Monday morning headlines

Gasoline conspiracy?: There has to be something behind the huge decline in pump prices, right? The LAT explores the various theories involving price manipulation by the White House, the oil companies - or both - and doesn't find much. Still, lots of Americans are convinced there's something fishy going on.

Wachovia blitz: Now that the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank has picked up Golden West Financial, parent of World Savings, expect an all-out assault on the California market. Besides the 120 existing World Savings branches, Wachovia is expected to open another 30 to 50 branches a year and will offer lots more services. World Savings had focused mostly on mortgages and CDs.

'Flushed Away' BO: Dreamworks fared pretty well over the weekend with its animated feature that Wall Street has been watching. Box office totaled $19.1 million, although the big story was "Borat," which topped the box office chart with ticket sales of $26.4 million at far fewer theaters.

Oscar East: Sunday NYT goes a little parochial with a boosterish lead piece in its holiday movies package about how important NY is in peddling an Oscar-potential movie. Turns out there are just 600 members of the Academy in NY, compared with 4,000 in L.A., but the story says that New York is important because that's where all the major media outlets are based.

L.A.'s liquidator: Glad the LAT got around to doing a feature on Great American Group, the Woodland Hills-based liquidator that most recently acquired Tower Records and is in the process of shutting down the retail chain. Sunday story spends time with founder Andy Gumaer:

With a black BMW convertible, a constantly buzzing BlackBerry and a preference for jeans, Gumaer, 46, doesn't fit the image of the liquidation business, with its gaudy store signs and almost-threatening promises that the end is near. "Historically, there's this negative connotation with liquidators," Gumaer said, sipping a can of Red Bull at 10 in the morning. "But we're just part of the food chain — someone has to do it."

Dole woes: The Business Journal examines an upcoming case in L.A. Superior Court in which Westlake Village-based Dole is accused of using a toxic pesticide in Nicaragua years after it was banned in the United States and even longer after the company learned that the chemical caused infertility. Nicaraguan field workers have filed 570 lawsuits against Dole and other companies and have won $1 billion in judgments. But that was in Nicaragua and Dole and other companies have refused to pay, citing lack of due process.

Steller earnings: Through the end of last week, 407 companies in the S&P 500 have reported earnings and 73 percent of those have exceeded expectations. Good news, right? Well, Merrill Lynch's David Rosenberg says that share buybacks have inflated earnings results and that the earnings decline last year after Hurricane Katrina is skewing this year's results. From WSJ Marketbeat.

"If you look at S&P earnings as you would GDP, it is actually contracting in the current quarter for the first time since 2001, so on a sequential basis the profits recession has already started. It's just not evident yet in the year-over-year numbers," he writes. "It is, however, becoming evident among equity analysts because the consensus fourth-quarter earnings estimates have been consistently lowered over the past month and are down four-percentage points since Labor Day."

Downtown fix-up: Brookefield Properties is planning some renovations for the downtown properties it picked up through its purchase of Trizac Properties. Those include 601 Figueroa, Bank of America Plaza at 333 S. Hope St., and Ernst & Young Plaza at 725 S. Figueroa St. and its adjacent shopping mall. Downtown News talks to a Brookfield exec about the plans.

Times Select: In a one-week promotion, the NYT will be offering all the features on Times Select for free. That mostly includes columnists. Normally, Times Select runs $49.95 a year, except for home delivery customers who get it for free.