Friday morning headlines

Stocks open higher: Solid earnings from Oracle and RIM (maker of the BlackBerry) boosted the tech sector in early trading. The Dow has been trading in a narrow range for some time.

Scary number: A total of 617,600 jobs have been lost in California over the last 12 months, by far the largest decline of any state. As posted below, the state had a jobless rate last month of 12.3 percent, down slightly from October.

Saab to shut down: GM says it just couldn't find a buyer for the Swedish carmaker. Saab will continue to honor warranties, while providing service and spare parts. From the NYT:

Saab, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Sweden in February, has been a perennial money-loser and is among G.M.'s smallest brands, with sales of 93,000 vehicles worldwide last year. It is on pace to sell fewer than 10,000 vehicles in the United States this year.

KB's sudden exit: Raymond Silcock's resignation as CFO of the L.A. homebuilder is not related to the ongoing SEC investigation of the company, according to one analyst, who called the departure surprising but not shocking (something about Silcock's unusual management style). He had been on the job three months. (MarketWatch)

Twitter gets hacked: Some group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army shut down the service for about an hour, but everything seems to be up and running. (USA Today)

Fox vs. Time Warner Cable: Look for News Corp. to launch a marketing blitz that takes on the cable operator. It'll threaten to pull the plug on the Fox networks in L.A. and elsewhere if it can't get a better deal on programming fees. Contract between the two expires at the end of the month. From the WSJ:

Cable companies and TV network owners frequently have bruising negotiations over programming fees. News Corp. and Time Warner Cable view this battle as potentially precedent-setting for the TV business as a whole. That has led to a more public negotiation. "Negotiations are ongoing, but Fox's current demands are unreasonable, especially in this economic climate," said Maureen Huff, a Time Warner Cable spokeswoman.

NFL vs. Time Warner Cable: If it's December, it must mean a few important games are out of reach of most viewers in L.A. because the area's dominant cable operator can't cut a deal with the NFL Network. From the NYT:

Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable, said the cost of carrying the channel is too expensive. "We think it's an excessive amount of money for eight out-of-market games," she said. All other N.F.L. games are available on existing networks without adding the league's channel, she said.

Gas barely budges: This week's decline was less than a penny a gallon, to $2.923, according to the Auto Club. Do the tiny drops we've seen in recent weeks do any good? From the NYT:

Economists note that a drop of a few cents a gallon will not make a big difference in the buying power of consumers, who on average spend about 3 percent of their disposable income on gasoline. But gasoline prices pack a psychological punch, in part because gas is the one consumer good whose price is advertised on street corners all over the country.

TCW defections grow: The L.A. money management giant has lost about 40 people to DoubleLine the firm just started by its ousted investment chief Jeffrey Gundlach. He was responsible for 59 percent of TCW's assets. (Bloomberg)