Friday morning headlines

Has recession arrived?: This morning's jobs report would certainly suggest as much. December payrolls rose by a mere 18,000, way less than had been forecast and the worst showing since August 2003. Not only that, the unemployment rate rose to 5 percent from 4.7 percent in November. In other words, job growth pretty much went kaput last month (state and county numbers are due out in a couple of weeks). This will obviously have more pundits predicting a recession and will probably lead to more interest rate cuts. "The uptick in the unemployment rate alone, which won’t be revised away, is flashing recession," said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economics Policy Institute. Already, the Dow is down around 150 points. From the NYT:

Wall Street has been on edge since a manufacturing report came in weaker than expected on Wednesday, and many investors were looking to the employment figures for a clearer picture of the economy’s growth prospects in 2008. They did not like what they saw. Payroll growth slowed significantly throughout 2007, but the weak December number makes for a particularly painful finish to the year. The report came in far below analysts’ estimates of 70,000 additional jobs, putting annual job growth at its lowest level since 2004.

Gas prices back up: Well, what do you expect when the price of oil is hovering around $100 a barrel? The Auto Club's weekly survey shows that the average price of self-serve regular in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area is $3.303, which is 8.1 cents higher than last week, 5 cents less than last month, and 68 cents more than last year. For some months, gasoline prices have been increasing at a much slower pace than oil prices. That puts the squeeze on refineries, which act as a kind of middleman. We'll see how much longer that lasts.

Bankruptcy filings are up: The mortgage mess appears to be taking its toll. More than 800,000 personal bankruptcy filings were made in 2007, up 40 percent from a year earlier, when a new law made it harder to seek bankruptcy-court protection from creditors. If you believe the dire foreclosure forecasts, 2008 could be another big bankruptcy year, perhaps leading to a loosening of the rules. (AP)

Brokerage inquiry: Securities regulators want to know more about how Wall Street firms marketed and sold mortgage products known as collateralized mortgage obligations or CMOs. Letters were sent out by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's self-regulatory body in what has been described as a "sweep," though these kinds of inquiries don't necessarily result in an enforcement action. From the WSJ:

The Finra letter suggests that the regulators are looking into whether brokers sold these risky investments to individuals just as the market for related products was collapsing. Finra specifically asks for offering documents on products sold, created or distributed during the months of March and June 2007. The mortgage market had weakened since the previous fall and fell sharply over the spring and summer. The sweep comes amid probes by the Securities and Exchange Commission and several state attorneys general into how Wall Street firms are valuing mortgage-related products and how they packaged and sold them to investors.

JDate company up for sale: The NYT reports that Bev Hills-based Spark Networks is already in talks with several prominent media companies that include Yahoo; eHarmony; IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Barry Diller company that owns Match.com; and MySpace, which is part of News Corp. Spark has a bunch of other relationship sites, including AmericanSingles, BlackSingles and ChristianMingle. By the way, Spark is publicly held (ticker symbol is LOV) and its shares have been going up for several weeks.

Online dating sites have exploded in popularity in recent years as both the younger and older generations have flocked to them and other social networks to meet people. Social networks generated nearly $650 million a year in sales. But growth has slowed after year-over-year gains of more than 70 percent early in the decade. Jupiter Research, an Internet consulting firm, said the market grew 10 percent in 2006, to $649 million, and is likely to grow 8 percent a year until 2011.

The Leno affair: He apparently wrote his monologue again for last night's show, despite warnings from the WGA honchos that he was breaking the guild's strike rules. There's a lot of finger-pointing between the union and the network about those rules (NBC says they're illegal), and about whether Leno had told the union in advance that he was planning to prepare his own monologue. Talk about much ado about not much. (Variety)

Writers stiffing workers: The folks who work for the East Coast branch of the guild claim they're not getting the wage increases they had negotiated last year. The workers, being represented by the Newspaper Guild, allege that WGA East Executive Director Mona Mangan revised the contract after it was ratified and insisted they sign it. The WGA tells the NY Post that it's a "contract interpretation issue." Countercharges against the WGA have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board (the WGA filed charges against the Newspaper Guild on Dec. 19).

Fox Biz a bust: So much for any concern about Rupert Murdoch's new business channel taking audiences away from CNBC. On any given weekday, a mere 6,300 viewers, on average, are tuning in, according to early estimates compiled by Nielsen and leaked to the NYT. CNBC attracted 283,000 viewers. The Fox Business Network numbers were expected to be low, of course, but probably not this low (Roderick gets more folks at one of his book signings).

Putting brakes on development?: Only a fraction of industrial land in downtown L.A. will be opened to residential and commercial uses under a directive of city's planning department and redevelopment agency. Presumably, that would preserve 2,633 acres of land zoned for industry, but this is L.A. government we're talking about, and anti-development directives don't go down well. Two City Council members already have threatened to ignore the directive and approve exceptions that would continue the expansion. From the LAT:

Cecilia Estolano, chief of the Community Redevelopment Agency, said the directive that she signed Thursday was intended to protect more than 40,000 blue-collar jobs, preserve land for future industrial uses and keep the focus on downtown neighborhoods that are being redeveloped. "Economic development has to be more than high-priced condos and cheap retail jobs," she said. "You have no chance of creating these manufacturing jobs once" the land is used for other purposes.