Thursday morning headlines

Stocks keep advancing: The Dow is up about 90 points in early trading, which puts it over the 10,900 mark. More encouraging views of the economy, including good earnings at Best Buy.

Social Security in trouble: Payouts are expected to exceed pay-ins this year, well ahead of the 2016 projection. Blame the economic downturn - jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than planned. There's no effect on benefits in 2010. From the NYT:

Although Social Security is often said to have a "trust fund," the term really serves as an accounting device, to track the pay-as-you-go program's revenue and outlays over time. Its so-called balance is, in fact, a history of its vast cash flows: the sum of all of its revenue in the past, minus all of its outlays. The balance is currently about $2.5 trillion because after the early 1980s the program had surplus revenue, year after year. Now that accumulated revenue will slowly start to shrink, as outlays start to exceed revenue. By law, Social Security cannot pay out more than its balance in any given year.

Yes on health care: By a 50-39 percent margin, Californians support the legislation signed into law, according to a Public Policy Institute poll. Other questions include gay marriage and the governor's race.

Losing jobless benefits: The checks will stop coming for as many as 130,000 Californians who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. The state offers up to 99 weeks. (OC Register)

Blasting rate hikes: L.A. business owners are not happy with DWP plans to boost the cost of power by up to 22 percent. Some are talking about layoffs. From the LAT:

Businesses were blindsided when the DWP board approved the increases three days after they were unveiled -- with the first going into effect April 1. "We wouldn't do this to our customers," [said Gary Toebben, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.] "And it doesn't feel like the way customers should be treated, to find out one week that a rate increase of this size is going into effect two weeks later."

Downtown Marriott sold: A Chinese real estate developer is buying the Figueroa Street property. The new owner is expected to keep the Marriott brand. (Downtown News)

Auto price wars: As Toyota trumpets those aggressive sales incentives, Honda is offering its biggest lease deal ever. From the LAT:

"Any type of price competition hurts everybody's profits," said Shelly Lombard of Gimme Credit, a corporate credit research firm. But moves by manufacturers to close factories and reduce expenses last year should make the companies less vulnerable to the current round of incentives because they have learned to make money on a lower sales volume, she said. Honda has to act because it has the most shoppers who also consider buying Toyota vehicles and faces the "most competitive pressure," Lombard said.

Movie tickets taking off: Regal, Cinemark and AMC are raising their prices, beginning tomorrow (increases vary according to theater). Some of the biggest price hikes are for 3-D fare, which was mostly responsible for last year's jump in box office revenue. (WSJ)

"At the Movies" gets axed: The show started out as "Sneak Previews" with a couple of Chicago movie critics: Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. It's gone through numerous iterations since. (The Wrap)

MPAA opposes movie exchanges: Hollywood's government lobby says that the trading of futures contracts based on box-office receipts is "unbridled gambling." The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been expected to sign off on the exchanges at the end of April. (NYT)

Smart phone usage soars: February traffic was up almost 200 percent from a year earlier. As you would guess, the iPhone leads the way by a large margin. (Digital Daily)