Tuesday morning headlines

Stocks taking off: Maybe the Santa Claus rally is finally here. The Dow is up about 240 points and has topped the 12,000 mark.

House to vote down payroll tax cut: Republicans say they don't want to extend the tax break for only two months, which is what Senate Democrats voted for over the weekend. But their real gripe is how the extension will be funded. From the NYT:

Rather than have a straight up-or-down vote, the House will implement a procedural maneuver in which they will "reject" the Senate bill while requesting to go to conference with members of that chamber in a single measure, protecting House members from having to actually vote against extending a payroll tax cut. During the conference meeting among Republican members, some members expressed concern about effectively voting for a tax increase on the eve of an election year, said some who attended.

AT&T gives up T-Mobile bid: Just too many regulatory hurdles. But that leaves both companies (T-Mobile is Deutsche Telekom's U.S. wireless unit) looking for alternatives. From Reuters:

AT&T will have to find another way to address its shortage of wireless airwaves while Deutsche Telekom has to go back to the drawing board on what to do with T-Mobile USA, the struggling U.S. business it had desperately wanted to shed. The failure of the deal, which was seen as a tough sell from the very start, may call AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson's judgment into question as he was clearly surprised by the strength of regulatory opposition.

Another drop in gas prices: Cheaper, but far from cheap. An average gallon of regular in the L.A. area is $3.597, according to the government survey, down about a nickel from last week.

Holiday shopping picks up: After a lengthy post-Black Friday slump, the malls were busier last week. Still, lots of procrastinators out there as the chain stores prepare for one last promotional blitz. (AP)

Calculating Dodger debt: Figure around $700 million that's tied to the team and related assets, according to a sports banker who has seen the sale book. From Forbes:

The banker said the sale book is "a piece of crap," because of some information typically given in such matters was missing, such as net income. However, after applying conservative estimates on interest rates to McCourt's debt the banker said the team almost certainly lost more than $20 million. Information about the financial state of the Los Angeles Dodgers continues to leak out because several people have their hands on the MLB team's sale book. The sale book contains selected financial data released by the team's investment banker, Blackstone, meant to provide prospective buyers with the information they need to determine if they want to bid for the Dodgers and if so, how much.

Hollywood sees skyscrapers?: New zoning guidelines being recommended by the Planning Department would give developers an easier time. From the LAT:

It's part of a grand vision of concentrating development around transit hubs -- a doctrine Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa likes to call "elegant density." The principle can be seen in the pricey downtown condos built over the last decade, and can be expected to be repeated in the future at current and future transit-rich communities like Woodland Hills and the Crenshaw district, officials say.

Amgen to develop generics: The Thousand Oaks biotech company announces a deal with Watson Pharmaceuticals to sell lower-priced copycat versions of several cancer drugs. From the NYT:

Amgen and some other biotechnology companies have long tried to impede the development of generic competition to their drugs, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year a patient. They have argued that biologic drugs, which are made in living cells, cannot be precisely copied, unlike drugs made in chemical factories. But now that pressure to lower health care costs has made such generic competition unavoidable, some of the biotech companies are starting to view it as a natural extension of their business -- as long as the cheaper versions they produce are of other companies' drugs, not their own.