Tuesday morning headlines

Quiet morning for stocks: The Dow is skirting around the line in early trading.

Nissan reports loss: It was the automaker's first annual net loss in a decade. CEO Carolos Ghosn expects gradual improvement, but he doesn't see a return to profitability until early 2011. (AP)

Big jump in gas prices: An average gallon of regular in the L.A. area is $2.428, according to the Energy Department, up almost nine cents from last week. Oil prices have been edging up, presumably because traders believe demand will pick up as the recession eases.

Dreier pleads guilty: The NY lawyer said through his attorney that he felt "profound remorse," accepted full responsibility for his fraudulent activities, and was trying to track down assets that might be returned to victims. Dreier expanded into L.A. before his empire came crashing down. From the NYT:

Marc S. Dreier, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, sold $700 million worth of bogus promissory notes to investors, a federal indictment charged. He then used the proceeds to maintain a lavish lifestyle, according to the authorities, which included owning a $10 million apartment on the Upper East Side, beachfront properties in the Hamptons, a valuable art collection, expensive cars and an $18 million yacht, documents show.

Bruckheimer tries videogames: The action/adventure producer is announcing the creation of Jerry Bruckheimer Games, a studio based in Santa Monica. Other Hollywood executives have taken the videogame route, to mixed results. (LAT)

Trouble looming for Live Nation deal?: The Obama administration will be tougher in approving mergers, not great news in the efforts to complete the Live Nation/Ticketmaster deal. From the LAT:

In her first public comments since taking office, [Assistant Atty. Gen. Christine] Varney said the financial crisis had shown that the free market didn't always correct itself. She said the Obama administration was repealing antitrust guidelines issued by the Justice Department last year that, in her view, raised too many hurdles to government action. "There was a high cost to standing aside. We must change course and take a new tack," Varney, an assistant attorney general, said in a speech to the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. "It is time for the antitrust division to step up their efforts."

Plane sucks baggage container: Screenwriters take note: A Japan Airlines Boeing 747 was pushing back at LAX when the container became lodged in the outer left-side engine. No one was injured. (Press-Telegram)

Just give readers what they want?: Ed Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, says it could be tricky. From the Miami Herald:

That seems to be what Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, advises. Mind you, his company has grown fat from hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising sold against content it doesn't pay for and does nothing to create. Still, it's insanely successful, so Schmidt naturally felt entitled to offer this pearl to a recent newspaper convention: ``Try to figure out what your consumer wants. If you [upset] enough of them, you will not have any of them.'' Well, fine. But for journalists the hitch has always been that news, if done honestly, is routinely unwelcome and, more to the point, that it isn't just another consumer product. It's a kind of civic good.

Lacter on radio: This week's business chat with KPCC's Steve Julian gets into the higher deficit projections out of Sacramento and why apartments in L.A. are often unaffordable. Also on kpcc.org and on podcast.