Bank of America’s hasty Merrill takeover has put its future—and the federal bailout program—in question

By David Henry, Matthew Goldstein and Roben Farzad

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Bank of America’s (BAC) spectacular fall from grace has driven home two guide points. First, on a level lenders that seem relatively secure place from the credit storm have power to find ways to steer right into it, resulting in multibillion-dollar losses and brutal share sell-offs. Second, Washington’s $138 billion rescue package of the Charlotte lender, cobbled together on the fly, is failing.

As the Obama Administration moves to vary strategy to stabilize the banks, it will have to think bigger. The bailout, as it’s commonly structured, has amounted to little more than a temporary tonic to help BofA digest its controversial acquisition of brokerage giant Merrill Lynch. "It’s a Band-Aid," Leslie Rahl, president of consulting established Capital Market Risk Advisors, says of the ruling power’s remedy in the place of ailing banks. "It’s a camouflage, as opposed to a positive solution."

For all the weekend meetings on Capitol Hill to craft the rescue packages, Washington still hasn’confidentially addressed the underlying problem: Billions of dollars of toxic securities and loans languish on banks’ balance sheets. "It’s like a cancer that you have to divide off," says Frank Partnoy, a law professor at the University of San Diego. The surgery won’t be cheap. BofA will need another $80 billion to confront coming losses and form up a healthy footing of capital, estimates Paul J. Miller Jr., every analyst at research firm FBR Capital Markets (FBCM).

To be sure, no bailout could possibly solve all of the banks’ problems, multitude of them self-inflicted. CEO Kenneth D. Lewis, beneath fire from angry shareholders, probably wouldn’face to face be in this hotch-potch whether he hadn’t agreed to buy Merrill just after BofA’s $4.2 billion tackle of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial and its $21 billion acquisition of banking chain LaSalle Bank. From the opening there was trepidation among BofA’sitting rank and file about the Merrill purchase, particularly since the deal was forged during the sort mid-September weekend that Lehman Brothers was filing for insolvency. One BofA derivatives expert, fresh off a 14-hour epoch, was summoned to a law office at 2 a.m. to inspect Merrill’s numbers. In all, BofA had just 24 hours to check the books and construction a decision. "It would take much more time than we were given to excellence [Merrill’s illiquid] assets," says a senior BofA employee who works closely with management.

History shows that BofA’s assiduity was less than that which was due. Lewis’ advisers inside and outside the company expressed doubts about the Merrill conduct one’s self, then valued at $50 billion—far more than its $27 billion market value at the time. But Lewis was ultimately swayed by his director of corporate planning and strategy, Gregory L. Curl, the architect of previous transactions. By the time the deal closed, Merrill’sitting market reward was less than $20 billion. A BofA spokesman says the befitting diligence on the Merrill transaction was competent, noting that losses grew dramatically in December because of "market phenomena."

Now the hastily arranged deal is laying bare a host of problems. Investors are expanding impatient: Since October, shares of BofA have fallen through around 70%. And some insiders are loss faith in Lewis and his senior management team. Employees on the commercial floor are riffing on Lewis’ dictatorial mode of address, referring to the CEO as Kim Jong Il, the North Korean victor. On Jan. 28, BofA’s directors issued a statement backing Lewis.

But the Obama Administration and Congress are starting to grapple through the outrageousness of the problems in the financial system

By Jane Sasseen

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Last year, as the U.S. fiscal system began to unravel, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson used to utter about the bazooka in his pocket. It was a metaphor designed to calm investors anxious about the government’s willingness to spend massive taxpayer dollars to save the financial a whole if really needed. But Paulson’s weapon jammed. For despite an marshalling of lending programs by the Federal Reserve and the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress for the period of his tenure, Wall Street firms and banks still collapsed left and right last fall.

Now the Obama Administration is effectively declaration: Forget the bazooka, let’sitting bring outright the ponderous ordnance. The President’session economic advisers believe it is time to hit the reset button on existing bailout programs, and think big. There’s not one choice given the deepening recession that’s driving up jobless rates and home and credit-card defaults. All that in turn is contributing to multibillion-dollar quarterly losses at the likes of Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC).

One big piece of that effort, of course, is the controversial $819 billion parcel of expenditure and tax cuts that were approved by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Jan. 28. At the same time, the Fed is ramping up programs to bribe securities backed by car, credit-card, and student loans as source as mortgage-backed dissertation to relieve thaw the credit markets.

Fixing the banks, Obama advisers argue, will require a more innovative approach than the capital injections into lenders that the Bush team settled on. Fed lending and commonwealth cash transfers help, but Bush’s advisers backed away from tackling the disposition of toxic estate that have caused a massive erosion of capital on bank balance sheets and have made extending loans to totally but the most creditworthy borrowers unthinkable. "Money is moving throughout the system, but there is increasing recognition that these institutions don’t have enough capital to withstand the losses from all the broken loans they have," says Frederick Cannon, a banking algebraist by the agency of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW).

New Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is exploring the creation of a government-funded "bad bank" to buy up mortgage-backed securities and other troubled effects from banks in hopes of boosting their capital levels so they be possible to begin lending again. Daniel Clifton, Washington policy analyst for Strategas Research Partners, says Treasury is considering starting the bank through $100 billion from TARP, then adding leverage from the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. so $1 trillion in funding is available to buy bad effects. Ultimately, he adds, Administration officials believe they could want up to $2 trillion.

Fixing the banks will within a little certainly require far greater quantity than $700 billion in TARP funds. Goldman Sachs (GS) analyst Andrew Tilton figures U.S. financial institutions will suffer more than $1 trillion in loan losses—about moiety of what one. have been recognized so distant. The problem isn’t simply with residential mortgages. Add in commercial real estate and other poorly performing loan categories, and the banks may hold more $5 trillion in "troubled assets" on their books, he says. New York University’s bearish economics professor, Nouriel Roubini, estimates that additional private and the community capital of $1 trillion to $1.4 trillion will be needed to recapitalize the banks.

Another idea essence considered by Treasury and White House officials would present itself banks federal guarantees that limit their losses steady depressing assets backed by dud loans, as through Citi and BofA. While this ability cost taxpayers as much as buying the banks’ assets, guarantees would allow the Administration to avoid the difficult and politically risky step of potentially overpaying for assets now trading at fire-sale prices. In extreme cases, authorities also could put principal directly into the banks in exchange for common right—pulling off a thinly veiled nationalization of the worst banks.

Analysts say a combination of remedies is likely. "They’ll need to create a mix of options," says Karen Shaw Petrou of Washington research firm Federal Financial Analytics. Prying more money out of Congress for expanded bank bailouts will be tough. Yet it’session hard to see the plan recovering without healthy banks. Getting there won’t come cheap.

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Akron, your ship just came in. Your record in college men’sitting basketball may be a mere 9-8, but you’re bound on this account that the postseason. You’re going dancin’, even if it is in a pair of grubby Levis and ragged Birkenstocks.

That’s the hypothesis, at least. According to RPIratings.com, the Zips are the No. 129 computer-ranked team this week. And that’s the cutoff for teams going to the postseason, now that CollegeInsider.com, a hoops Web position, announced this week it is christening a 16-team postseason tournament to begin in March.

So this is the landscape: Sixty-five teams make the NCAA field, another 32 go to the NIT. Don’privately forget the 16 ticketed for the College Basketball Invitational, which launched last year and included Washington.

That’s 113. Now stir and add another 16 with the new tournament, and you’ve got plenty commotion the third week of March to rival any day-care center.

“I definitely think there’s sweep,” said Hugh Durham, the retired Florida State coach and one of the starting anew tournament’session selection-committee members.

By entirely means. In act, there’s a huge madness vacuum in March.

Think of it like this: Of the 119 Division I-A football teams, 68, or besides than 57 percent, played in bowl games. Applying that percentage to the 343 Division I association basketball teams, there should be 196 teams in the postseason. So that leaves space, for, what, maybe any other four tournaments?

I asked Rick Giles, whose New Jersey-based Gazelle Group puts on the College Basketball Invitational, if there’s a saturation point.

“There is,” he said. “The act of asking is, will this collide it? I don’t have feeling we hit it last year.”

Details on the new tournament are still a crumb sketchy. Meanwhile, the CBI assigns home games and requires a guarantee of encircling $50,000. There is in this wise the potential for hosts to realize some profits, if small.

“We made a little bit of money,” Giles said, referring to the organizers and adding, “Tulsa made $117,000 by winning the CBI. Ohio State made $15,000 by attractive the NIT.”

That’session because Tulsa hosted five home games, while Ohio State got a trip to New York and improvement TV exposure.

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Some 40 years after they attended Briscoe Memorial School in Kent, 13 men who said they were abused as students there have reached a $7 million settlement by the Seattle Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which owned the school, and the Congregation of Christian Brothers, the religious order that ran it.

The settlement marks an end to most of the lawsuits filed to date alleging physical and sexual misapply over the decades by authority figures at the now-defunct boarding school.

The 13 men said they were abused at Briscoe in the 1960s. Of the $7 million, the Seattle Archdiocese agreed to make a good return $1.25 million, the Christian Brothers about $3.63 million, and some security against loss company that jointly covered both institutions about $2.13 the great body of the people.

In November, 11 men who said they had been abused at Briscoe in the 1950s settled with the Seattle Archdiocese and Christian Brothers for $7.15 million. Of that, the Seattle Archdiocese agreed to pay $2.7 million and the Christian Brothers $4.45 million.

In 2006, the Seattle Archdiocese and Christian Brothers every-day three other cases involving Briscoe.

Briscoe, which opened in 1909 and closed around 1970, had been a home for thousands of boys. Some of the former students said they got an education in that place they otherwise at no time would’ve gotten. But others said they were subject to abuse.

“As in every case involving sexual abuse, we hope our efforts to reach a fair and correct discharge will help the victims begin the process of healing,” Seattle Archdiocese spokesman Greg Magnoni said in a statement.

Steve Mangione, spokesman with a view to the Christian Brothers, related the regulate takes “exceedingly seriously all allegations.”

It settled the cases, he said, because it would own been extremely difficult to defend against the allegations, since many of the witnesses and defendants are now dead or infirm and applicable records no longer exist.

Given that, the order’sitting legal advisers believed “the allegations would not have been accurately or fairly represented for the time of a criterion,” Mangione said.

But plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Pfau reported there was “overwhelming evidence that Briscoe was a problem institution and they knew that children were substance harmed there.” Pfau said such evince included brothers who had been removed for molesting children, correspondence between the order’s leaders discussing children being abused and numerous instances when boys had complained.

Among lawsuits behind what is stated to be resolved is one Pfau filed in December saying that in an earlier declension-form, the order had claimed to gain no evidence that any accused Christian Brother had abused. But after the case settled, the “Christian Brothers erect or located documents” that indicated the accused was being removed from the order for inappropriate conduct with children at Briscoe, Pfau said.

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Seattle Public Schools estimates it will save $12.6 million over five years in day-to-day costs if the school board votes Thursday to close five schools and move all or part of eight others to new sites.

But there’s an important footnote to that estimate — one that touches on an issue critics raised when the district closed schools in 2006 and are raising again this time around. The district is assuming it won’t lose a single student because of the closures. Yet in 2006, 20 percent of students from the closed schools left the district — taking roughly $880,000 a year in state funding with them.

Not all of those 154 students left because of the closures. District leaders say the schools they attended had high turnover rates, and almost all probably left for reasons unrelated to school.

And even if it loses a few students, the district doesn’t expect its overall enrollment to drop. Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson said Wednesday that’s why the district didn’t factor the loss of students into its estimates of how much closures would save.

The district also hopes the economy will work in its favor, said school-board member Harium Martin-Morris. “A lot of people who might have chosen private schools in the past won’t be able to do that as much.”

Still, the district loses about $5,700 in state funds for every student who leaves, according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. And many argue those losses should be included when calculating the costs as well as the benefits of closing schools.

Some even say they think it’s possible the closures could cost the district money.

Based on the percentage of students who left during the 2006 closures, Lowell parent Meg Diaz says the district could lose $9.4 million over the next five years. But that might be overstating the case because she’s assuming that every one of those students would leave because of the closures.

Closing buildings does reduce many costs. One building with 500 students, for example, requires less heat and electricity, and office, janitorial and other staff than two schools of 250. By closing older school buildings, the district also avoids some major maintenance work such as new roofs or major heating and plumbing repairs. That’s perhaps where the biggest savings lie.

The district estimates that closing the five schools on Goodloe-Johnson’s list will mean it can avoid about $33 million in major maintenance, although the way school finance works, those savings can’t be used in the classroom.

But it costs money to close schools, too. The district must pay to move furniture, files and libraries — everything inside the closed schools — and must install security systems at the closed buildings. Officials believe that the district’s estimates for moving costs for this round of closures are better than in 2006, when it spent much more than it anticipated.

The school district’s goal is to cut about $25 million in expenses for the 2009-10 school year. Along with the closures, the district is considering axing more than 100 jobs in the central office and in schools.

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Current best-sellers at University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., Seattle (206-634-3400 or www.bookstore.washington.edu).

Hardcover

1. We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land, Jimmy Carter

2. The Last Straw, Jeff Kinney

3. Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer

4. Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin

5. Hot Flat & Crowded, Thomas Friedman

Paperback

1. The Weather of the Pacific Northwest, Cliff Mass

2. New Moon, Stephenie Meyer

3. Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama

4. The Devil’s Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea

5. Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson

Since the House has passed Obama’s $819 billion spending plan, appear for compromises in the Senate on toll cuts and other matters dear to Republicans

By Theo Francis and Jane Sasseen

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Now that the House of Representatives has passed its $819 billion economic stimulus i. o. u—by a vote of 244 to 188 and with no Republican support at totally—the negotiations be possible to really begin.

The White House-backed legislation includes an estimated $544 billion in federal spending and $275 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses. The nearly party-line victory on Jan. 28 clashes by President Barack Obama’s near-promise that he would deliver apolitical legislation through strong bipartisan support. But now the focus turns to the Senate and its again collegial atmosphere, where lawmakers have already begun to incorporate or compromise forward several GOP proposals.

The vote came the same day Obama held a high-profile meeting with corporate leaders, billed as gathering their thoughts in continuance the provocation package but serving equally to gain their support for the Administration’s efforts. That give by will be critical in helping gain the victory superior reluctant Republicans as the Administration heads into final negotiations for the package: White House officials are counting on a weighty lobbying push from the business community to win broader support, and the meeting appeared to incline them a step closer to that goal.

"It’s important that affair and government come together to help the President get this package from one side," Samuel J. Palmisano, the CEO of IBM (IBM), declared in introductory remarks. "And then we’ve got to breed down to work."

Executives who attended the meeting said they were heartened by the President’s sympathy in their concerns; each had roughly five minutes to talk about the economy and raise critical issues as the President moved on all sides the room and probed them with questions. "We had an opportunity to let him know the key issues on our minds," says John Bryson, the recently abstracted CEO of power company Edison International (EIX). "There was a great sense of urgency, a emotion that we be able to’t obstacle the consummate be the arch-fiend. of the good in getting the measure passed."

The extended discussion also helped ease concerns some in the business community have had about the size and makeup of the bale.

One issue that arose, says Bryson: worries that tax breaks in the bill as it was taking pattern in Congress would do moreover little during the term of businesses racking up losses and individuals with declining or no income. "So many humbler classes and businesses now be possible to’face to face use tax incentives because they have no taxable income," he said.

Obama praised the House bill’s passage in a report soon afterward, stressing the need for Congress to move with haste and not mentioning the lopsided vote.

"I hope we can continue to steel this plan before it gets to my desk," Obama before-mentioned. "But what we can’t do is drag our feet or allow the sort partisan differences to get in our way. We be under the necessity of move swiftly and boldly to put Americans back to work, and that is exactly what this plan begins to do."

A version of the stimulus bill had already begun affecting through the Senate, where a number of compromises with the Republican smaller number be in actual possession of swelled it to nearly $900 billion. More compromises are likely—as are a string of amendments with potentially far-reaching goods as antidote to U.S. businesses if adopted.

A variety of factors are in a fair way to give the Senate bill more weight when the two hired apartment sit down to negotiate the final legislation.

The aerospace giant more than doubles its planned layoffs in light of a $56 million net quarterly loss and signs of trouble ahead

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By Joseph Weber

With demand towards commercial jets losing elevation, Boeing (BA) reported a $56 million get loss since the fourth quarter of 2008 and said it is taking more tough steps to keep itself aloft. Will the moves reward off? It’s not clear, and Boeing managers against now say they can’t see flow enough out of the reach of 2009 to make a firm call. The "visibility" just isn’t there from 2010 and beyond, says CEO W. James McNerney Jr.

Boeing on Jan. 28 reported surprisingly bleak results, even as its top executives forecast a modest rebound in sales this year. McNerney, citing "challenging economic seasons," doubled the number of jobs he plans to cut this year. Whereas Boeing on Jan. 9 said it would dissever some 4,500 jobs from its commercial plane unit, McNerney hiked the shape to 10,000 on Jan. 28 and said the cuts would be be scattered all across Boeing’s global operations, most of them in places other than the company’s Seattle-area commercial-plane facilities. Such steps, amounting to a 6% trim in Boeing’s workforce, are needed to keep the company’s pecuniary strength, McNerney maintained.

For now, Boeing is sticking with plans to put its new 787 Dreamliner trading jet into the air by June. After nearly two years of delays, the 787 remains on target, the company said. So far, only one customer has backed off on orders towards the recently made known plane, and its orders were scheduled for delivery tardily in the next decade. Boeing has some 895 orders on the modern jet from 58 customers.

Clearly, McNerney feels he must move aggressively to preserve the company’s profit margins as tougher times loom. The company blamed most of its fourth-quarter loss on the 57-day machinists’ strike that brought plane deliveries to a halt. The stoppage cut revenues 27% from the closing furnish of 2007, to equitable $12.7 billion, and trimmed operating earnings by some $1.2 billion.

In addition, Boeing had to sum charged off dear $685 million since of costs in a delay-plagued update to its line of 747 superjumbo jets, including a freighter now due out recent next year and a passenger version of the old plane planned for mid-2011. The red ink also included a reserve Boeing has stiff out of the heart for the sake of judicial contest over faulty satellites.

The problems drove down full-year 2008 net income by 34%, to $2.7 billion, while revenues fell 8%, to $60.9 billion.

McNerney expects that sales will arrive back. With some 480 to 485 commercial planes on target for delivery this year—up sharply from the strike-shortened tally of 2008—he’s predicting that sales will climb to between $68 billion and $69 billion toward 2009. Still, this will be up modestly from 2007, when revenues came in at $66.4 billion.

But the CEO is pointedly not making any predictions for 2010 thus far. Boeing managers believe they can forecast sales gains for this year because planes ordered long ago behest only now be delivered. (The company records sales upon the delivery of its planes.) But McNerney did say he expects some ecclesiastical office to slip with respect to planes due out later, as airlines—especially those outside of North America—cut short in the global slowdown.

Even as the company makes plans to downsize, it is expecting to keep engineers and assembly-line quarter-staff on the job. The cuts in the commercial flat unit are expected to fall largely onward support and administrative partisan. Boeing before that time is sense of touch a strain from reduced labor in some of its production areas. In explaining delays in producing the new versions of its 747 level, Boeing cited "limited availability of engineering resources inside the company." The planemaker also faulted design changes in the even.

Unsurprisingly, the plans for job cuts are getting a devoid of warmth reception from union leaders. Charging that delays in the production of the Dreamliner was a result of "lean management decisions" and "a avocation model that failed miserably," International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers District President Tom Wroblewksi said Boeing should cut contractors before axing employees. Boeing has not yet said how many—if any—production workers will be trimmed, but the union vital vowed that "subcontractors remaining without ceasing the exclusive right while our members allow layoffs are totally unwelcome and will be challenged."

Even in the midst of wholly the problems, some analysts put confidence in Boeing will do well at least this year. Aviation analyst Paul Nisbet of JSA Research argues that the company is still blessed with a 3,700-plane order backlog and that any cancellations or deferrals of orders by hard-pressed airlines will be offset through demands from other carriers in greater good financial shape. Nisbet adds that prolongation for greatest part of Boeing’s jets is humming along at or near capacity. Moreover, he says the long-delayed 787 should soon take wing. "You look at whole these factors together and it’s a brighter picture for this year than many analysts and investors were anticipating," Nisbet says.

But for 2010, the algebraist shares CEO McNerney’s uncertainty. "That depends very heavily on the economy and which happens to oil prices and that which happens to airlines in general," Nisbet says. "Who knows?"

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Yahoo finished 2008 the habitual method it started the year: struggling. But this time, it sank uniform lower by posting its earliest quarterly loss in not remotely seven years.

After the market closed Tuesday, Yahoo said it had lost $303 million for the time of the fourth special location. That compared with a profit of $206 million in the same period a year ago. The Silicon Valley Internet cyclops said revenue fell 1 percent to $1.81 billion.

It was Yahoo’s first money-losing quarter since the first three months of 2002, and the first time its revenue declined since the fourth quarter of 2001.

Despite the loss, Yahoo outperformed Wall Street’sitting lowered expectations. The financial results included one-time charges of more than $500 very great number to write in a descending course international assets and cut short its summit count, among other things.

Better than predicted

Excluding those charges, Yahoo earned 17 cents a receive, better than the 13 cents predicted by analysts. Revenue excluding commissions paid to advertisers fell 2 percent to $1.38 billion, slightingly better than the $1.37 billion expected by Wall Street.

The results closed the books on Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang’s fruitless 18-month stint as chief executive. The assemblage hired a new leader, Carol Bartz, two weeks ago in its latest try to orchestrate a turnaround.

Signaling there will be not at all quick fixes, Bartz told analysts in a Tuesday conference call that she is trying to understand Yahoo’sitting “very complex” organized existence as she plots a way map for 2009.

Preparing for bumps

Yahoo is bracing during the term of more bumps along the way. In its first-quarter forecast, management predicted the company’s revenue may globule by in the manner that a great deal of as 16 percent from the same time last year.

In a change from the company’s more than practices, Yahoo refrained from looking beyond March because the economy is so fragile.

Known for her blunt talk, Bartz made it clear she has none intention of selling Yahoo to former petitioner Microsoft, but left open the possibility of turning over Yahoo’s search operations to Microsoft — an alternative deal that has been bandied about for the past eight months.

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There was an urgency to this make palatable. A deep belief that they were going to carry on something of moment, not only for the school, but for the city.

Even before customary course began, University of Washington players were relishing their collective role because the only big-time basketball team in Seattle. They embraced their position as the only game in town, the fillers of the void created through the Sonics’ departure.

The Huskies expected to compete on the side of a Pac-10 championship, expected to return to the NCAA tourney for the first time since 2005, expected to march deep into March.

Senior Jon Brockman was back with All-American credentials. Isaiah Thomas had arrived, the latest in coach Lorenzo Romar’s stable of explosive mini-guards. And center Matthew Bryan-Amaning had torn up Europe, playing for the English Under-20 team and looking ready for a breakout gratify.

The Huskies were deep and hungry and full of confidence. They believed they could lift the city out of the doldrums. They could help Seattle fans past their disappointments with the Seahawks, the Mariners and the Huskies football team.

This team was the make answer.

Then they opened the season in Portland and lost to the Pilots. And then they went to Kansas City and lost by 19 to Kansas and lost the nearest night to Florida. By Thanksgiving, when they returned to Seattle, they were 2-3 and looking like another in the string of Seattle disasters.

But two months later, these Huskies have ignited like gasoline. They’ve won 13 of their be unexhausted 14. Entering a treacherous four-game road swing that begins Thursday in Arizona, they lead the Pac-10 conference and are ranked 23rd in the AP enroll.

“I don’t think we were all on the same page in October,” Romar said before Tuesday’s practice. “I think now we are. You can consciousness that whether individual players have liked it or not, at this point, they have accepted settled roles. They’ve inflict their individual aspirations aside.”

These Huskies are swaggering afresh. Hec Ed is loud and vibrant. There’s rejoice in the gym again.

Washington has warmed an especially cold winter. The Huskies own lifted Seattle in a puzzle of its lingering stink. They be favored with given fans’ sagging sports soul a generous help.

“A lot of fans in the area and the city be in actual possession of been a little disappointed with the way things have gone recently,” Brockman said. “Now to finally take a team that everyone can get behind and support, definitely can be the means of some joy and happiness in tough times.”

In their small way, these Huskies even have lifted the load, lightened the gloom and given people event to talk about besides layoffs, foreclosures and other divers economic distresses.

“We talked relating to that briefly before the season started, but just briefly,” Romar said. “It wasn’t something I wanted to make a big deal by our team, that we had to be the saviors of the city, or anything find to one’s mind that. But it makes you be conscious of being true that you can have being in a position to make people feel improvement.”

It isn’privately just the winning, it’session the way they are winning.

They are playing defense the rough-and-tumble way Romar’s teams are supposed to play it, waking up the echoes of Bobby Jones, Will Conroy, Nate Robinson and Brandon Roy.

They’re making free throws as if their bodies have been inhabited by Rick Barry, shooting 80 percent against SC and 83.7 against UCLA.

Senior guard Justin Dentmon, who has struggled so profoundly the past two seasons, is reborn, scoring 38 points in last week’s wins. His Renaissance is the most wise Seattle sports story in a long time.

Justin Holiday has grow a lockdown defender in Jones’ mold. Fearless freshman Thomas is a herky-jerky, ankle-breaking, natural-born scorer reminiscent of former Arizona All-American Damon Stoudamire.

After couple uncertain seasons, Quincy Pondexter is understanding who he is — 11 points, 5 assists, 2 steals close up to USC, 10 points, 2 steals contrary to UCLA. And Brockman just continues to rev at preternatural rpms.

This team has become a party of brothers bent on doing something special for Seattle.

“This summer I didn’t think I was going to be hanging out with the guys on the team like I have,” Thomas said. “But we’re just all one now. We’re so clog. We be dependent confused all the interval. The relationship we have off the court just makes it so plenteous better on the court.”

Turns out these Huskies have be transformed into exactly the kind of Seattle hoped they would be in November, when this city felt like the Siberia of sports.

Washington is the good intelligence that has been so long to come.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com