Sales of luxury cars in North America are likely to fall under 1 a thousand thousand units for the first time in more than a decade

By David Kiley

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European luxury-car companies are introducing their usual lineup of new and pricey models at this week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit. But analysts and some industry executives are unsure about how many buyers there are likely to subsist this year or exactly in the foreseeable future.

Sales for the whole of animalism auto brands were down across the board for 2008. In 2009 the animalism segment of the auto industry is expected to fall below 1 million units sold according to the first time since 1996, according to a forecast by Global Insight. Sales tracking firm Autodata said sales last year were 1.19 million units, down 21% from 2007 then sales were 1.41 million. Luxury sales accept been as distinguished as over 1.5 a thousand thousand in recent years.

Ford Motor (F), which has recently sold most of its enjoyment car business, doesn’t account it made the wrong decision, especially given, in the same proportion that Ford sales analyst George Pipas calls it, "the financial restructuring" that a haphazard of infant. boomers are going through as a determination of the collapse in housing values, Wall Street investments, and consumer savings. "Consumers in the age range of 50-65 are a huge part of luxury sales, and this arrange is in a retrenchment that could take at least a hardly any years to full," says Pipas.

AutoNation (AN), the earth’s largest retailer of automobiles, has seen its luxury carriage business slide since last September. CEO Mike Jackson says he believes a lot of traditional luxury buyers are going to bear heavily a lot more options while their leases arrive due. "The consumer’s psyche is scarred," says Jackson, who was Mercedes’ top U.S. executive in the 1990s. "People have lost money in ways they never thought possible, and many will look beyond luxury."

That’sitting where companies and brands like Hyundai (HYMOF), Ford, Honda (HMC), and General Motors’ (GM) Buick are hoping to gain share in the next hardly any years as they upgrade their models and put up to sale loaded vehicles for surrounding $30,000 to $40,000.

Hyundai’s Genesis sedan, which sells for around $37,000, won the North American Car of the Year award, every yearly report prize voted steady by dint of. around 50 journalists. It was a first for Hyundai, and a validation of its risky bet building a car with the similar equipment, ride, and handling of a BMW (BMWG) or Infiniti, bound for about $8,000 to $10,000 less. "I call to mind we are in a good position to help consumers rethink what ‘value’ really is with our products," says Hyundai’s acting CEO John Krafcik.

Even the Ford Taurus could draw former sensuality buyers. "We’ve got European styling and options that are more commonly found on guerdon and luxury [vehicles], such as adaptive cruise regulate, push-button start, paddle shifters, heated and cooled seats, so we think we can turn some heads in what could be a changed environment," says Ford Americas President Mark Fields. The Taurus’ pricing is between $28,000 and $33,000.

That kind of deliberate doesn’t bother James O’Donnell, president of BMW North America, whose company is launching a new 7 Series sedan this spring with prices fine $100,000 and a Z4 Roadster. BMW’s sales were along the course of in 2008, but less than the overall luxury segment, which means it gained market share.

Vikram Pandit may soon be forced to chisel up Citi to chew the hole in its surplus sheet from what could be as much as $150 billion in toxic assets

By Mara Der Hovanesian

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Even before the ink was dry without interruption the deal merging Morgan Stanley (MS) and Citigroup’s brokerage operations, talk surfaced of more primitive letter changes at Citigroup (C).

It’s not known exactly what Citi, what one. pioneered the concept of the financial supermarket, will look like. But it’session quickly becoming visible it be pleased be a good lot different from the institution initially conceived back in 1998 when Citicorp and Travelers Group were merged to form Citigroup. With the brokerage sold, Primerica, largely an assurance operation, is on the chopping block, according to a fountain-head. well familiar with the discussions. So are more of the course’s proprietary trading operations, the same ones that bulked up on the toxic real estate-related securities now making Citi’s balance sheet sick.

Broadly speaking, the bank resoluteness still have consumer, commercial, and investing. banking operations, according to the fountain-head. well. Citi will also hold attached to its private bank, which caters to the mass affluent. (An announcement with explicit details isn’t expected till the bank’s proceeds call on Jan. 22.)

The changes now on the anvil contradict what CEO Vikram Pandit has been effective the market for months—that he wouldn’t split up Citi. But as the economic and faith climate has deteriorated, the government—Citi’session largest shareholder, by a 7% stake—is likely nudging Pandit to shift his strategy and raise more capital. And the 52-year-old executive has little choice bound to follow orders.

Citi isn’t the without more dike in need of fresh cash. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech to the London School of Economics on Jan. 13 that the government will probably need to dart in greater amount of capital into the banking system. Additionally, the Fed may need to backstop more toxic assets—as it did by Citi back in November—"to ensure stability and the normalization of credit markets."

All of Citi’s recent posturing may be obfuscating the real issue: the row’s portfolio of toxic assets, which is becoming increasingly troublesome. While Citi gets a $6 billion aftertax gain from the commissure venture, it does nothing to alleviate the problems in that portfolio. According to more estimates, the toxic possessions on the books—consumer, corporate, and leveraged loans—could stand at $150 billion.

"The hole in the balance sheet is the problem," says a senior executory at a financial firm that specializes in fixed-income securities.

So which will happen betwixt now and the bank’sitting earnings conference on Jan. 22? Some mart observers suspect the government will directly bribe up Citi’sitting assets or contract a backstop for all the toxic securities on the books. In effect, like action will mirror the original intent of TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, as first drafted last summer.

"TARP was designed first to restore the secondary market, which was far more influential," says Robert B. Albertson, chief strategist at Sandler O’Neill + Partners, a boutique financial services investment bank in New York. "It is economic quicksand to bestow or lend banks the money now."

Others judge the government of necessity to take more drastic performance, anger Citi into receivership, wiping out equity and likely debt-holders in the process. Then, the government would need to carve lacking the bad assets into a separate entity, following the good bank-bad bank structures set up in the wake of the savings & loan crisis in the early 1990s. "Until you separate those toxic assets and boor a valley to the pricing and trading of those instruments," the mart inclination be in no-man’s-land, says Tom Barrack of money manager Colony Capital.

Barrack believes the government will move in this way because he has seen it happen before. After the S&L crisis, Barrack’s firm bought American Savings, a failing frugality the treaty powers that be had seized and chopped into the bad bank-good bank structure. "I am a big fan of Hank Paulson, but TARP has been an abject failure," says Barrack. "I compare the situation to a fire on a Savannah Plain: Let it rip and burn, and the market will rejuvenate in this way much faster—adjudicate to direct or hinder it, and there will be again and longer suffering before renewal. Japan experienced two decades of economic paralysis by experimenting with fire control of a similar unproductive sort."

The recession hits Nortel, the largest North American maker of telecommunications equipment, as the company announces Chapter 11 plans

By Tom Giles and Arik Hesseldahl

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Plunging demand for phone gear and a global fiscal crisis finally caught up by Nortel Networks (NT). The largest North American maker of telecommunications equipment said on Jan. 14 that it’sitting filing for bankruptcy protection in Canada, the U.S., and in Europe.

The company related it would seek creditor protection in the CCAA performance in Canada and Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. Filings in Europe were to be forthcoming. The company said it had sufficient cash on hand—$2.4 billion—to fund ongoing operations, and the company’sitting business would hold out out of interruption. Affiliates in Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America are not included in the filing.

Under Chief Executive Mike Zafirovski, the company embarked on an ambitious turnaround in 2005 that involved selling off businesses and eliminating jobs.

But during the time that the recession took hold, customers delayed telecom gear purchases, sending Nortel’s sales into a tailspin. Competition from rivals including Huawei likewise took a toll. "Nortel must have existence put on a sound financial footing once and notwithstanding all," Zafirovski said in a statement. "These actions are imperative so that Nortel have power to build steady its core strengths and become the highly focused and financially unhurt leader in the communications industry."

Nortel had $2.6 billion in cash and $4.5 billion in debt at the end of September and has been burning about $300 the great body of the people to $400 million in cash per quarter, says Nomura analyst Richard Windsor. The company power have been able to "trip along toward about a year or two" under the jurisdiction being unnatural into bankruptcy, he says. "This action has not been forced. The idea is to prepare something decisive rather than be broken up and sold off at extremely distressed valuations."

Nortel had been one of the highest fliers during the Internet boom of the past decade. As the million flocked online and companies set up operations on the Web, the amount of Internet exchange soared and demand for Nortel’s gear looked headed on account of years of strong growth. In 2000 the company’s mart capitalization topped $300 billion, making it one of the greatest number valuable companies in the world. Author George Gilder featured the set in his 2000 book Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World.

Nortel was also a longtime supporter of Canadian business, with the kind of celebrity that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) enjoys today. The company was once co-owned by AT&T (T) and Western Electric, but the U.S. shareholders had to sell out to Bell Canada as part of an antitrust settlement 50 years agone. Nortel, formerly called Northern Telecom, eventually became independent of Bell Canada and evolved into a giant telecom equipment supplier.

A clear identity since starters. But be possible to the new CEO’session "adult supervision" steer the beleaguered tech giant into taking greater amount of crucial nearest steps?

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By Robert D. Hof

With a new leading executive chosen from well outside its decaying orbit, Yahoo (YHOO) now has one greatest opening to salvage itself from a slow spiry into irrelevance. On Jan. 13, the struggling Internet icon appointed Carol Bartz, the executive chairman and former CEO of computer design software firm Autodesk (ADSK), to succeed co-founder Jerry Yang at Yahoo’s helm.

In her first public statements without interruption behoof of the company, on a brief conference call with analysts, Bartz’s no-nonsense gnomon shone through. She noted that Yahoo is a strong company that "frankly necessarily a little management" and said she would take some time to talk through her staff before announcing any plans in quest of which Yahoo should achieve from here on out. Bartz will still have Yang’s counsel in his longtime strategy-setting role as Chief Yahoo, but Yahoo President Sue Decker, who was a outgo internal aspirant for the CEO spot, will leave the company

For her part, Bartz will neediness a little educating. It’s not that most people question her management prowess or her drive to succeed amid immense obstacles. She joined Autodesk as CEO 14 years past and almost immediately got a diagnosis of breast cancer, returning to labor while still in recovery. She also joined a company where she wasn’t exactly embraced by the engineers but managed to expand the product line in the same state Autodesk is now a $1.5 billion attempt, while cutting costs early in the 2001 downturn to keep the profession above water.

Bartz, nevertheless, has not one Internet or media actual feeling, so she probably won’t change Yahoo’s direction on a dime. She’ll not only have to conformation out Yahoo’s operations but also hear where Yahoo fits into a still fast-changing Internet media globe. "It will likely take months for her to acquire skill in the Internet business and how Yahoo really works before she can develop every effective new strategy," Bernstein Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said in a note to clients.

Observers bring forth no shortage of ideas for what she should do next. None of this advice, it should be said, is something Bartz has asked for on the surface the company. Indeed, Bartz put it in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t be hurried in the sight of she had a chance to scrutinize operations more closely. "Let’s bestow this company some friggin’ breathing place," she declared in the conference call.

But investors, advertisers, and employees won’t give her unlimited time to decide Yahoo’s next steps. Here are five ideas that smart folks are hoping leave get Yahoo hindmost on track once and for total. Not wholly of them are entirely new, but they’re all more relevant than ever as Yahoo stares down restless investors, weary employees, and a declining economy that is now taking a heavy toll on Internet advertising.

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Portland scribbler Jon Raymond may be best known for two recent movies adapted from his pithy stories: “Old Joy” (2006) and the upcoming “Wendy and Lucy,” both directed by Kelly Reichardt.

But Raymond’s novel book of short strange, “Livability” (Bloomsbury, 260 pp., $15) shows him to be more varied in his range and talents than the two movies would suggest

I had the risk to talk by him about work earlier this week:

Q: You take on and portray the contemporary urban Northwest in ways I haven’t encountered before. Were you consciously trying to correct a literary statue of our region that still seems to consist largely of mountains and fir trees?

A: Yes, absolutely. I was trying to represent a fairly middle-class world, different from, saying, a Kesey-ish world of tragic lumberjacks, or a Carver-ish world of beery bingo parlors and broken cars and such. And definitely a world without salmon or fly-fishing. I might say it’s smaller quantity a correction than an update, though. I wanted to depict lives more like those that my friends and family are living.

Q: That prompts me to seek about the collection’s title, “Livability,” which seems a fragment ironic. Portland, like Seattle, comes near the top of the bill whenever cities are indexed for their “livability.” Yet considerably a few characters in your book mess up badly. Were you trying to caution readers that living somewhere “livable” doesn’t mean your life will go the mode of dealing you hoped?

A: Yes! I’ve always found the word “livability” hilarious. I mean, is that really what we’re shooting for in the present life? Mere livability? I always conceit the point of life was a thing richer than that. Something full of great tragedy or comedy, change of fortune, ecstasy, that kind of thing. But no, contemporary urban theorists look satisfied with the merely livable, which always sounds to me like the purely survivable, the not so bad. Livability has always struck me being of the class who a consolation estimate. I wanted to at least trouble that word a little. I wanted to inject it with if not some romance, at least some darker currents.

Q: Two stories, “The Wind” and “New Shoes,” move some of the chiefly profitably portraits of children I’ve read in a long during the time that. Are you drawing from childhood memories? Are you a parent? Does your writing bringing you into contact with children, for specify as a teacher?

A: “The Wind” draws on childhood memories, for sure. As with that character, I was forced to fight a kid in my neighborhood, and as through that novel, the older kids who organized the fight only had one pair of boxing gloves, which meant we only got one glove apiece. I was younger, so I got the left undivided. And I lost. As far as parenthood goes, I have a stigma new kid, a 9-month-old daughter named Eliza. She’s not old enough to oral intercourse yet, though, thus she’s not much help at what life it comes to research.

Q: You look a little too young in your jacket photo to be writing about middle-age burnout in spite of the reason that persuasively as you cozen. I’m thinking of “The Suckling Pig,” a very tough story about bankrupt time from birth to death design. “The Coast,” in all parts of a widower trying to balance grief with his stilly vital impulse toward life, has a homogeneous authenticity from a different fish-hook. So I be possible to’t help asking: How old are you? Are these experiences you’re anticipating? Or do they somehow reflect what you’ve been through?

A: I’m 37. So, you know, old enough to have experienced my share of disappointment, shame, horniness, belated satisfaction, etc. At smallest sufficiency to sympathize with others’ like experiences, I hope.

Q: Each story in the book covers very different ground — friendship, parenthood, love affairs, divorce, widowhood, lives gone facing the rails. Each seems to have a moral quandary it addresses, too. What are the germs of these stories? Do you be of the quandary first? Or does the process start more intuitively, with the narrative’session focus emerging gradually?

A: I was hoping the stories would add up to a little more than the sum of their parts, so I was drawn to characters and situations that covered similar geographical territory, but divergent of ethics, socio-economic, and cultural territory. The germs of the stories came from all over the station, though. I stole a goodly amount from friends and family and tried to keep an observe upon the body political moods. In more sense, I do think of these characters as all part of the same common, neighbors in the interval that, saw, the characters in Sherwood Anderson’session “Winesburg, Ohio” are neighbors. In that regular course, they are all facing similar questions about what exactly their duties are to each other, what they owe each other being of the kind which people sharing time in the same place.

Q: You’ve been a magazine editor at Plazm, a film-set adjuvant to Todd Haynes (for “Far From Heaven”), a film-script co-writer and the author of brace books. Which is the career you most aspired to from the start? Which is your day job? Was your entry into film-making a charmed hazard? Does the father’s uneasiness about his film project in “New Shoes” reflect your have ambitions, or was it a product of something you witnessed?

A: Writing fiction is the “piece of work” I prove by experiment to endure at the center of things. The movie stuff has been a wonderful hazard, though not entirely bizarre, either, as I own done some work in film control, and even directed a ridiculous, cable-access item back in my 20s. As far as paying the bills, though, I’ve had the pleasure of falling into each queer series of freelance jobs over the years, in the strength in advertising, or para-advertising capacities. I also practise teaching from time to time and review books and aptness. So far it’s worked out all right, but long-term survival remains kind of mysterious to me. The father’sitting artistic/monetary anxiety in “New Shoes” is definitely something I report to, and something I think a lot of other artists probably would, too.

Q: I liked your comment in your interview with The Oregonian attached the short story being “the more proper template for a movie.” It’s pained me, for the sake of instance, to examine Henry James’ great novels shrunk to a two-hour span when James has likewise many fine stories and novellas that would suit film adaptation hostile in addition comfortably. Are there are any writers whose novels have been adapted, perhaps inadequately, for film, whose short stories or novellas remain untapped but might by far more movie-suited candidates, in your opinion?

A: For some reason the only thing coming to mind is the idea of like Spike Jonze adapting more George Saunders stories. I’d like to examine that. Otherwise, though, I can’t really think of anything off hand. Alice Munro? I caught some of that Sarah Polley movie on a plane [”Away From Her”], and it didn’t be directed that amazing to me. Charlie D’Ambrosio’session stories? I bet someone could do it. Some inconvenient part of me wants to assume Ben Marcus or Donald Barthelme. But in captain-general, its nice rare that I read something and long for I could see it in the same proportion that a film.

Q: I’ve noticed some name changes in your world. For instance, you’ve changed from “Jonathan” to “Jon” between your debut novel, “The Half-Life,” and your new book, “Livability.” And the name of the protagonist in “Train Choir” [adapted as far as concerns film as “Wendy and Lucy”] got changed from Verna to Wendy. Any particular reason?

A: My mom calls me Jonathan, so I felt like I should go with that for the first novel. But then at more point I realized that everyone calls me Jon, and it seemed almost misleading. As for Verna and Wendy, I consign to oblivion exactly why the names changed. Kelly liked Wendy and I liked Verna, and ago we each have our respective domains we the one and the other got to have our direction of motion.

Q: Last question: “Words and Things” includes the first allusion I’ve come across in contemporary fiction to Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin’s “Careful!” — one of my favorites. What other movies might be likely to make cameo appearances in your work?

A: That is some seriously observant reading forward your part. The simply other movie respect that I can think of is in “New Shoes,” the main characters’ screenplay, described as “‘Animal House’ meets ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’” That movie doesn’t exist, but more friends and I did actually compose that screenplay a couple years ago.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com

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WASHINGTON — In the days leading up to President-elect Obama’session inauguration, his message of hope and change has become open — and commercial — here.

On the sides of buses, inside Metro subway stations and over the radio, Ikea hawks its hearth furnishings by proclaiming that “Change Begins at Home.” In other Metro stations, advertisements using the words “Hope” and “Optimism” are splashed in continuance walls and huge pillars — with the O’s replaced by Pepsi logos.

Among the Obama yo-yos and piggy banks, Amy Fettig, a Washington barrister who was out last Sunday buying a T-shirt from the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s store, noticed the $70 lead bags by designers Diane von Furstenberg and Tory Burch.

“I just wonder grant that this is part of the stimulus package,” Fettig said.

From big-box retailers to mom-and-pop vendors, an army of people is trying to make a bounty off Obama’s inauguration next Tuesday, the culmination of his historic campaign.

“Nothing will touch this,” said Bahman Shafa, the owner of Focus Sports, what one. last month opened each Inauguration Superstore here with 10 cash registers. His company also works the Olympics, Super Bowl and World Cup soccer.

There is Barack Obama Inauguration Hot Sauce, sold for $6.99 by the Kentucky house TooDarnHot.com; a “Hope and Change” necklace for $24 at Chico’s, a women’s clothing chain; and Barack Obama Topps trading cards priced at $1.99 per six-card load.

There is Obama toilet paper, a tribute that features his likeness, sold for about $8 by Jeremy Rupke, who lives outside Toronto. Rupke warned in each e-mail message that the dissertation is just toward show. The ink is toxic.

There are more than three price points on Obama soap alone: $20 Hope on a Rope soap; $9.99 for Obama Bars declaring, “This is our moment to clean up America”; and $44.99 against an inauguration gift pack sold by The Obama Bar online store. The pack, with eight Mini-Bama bars, is going quick, said the store’s co-owner, Salah Boukadoum.

“We’re happy to see that Obama is already doing his part to stimulate the economy,” Boukadoum said.

Everyday Obama items, like Obama-themed, $10 Metro cards by reason of the Washington subway system sold out at $10, then reappeared without interruption eBay for $25.99.

Obama sex toys, what one. determine not be described here, are suitable for $34.95 at one online company.

HSN, the home-shopping joint concern, is expecting some other sales boom after $3 the great body of the people worth of Obama coins sold days about the Nov. 4 election, said Nancy Caplan, a senior wickedness president at the company.

For the first measure, QVC, another home-shopping network, will broadcast from Washington for the time of the inauguration. Its legion will wear away a ball gown.

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HARPERSVILLE, Ala. — With his globe crumbling around him, investment adviser Marcus Schrenker opted with respect to a bailout. However, his plan to escape personal turmoil was short-lived.

In a feat reminiscent of a James Bond movie, the 38-year-old businessman and amateur daredevil director apparently tried to fake his debt of nature in a even crash, privily parachuting to the ground and speeding away on a motorcycle he had stashed away.

But the captivating three-day saga came to every end when authorities finally caught up to Schrenker in North Florida. Gadsden County Sheriff’s Lt. Jim Corder said late Tuesday obscurity that police there had Schrenker in watch.

Federal authorities say he had been found alive in a pavilion at a campground in northern Florida after he apparently slit one of his wrists.

“He had cut one of his wrists, but he is subdue active,” said U.S. Marshals spokesman Michael Richards.

Schrenker was on the run not only from the law but also from divorce, a dignity investigation of his businesses and angry investors who accuse him of stealing potentially millions in savings they entrusted to him.

“We’ve learned over time that he’session a pathological liar — you don’t believe a honest vocable that comes in a puzzle of his mouth,” said Charles Kinney, a 49-year-old airline pilot from Atlanta who alleges Schrenker pocketed at least $135,000 of his parents’ retirement fund.

On Sunday — couple days after sepulture his beloved stepfather and suffering a half-million-dollar loss in federal court the corresponding; of like kind day — Schrenker was flying his single-engine Piper Malibu to Florida from his Indiana home when he radioed from 2,000 feet that he was in trouble. He told the tower the windshield had imploded, and that his face was plastered with blood.

Then his radio went silent.

Military jets tried to intercept the plane and found the door debatable, the cockpit dark. The aircraft crashed in a Florida Panhandle bayou surrounded by homes. There was no sign of Schrenker’sitting body.

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A year ago, Teresa Pelayo, Sam Song and Tabetha Thomas were strangers and didn’t care end for end politics.

Next week, they’ll be in Washington, D.C., together to keep vigil Barack Obama be sworn in as president.

The Seattle-area trio were brought together last year by chance at the time, like thousands of others, they competed to be Obama delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Introduced at a bookstore last April, they bonded during the campaign.

Now the trio plan to celebrate their conquest back in the District of Columbia, even if it’s on a shoestring budget that won’t allow them to attend many marquee events.

“If Obama had never run, we would have not ever met,” Pelayo said. “Obama has given us the gift of friendship.”

They’ll be among the hundreds of thousands, granting that not millions, gathered in Washington Jan. 20 to witness the inauguration of the nation’s primary African-American president.

Attendance at the inauguration is probable to summit the previous record set in 1965, when 1.2 million turned to the end for the swearing-in of President Lyndon Johnson.

Big names from Washington state resoluteness subsist there, such viewed like glass skilled workman Dale Chihuly and RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser, both of whom are donating tens of thousands of dollars to the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

And the Department of Homeland Security, worried hospitals could subsist overwhelmed, have called up doctors and nurses to help, including Dr. Chris Sanford, co-director of the travel clinic at the University of Washington.

But campaign volunteers, Obama supporters and others who simply want to be part of history say this inauguration really belongs to them.

So they are to come by plane, by retinue, through bus — even roving voyage ship. They are staying in hotels and friends’ homes. Some are profitable residents a small fortune to lease their homes for the holiday weekend leading up to the big day.

Bertha McDaniel, 78, of Seattle, who participated in 1960s civil-rights marches, plans to escort the ceremony with her nephew and his wife.

She usually avoids big crowds and parties, no more than on this account that the inauguration she is structure an instance to be excepted. She plans to buy a newly come arrange — purple or black — and go to a round body.

“I’m one old, old black lady,” said McDaniel, who grew up in Topeka, Kan., and moved to Seattle in 1953. “I not thought I would live to see this.”

Nicole Wicks, 26, of Seattle, said this will be the positive, defining moment of her generation.

An incident planner, Wicks reported she had “zero involvement” in politics until final year. That changed when she ran as an Obama deputy at her environs caucus in February. Later she became a volunteer organizer at the campaign’s Renton office.

“Between having friends in Iraq, a mother with a brain tumor who will lose her health care if anything happens to my father’s job, and after being treated like crap on trips overseas because I was American, I finally cared about every election,” Wicks said.

“And I want to be there to give attention to it.”

Political awakening

When Obama came to Seattle’session KeyArena last February, he was trailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

He asked the 18,000 the public inside the arena — and some 3,000 surface — to go to their caucuses the next day.

Thomas, a homemaker originally from Chicago, was inside KeyArena. Song, an solicitor, listened to Obama speak on the radio. Pelayo, a dental aider, heard about the speech from a co-worker.

When they arrived at their separate frontier caucuses, each felt lost. But as caucus leaders asked for volunteers to be delegates for Obama at the legislative circuit level, Thomas raised her hand. So did Song and Pelayo.

“I was inspired by him [Obama],” Thomas said.

Pelayo, Song and Thomas didn’t receive to know one other until the 1st Legislative District Democrats organized a meeting in mid-April at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. There, harvested land polished the speeches they would give in their bids to be successful delegate slots to the public convention in Denver.

The advantage were against them. Chris Roberts, a doctoral aspirant in civic science at the UW, sized it up like this: “You either had to be well known or had to have a very compelling story.”

“Mini-United Nations”

Week after week, the form into groups gathered at the bookstore to practice their speeches and get feedback. Sometimes they brought their spouses and kids.

Though shy at first, Song became the group’session go-to guy and coordinated events. Pelayo, funny and of mutual regard, would make lists of reasons to have being happy — “You slip on’t look like McCain,” or “You don’t smell like a chicken.”

About 10 populate became regulars. They were a diverse bunch that included African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, a lesbian, students and white women.

“I would always joke we were a mini-United Nations,” Pelayo reported.

They called themselves the Third Place Obama Democrats, or TPOD.

They held fundraising events to raise money to help a student in their group, Kendall Hamilton from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, go to the national convention. She won a delegate station after speaking about her dream of running for president someday.

“We want her to be president so we can party in the Lincoln Bedroom,” quipped Pelayo.

One of their members dropped out after her husband died in a car misadventure in July, just before the state Democratic meeting. in Spokane. Members of the group went to the commemorative service.

Trio went to Denver

Though Pelayo, Song and Thomas lost their bids to become delegates, they the whole of flew to Denver anyway and managed to learn into some events.

“I actually saw Hillary Clinton walk down the aisle and deliver her concession speech,” Song said.

They all drawing on staying involved in community affairs. Song, conducive to example, is working with a group trying to make stable a human-rights commission in Snohomish County.

Thomas left a week ago to volunteer for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and is making arrangements for Song and Pelayo to stay at her sister’s home in a District of Columbia suburb. Song is flying to Boston and then taking a bus; Pelayo is flying to Baltimore.

Because tickets to most events are expensive, the trio is choosing carefully. Song plans to guard an Asian-American gala and take his sister to the swearing-in ceremony.

As an inaugural volunteer, Thomas isn’t sure where she’ll be deployed. (She got a surprise last Thursday, when Obama visited the committee’sitting offices and shook the hands of more than 100 volunteers, including her hand.)

And Pelayo, who is selling 600 homemade Obama buttons on the side of $1 to finance her trip, figures begging may get her into the hottest ticket of totally — the Illinois ball.

She bought a red gown to wear in honor of President Lincoln’s wife, Mary.

“I’m hoping if I stand outside and cry they’ll let me in,” she said. “I’gallimaufry going to endeavor and work it.”

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

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DETROIT — Chinese automakers looking to make the jump to the key U.S. emporium are facing increasingly strong headwinds, including a global financial crisis that has slowed growth in what place they already sell cars and sapped the potential as being partnerships that would help expansion.

But BYD Auto and Brilliance Auto are making China’s greatest part prominent appearance yet at this year’session North American International Auto Show — sandwiched between General Motors and Ford’s displays, instead of tucked away in the basement or outside the main exhibits.

And they remain interested in selling in the U.S., although that looks to be years away.

“We will start to bring out sales and dole networks in North America,” Wang Chua-Fu, chairman and president of BYD, said at a news conference Monday. He said plans muster for U.S. manufacturing facilities “at what time it is appropriate.”

Henry Li, general manager of BYD’s auto-export trade disagreement, said the company has set a target of 2011 to sell brace models that it’s showing in Detroit — the e6, which is an all-electric crossover with a 250-mile range, and the F6DM, a plug-in mule sedan.

By then, he said, BYD hopes to barter the Chinese-built vehicles in a market that’s recovered.

“I think the most important thing for us is to bring the right product, and that product be able to prove itself,” Li said.

U.S. auto sales tumbled to 13.2 the masses in 2008, down 18 percent from 16.1 million in 2007. Some analysts predict this year’s sales will hit 10.5 million, material the prospect of bringing newly come lines of Chinese vehicles into that market much more daunting.

Jesse Toprak, executive director of perseverance analysis for the Edmunds.com automotive Web site, said he sees potential for Chinese automakers to sell in the U.S., especially those looking to market relatively inexpensive, smaller vehicles. But the Chinese will face a skeptical general.

“In this time of household uncertainty, consumers tend to be active safer choices. They don’confidentially know about the quality of the Chinese vehicles,” Toprak uttered. “Initially, I think it’s going to be an arduous strive for them.”

BYD’s foray into electric-car manufacturing drew attention last year when MidAmerican Energy Holdings, what one. is majority-owned by billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, bought a 9.9 percent stake in the stud.

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In an industrial art lucky venture hard by the financial crisis, the blockbuster deal ZymoGenetics and pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb unveiled Monday made a splash.

The announcement turned many heads at one of the most important biotech gatherings, the JP Morgan annals health-care conference that began Monday in San Francisco.

ZymoGenetics’ forbearing stock also got a strong push in after-hours mercantile after news that it could get $1 billion or more in payments if its hepatitis C product reaches certain according to principles, regulatory and commercial milestones.

David Miller, an analyst with Seattle-based Biotech Stock Research who was at the conference, called the agreement “a really big deal.”

Conference attendees “were all impressed somebody would pay $1 billion for a drug that’sitting not even out of Phase 1 at the same time,” Miller said, referring to the fact the compound, PEG-interferon lambda, is stilly in early-stage clinical trials.

In addition to the payments from Bristol-Myers, Seattle-based ZymoGenetics stands to collect sales revenue and royalties if the compound gets to emporium.

The companies declared Monday they agreed to in conjunction develop the ZymoGenetics product in the U.S. and Europe. ZymoGenetics can choose whether to sell interferon lambda in the U.S., alongside Bristol-Myers — keeping 40 percent of the profits — or receive double-digit royalties. ZymoGenetics will also win royalties on interferon lambda sold outside of the U.S.

The deal also would put $85 million in ZymoGenetics’ pocket immediately — a boon at a time when markets are rocky and the company’s stock has suffered because of inactive sales of its only commercial consequence, Recothrom, a blood-clotting remedy.

The company stands poised to receive an additional $115 million from the deal in 2009, said Chief Executive Doug Williams.

“It’session hard not to be a minute fickle about the economics,” he said. “It really put us in a a great deal of stronger financial doctrine.”

PEG-Interferon lambda is designed to strengthen the body’sitting response against the hepatitis C virus. It’s in early-stage clinical tests, designed to means of estimating safety and side effects in human patients.

Interim results presented in conclusion November showed antiviral briskness with less side effects than other interferon products, according to the company.

Such partnerships are not unusual, as they empower research-oriented biotechs to complete expensive clinical trials with the backing of cash-rich pharmaceutical firms longing in quest of new products.

ZymoGenetics’ latest deal is among the largest the region has seen, surpassing even the agreement Seattle Genetics signed through Genentech in early 2007, which could lead the Bothell biotech more than $800 million in milestone payments.

Bristol-Myers’ money will bear ZymoGenetics “to pay our way” end the development of interferon lambda, still retaining a significant cut of profits, said Williams. Bristol-Myers devise pay 80 percent of the require to be paid of developing the drug.

The deal does not mean ZymoGenetics have a mind stop its belt-tightening efforts, which recently led to layoffs and the opportunity to sell of more property.

“Given the current financial condition, it’s time to have existence prudent with the cash that we have,” Williams said.

Besides the $85 million upfront payment and a future $20 million license fee, Bristol-Myers would stipend ZymoGenetics up to $430 million upon hitting certain scientific and regulatory milestones, up to $287 million if the product is developed for other potential indications, and up to $285 million in addition based on certain commercial milestones.

Federal antitrust regulators will be favored with to approve the deal.

ZymoGenetics shares closed at $3.12 Monday, up 7.9 percent. They’re down 74 percent from a 52-week high of $15.23. In after-hours trading, they attain $4.40, up 41 percent.

Ángel González: 206-515-5644 or agonzalez@seattletimes.com