agreed without interruption the need to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a four-lane tunnel. But it’s still not clear how they force of will pay for the project, estimated to cost $4.25 billion.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has promised $2.8 billion in quest of replacing the viaduct, including digging the tunnel, but-end the Legislature has set aside $2.4 billion — leaving a $400 million gap.

And Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said the city’s share of the intend could be almost $1 billion, which would be used to establish the waterfront’s sea wall, make street improvements and possibly build a streetcar line.

Gregoire scheduled a news conference for this morning to announce the agreement, otherwise than that the news leaked Monday. More details are expected when Gregoire, Nickels, King County Executive Ron Sims and Port of Seattle CEO Tay Yoshitani make their functionary announcement today.

Under the agreement, the represent fully would pay to drill the two-mile tunnel under downtown and build some interchange near the sports stadiums in Sodo. The incorporated town and county would cover other costs, including the sea-wall repairs and surface-street and transit improvements.

It is up to the Legislature, that opened its 2009 session Monday, to authorize the state funding.

Legislative leaders in the greatness House and Senate said they brace tolling the proposed tunnel to raise the additional $400 million the state needs.

“There has to be tolling. In any one megaproject there is going to have to be tolling,” said Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, chairman of the Senate Democratic caucus. “There is no other way to move forward without ceasing megaprojects if we don’t.”

House Transportation Chairwoman Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, also supports tolling. The governor’sitting office would say only that Gregoire “is not opposed to tolling.”

The city’s share of the money would get to from a variety of sources, including a local taxing tract, Nickels said. He also said he hopes the federal stimulus pack expected from Congress would include money for the project.

The master stroke of policy would exist responsible for transit improvements. Metropolitan King County Councilmember Dow Constantine, D-West Seattle, said the county has the power to approve a $20 car-tab tax to raise money but may need to go to the voters to ask for more.

The county already was searching for ways to replace stagnant sales-tax revenues, a shortfall threatening to cripple King County Metro Transit. Constantine said he hopes state and limited governments can figure out how to plug that revenue shortfall and help finance the viaduct replacement at the corresponding; of like kind duration.

Little information was available Monday about what role the Port would be sufficient, and officials there weren’t talking. Port commission President Bill Bryant said the commission “has not considered any investment, and any funding decision would have to be considered by the commission in public session.”

The four-lane funnel, with two lanes going each way, would be bored beneath First Avenue. That avenue could allow the current viaduct to stay in use during tunnel construction.

The project would start at South Royal Brougham Way at the southward end and emerge near Thomas Street, boreal of the Battery Street tunnel.

Nickels has supported a tunnel for some existence in this world.

“My aim has been to open up the waterfront,” he reported, “and this will do that.”

In March 2007, Seattle voters rejected both a underground thoroughfare and another elevated highway as options to pay back the 55-year-old viaduct, that was damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake.

Officials in that case agreed to move ahead with projects on the north and south ends of the viaduct while discussing what to do about the middle section along the waterfront.

Last month, the recite, city and county came up with two new finalists in quest of viaduct re-establishment: an elevated highway like the existing viaduct, and a surface “distich” in which southbound trade would lie attached Alaskan Way and northbound traffic steady Western Avenue.

Almost without delay, a group of residents, business canaille and environmentalists brought on board to advise the incorporated town, county and state said a tunnel also should be considered.

Gregoire ordered her staff to get more information about the tunnel and about claims from supporters that the project could have being built for much less than the state had estimated earlier.

Not everyone is happy with the latest decision.

Mike O’Brien, chairman of the local Sierra Club chapter, uttered he opposes the tunnel because it’s too expensive and would do nullity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. He has supported surface-street improvements and additional line of passage to take the place of the viaduct.

“To spend a couple billion to build an underground highway by the waterfront only used for automobiles is the iniquity type of investing. to make rectilinear now,” O’Brien said. “The overseer, mayor and executory turned their backs upon the body global warming.”

Warren Aakervik Jr., president of Ballard Oil, what one. delivers fuel for the commercial-fishing labor, said the underground thoroughfare would not provide a connection to Ballard. He supports another elevated highway.

Aakervik predicted a tunnel also would funnel more cars to waterfront surface streets, making it harder for his trucks to set at liberty their cargoes.

“I don’familiarily believe it’s in the most excellent long-term interests of the community,” he uttered, likening it to other city decisions, such as the extension of the Burke-Gilman Trail near his business, that he said are making it harder for traditional industrial businesses to survive.

“As this city becomes in greater numbers of a bedroom, pedestrian, bicycle common, they bestow no thought to industry,” Aakervik said.

County Executive Sims has advocated using surface streets and increased transit to replace the viaduct. His office had no comment Monday and said he would wait for the governor’session announcement today.

Staff reporters Mike Lindblom, Emily Heffter, Jim Brunner, Susan Gilmore and Jennifer Sullivan contributed to this story.

A judge declines to revoke security, but sets additional terms in succession alleged trick mastermind’session release

By Phil Mintz

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Alleged $50 billion fraudster Bernard Madoff will tarry released on bail pending his trial, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled Mon., Jan. 12.

Federal prosecutors had sought to be delivered of Madoff’s bail revoked, arguing that Madoff’s novel transfer of valuables to tribe and friends justified a change in his bail provisions. However, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis ruled that the government had failed to prove that Madoff’s actions shadow forth either a serious flight risk or a great risk of obstruction of justice.

Ellis did impose several additional restrictions to Madoff’session release on handle, including ordering him to "draw up an inventory of all valuable portable items in his Manhattan home." The government or a security immovable approved by the regulation will check the inventory once every two weeks.

In late December, Madoff and his helpmate mailed packages containing items that prosecutors contend were worth more than $1 the masses to family and friends. That violated a court injunction, according to prosecutors. Madoff contends that the items were holiday gifts and sentimental heirlooms.

Madoff was arrested on Dec. 11 and charged with running a Ponzi scheme that could have cost investors as much as $50 billion. He was released on $10 million bail secured only by the signatures of him and his wife. After failing to get required co-signers of his bond, he was ordered held in home detention with electronic monitoring.