Wednesday morning headlines

Market stabilizes: A fourth-quarter profit by GM has gotten Wall Street into a more positive mood this morning - the Dow is down a touch after 90 minutes of trading - but the automaker's numbers aren't really very good, with North American operations still losing money. Also, the results include a partial sale of the GMAC operations. Bloomberg

All that space: The OC office market will probably be opening up, thanks to the sour subprime market and a bunch of new properties about to come on line. Vacancy rates could be pushed another four percent, although Maguire Properties Inc., which leases 267,000 square feet to New Century Financial at Park Place, just off the 405, says that the market would be only minimally affected by a New Century bankruptcy filing. LAT

Recommending New Century?: Why would a Bear Stearns analyst issue a positive notice on the OC subprimer, even after the stock started to nosedive? The Massachusetts Secretary of State has ordered Bear Stearns and UBS to turn over documents concerning their analysts’ recommendations. The question is whether business relationships at other areas of the brokerage firms (buying mortgage loans, repackaging them and selling them to investors) had an impact on the research departments' reports. The NYT's Gretchen Morgenson said the current situation may seem "all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts." Bear Stearns was cited in a study as being among the Wall Street firms that helped fuel the subprime meltdown by failing to adequately monitor the quality of the loans they were buying. NYT

Speak of the devil: The SEC announces this morning that Bank of America Sercurities is shelling out $26 million to settle allegations that it allowed research reports, including analyst upgrades and downgrades of securities, to make the rounds before being released. The company apparently traded before the reports were issued. Reuters

No plan for gridlock: Just as the city of L.A. is prepared to open up another 9 million square feet of building space downtown, a new audit finds that the Department of Transportation lacks a plan to deal with the current congestion. Like, what a surprise!!! In the audit, City Controller Laura Chick says the department is in "enormous need of reinvention and reorganization," lacks specific short- and long-term goals, has no strategic plan and has not incorporated many of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's transit goals. Aside from that, it's just swell. From the Daily News:

The audit comes as Los Angeles vies for billions of dollars in state bond money and city leaders lobby in Washington, D.C., for even more money for subways and light-rail projects. "How do we go up to Sacramento, much less Washington, D.C., effectively without a coordinated strategic plan for the city and Los Angeles County?" Chick said Tuesday in her office. "No wonder we have traffic problems. No wonder we have difficulty moving from one place to another. This is a city that has not planned for the traffic and transportation needs of the 21st century." "There are no easy or immediate fixes. But we can't fix the problem until we fix the Department of Transportation."

Anatomy of a lawsuit: The Viacom folks are obviously proud of the $1 billion suit they've filed against YouTube because they're offering details on how the thing was put together. The company spent tens of thousands of dollars a month to hire workers to scour every ounce of the video site for evidence that Viacom clips were being posted without authorization. They wound up finding 150,000, which Viacom says have been viewed 1.6 billion times. "You'd see people walking around the building with their eyes glazed over," said Mark M. Ishikawa, chief executive of a company that was hired to go through all the junk. LAT

Refinery expansion?: One of the reasons always cited for California's high gas prices is the shortage of refinery capacity in the state. Well, Chevron has revealed that it would consider expanding its operations in El Segundo and Richmond. It all sounds pretty preliminary - can you imagine the public outcry? - and even an expansion will provide only small production increases. Most of Chevron's development dollars will be going toward oil and natural gas exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico, northwest Australia and the waters off West Africa. LAT

Northrop setback: The L.A.-based defense and aerospace company will be relegated to a secondary role when a Boeing-led team bids next month for a new piece of rocket business from NASA. The new rocket, which is expected to be NASA's core launcher for manned space exploration for at least 20 years, could be worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Why the come down? Northrop's relations with Boeing apparently have been rocky ever since a Northrop-led team that included Boeing lost that big manned spacecraft bidding last year. WSJ

ShoWest speakers: MPAA head Dan Glickman and National Association of Theater Owners John Fithian pronounced the exhibition industry to be in fine shape. Glickman said that "reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated" and touted the summer of sequels that include "Spider-Man 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." I for one can't wait. Variety