Mayor Villaraigosa in Westwood Village

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A new post at Native Intelligence.

Here's an excerpt:

There he was, all alone on Lindbrook Drive in front of Jamba Juice at 12:25 p.m. today, the mayor in the shade on a cell phone while a security detail stood sentry in the sunlight (blame Hizzhonor's choice of the shade for the grainy quality of the cell-cam image, which would have been more clear had he stood in the sun). Nontheless, the Mayor was seemingly unfazed by the heat, his shirt so nicely pressed and perfectly white. He's clearly a man who's got that pesky ring thing under control, I mean, the ring-around-the-collar thing.

At least one young woman asked to have her picture taken while ...

Read the rest at Native Intelligence.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Housing-Market Woes Drive Dow Down

Ok, here we go:

LA Times Thursday (Breaking) -- Credit worries send Dow into a dive:

NEW YORK -- Fear that housing-market woes could dent consumer spending and inflict broad damage on the U.S. economy pushed U.S. stocks down sharply today.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down nearly 400 points.

The sell-off was fed by rising nervousness among investors that a sudden tightening of credit in some areas of the bond market could jeopardize the private-equity buyouts that have helped fuel the stock market's rise this year.

Investors were shaken by the news that the private-equity firm planning to buy Chrysler Group had to postpone a $12-billion bond sale amid evaporating buying demand.

"The market is just very, very nervous," said John Bollinger, head of Bollinger Capital Management. "Just a few days ago we were tying to break into new high territory and people just weren't comfortable with that."

LA Times Thursday -- Industry's foundations get shakier:

For the housing industry, the bad news just keeps on coming.

Three major home builders reported quarterly losses Wednesday, and a real estate trade group said that nationwide sales of existing homes fell to their lowest level in nearly five years.

The fresh data came one day after the nation's biggest mortgage lender reported more delinquencies among even its better customers, and a market research firm said California foreclosures were soaring.

The sole inkling of good news came in a report that said inventories of homes for sale in Southern California and the nation had leveled off after steadily rising for months.

LA Times Wednesday -- U.S. home sales hit 4-year low:

The pace of nationwide existing-home sales sank in June to the lowest in level in more than four years, as many buyers remained on the sidelines and the housing market indicated it remained far from staging a turnaround.

LA Times Wednesday -- Foreclosures in state hit record high:

A sagging real estate market and tighter lending standards are exacting a growing toll on Californians, forcing them from their homes in record numbers, figures released Tuesday show.

Foreclosures soared to 17,408 for the three months ended June 30, an increase of 799% from the same period last year. The current rate handily exceeds the previous foreclosure peak set in 1996, when the state was in the final throes of a six-year slump.

LA Times Wednesday -- Countrywide feels pain of ailing mortgage market:

Call it the mortgage-meltdown creep.

Countrywide Financial Corp. helped trigger a Wall Street sell-off Tuesday when it said that a growing number of customers once considered to be good credit risks were having trouble making their mortgage payments.

Until recently, such problems had been almost exclusively limited to the so-called sub-prime market, for borrowers with flawed credit records and high-cost mortgages.

But Countrywide, the nation's biggest home loan company, reported Tuesday that it was seeing more of its good-credit "prime" borrowers do the same.

"The spillover into prime, I don't think, is something that should shock anybody," Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide's chief executive, said in a three-hour conference call with investors and analysts to report second-quarter earnings.

The Calabasas-based company said payments were at least 30 days late at the end of the second quarter on 3.4% of prime first mortgages, up from 2.1% a year earlier.

The delinquency rate was worse among borrowers of prime home-equity loans — second mortgages — who missed payments at a rate of 4.6%. That was up from 1.8% a year earlier.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Not Sure UCLA Is On Board With This Idea

A new blog post is in the Native Intelligence section of LA Observed.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

The 'Countercyclical Business' of Foreclosure

Sunday's edition of The New York Times says of a recent house foreclosure auction in Irvine: "All that was missing was the preacher and the tent."

Here's an excerpt:

The company sold more than 265 properties in San Diego, Los Angeles and Riverside during two weekends in May, and it is planning to hold auctions in Sacramento, Modesto, the Bay Area and Atlanta this summer.

Mr. Friedman described his trade as a “countercyclical business,” and he said that the banks unloading the properties preferred not to be identified.

In some cases, he said, the institutions sold the properties for less money than they were owed.

“It’s not a happy occasion,” he said. “They’d rather take a little loss quickly, rather than waiting and seeing.”

However unhappy the occasion may have been for lenders, the auction company put on a driving, shrieking, high-spirited event. All that was missing was the preacher and the tent.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Police blotter, crime log, police notes...

Click on image to view blog post

It's too bad this kind of information isn't readily available in Los Angeles.

[MORE]...

A new blog entry in the Native Intelligence section of LA Observed.


— TJ Sullivan in LA

Al Gore's Inconvenient Conversation

A new blog post in the Native Intelligence section of LA Observed:

It was cute, at first, when the hostess introduced him as "Harry Gore."

It was Tuesday evening, May 22, and Al Gore was in Beverly Hills at an event described by its host organization, Writers Bloc, as "Al Gore in conversation with Harry Shearer." However, as I soon discovered, this was actually the first stop on a tour to promote Gore's new book, "The Assault on Reason," which was released Tuesday, May 22 (as of Thursday the hardcover was priced at $15.57 on Amazon.com) ... [MORE]

Read the rest at Native Intelligence.

— TJ Sullivan in LA