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January 2, 2008
name='1'>In Year-End Report, Chief Justice Urges Swift Action on
Judicial Pay Increases
Chief Justice John
Roberts Jr. calling on Congress to make approval of a judicial salary
increase 'a first order of business' when it comes back from recess in
January, the Legal
Times reported yesterday.
size='3'> Roberts noted that federal trial
judges are 'earning about the same as (and in some cases less than)
first-year lawyers at firms in major cities, where many of the judges
are located.' The words 'first-year lawyers' are italicized in the text
of Roberts' report.
w:st='on'>
size='3'>U.S.
size='3'>district court judges are paid $165,200 a year, the same as
members of Congress. The House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 12 endorsed,
by a 28-5 vote, a bill that would raise the pay of district judges to
$218,000, with similar increases for other judges. The Senate was
considering a similar bill when the session ended in December. Roberts
said he was grateful for support from President George W. Bush and
leaders of both parties of Congress on the salary issue.
href='http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1199181921633'>Read
more.
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>
name='2'>Delphi
Million in November
Auto-parts supplier
Delphi Corp. on Monday reported a net loss of $231 million for November,
Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. The Troy, Mich.-based company,
which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2005, said in a filing with the
Securities and Exchange Commission that its net loss for January through
November amounted to $2.78 billion.
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>Delphi
size='3'>recorded about $1.15 billion in net sales for last
month.
href='http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/31/news/companies/bc.delphi.netloss.ap/index.htm?section=money_latest'>Read
more.
In related
news,
size='3'>Delphi Corp. wants to pay Executive Chairman Steve Miller $8.3
million for his work steering the company through
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Delphi
bankruptcy case despite objections from the United Auto Workers,
the Detroit Free
Press reported today. Before the board's
decision Friday, the United Auto Workers and another union already had
said they plan to object to
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>Delphi
size='3'>'s compensation plan, which did not disclose the $8.3 million
the company wants to award Miller. Miller was recruited to
size='3'>Delphi
$1.5 million base salary and a $3 million bonus. Miller has said he
plans to leave
size='3'>Delphi
emerges from chapter 11.
href='http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2008/01/02/auto_delphi_1002.ART_ART_01-02-08_C9_CM8UB8H.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=101'>Read
more.
Deal
to Buy Mortgage Company Collapses
In another sign that
troubles within the mortgage industry will continue into 2008, PHH, a
New Jersey-based mortgage and vehicle leasing company, announced today
that it is scrapping a planned $1.8 billion sale because banks had
failed to agree to finance the transaction, the
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>New York Times
size='3'>reported. PHH, one of the largest originators of residential
home loans, announced in March that it was selling itself for $1.8
billion to General Electric and the Blackstone Group, a large private
investment company. However, as the mortgage industry continued to
deteriorate, the banks financing the transaction — JPMorgan and
Lehman Brothers — slashed the deal’s loans by as much as
$750 million in September. PHH said that it was terminating the sale
because Blackstone, which was to acquire the mortgage business, had
failed to find alternative financing.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/02deal.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print'>Read
href='http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/02deal.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print'>.
w:st='on'>
name='4'>Maryland
face='Times




































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Roman'
size='3'> Furniture Firm Files for Chapter 11
Scan International, a
Rockville, Md.-based seller of contemporary Scandinavian furniture,
filed for chapter 11 protection last week and outlined plans to close,
the Washington
Post reported on Monday. In papers filed with
U.S. Bankruptcy Court in
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Baltimore
blamed its troubles on 'the decline in the housing market and the loss
of business as a result of other furniture retailers ceasing operations
and liquidating inventories at deep discounts.' Scan International began
in 1960 as part of the Greenbelt Cooperative, which grew into the
largest nonprofit co-op on the East Coast but fell into financial
disarray after a 10-month employee strike. The co-op went into
bankruptcy in 1988 and in 1989, Scan was formed from the co-op's
furniture arm and taken private. Scan's revenue for the year was down to
$17.5 million from $25 million in 2005, according to court
documents.
href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/30/AR2007123001805_pf.html'>Read
more.
name='5'>Commentary: Effects of Housing Slump Continue to Lead to
Uncertainty over Economy
Though 2007 saw the
American economy assailed by plunging housing prices, tightening
consumer credit and soaring costs for oil, analysts expect that either
the negatives finally metastasize and drag the economy down or a fresh
source of growth will emerges in 2008 to help sustain consumer spending,
according to a New York
Times commentary today. “There are even
odds of a recession,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at
Moody’s Economy.com. “It literally could go either
way.” The bursting housing bubble remains a locus of concern. An
era of free-flowing credit and speculation has led to a far-flung empire
of vacant, unsold homes — 2.1 million, or about 2.6 percent of the
nation’s housing stock, Mr. Zandi said. Even in the worst years of
recessions in the early 1980s and 1990s, the share of vacant homes did
not exceed 1.9 percent. The glut could be exacerbated if an already
alarming wave of foreclosures continues to broaden, claiming even those
with supposedly good credit.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/02econ.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print'>Read
more.
name='6'>Commentary: Candidate’s Plan Looks to Boost
Commitment to the Middle Class
Steps must be taken to
renew
face='Times New Roman'
size='3'>America
size='3'>'s basic bargain with the middle class, which is facing
skyrocketing education and health care costs, the foreclosure crisis and
stagnant incomes despite working longer hours, according to a commentary
by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards in
today’s Wall
Street Journal. The first step that Edwards
proposed was to make affordable, high-quality health care a number one
domestic priority. Second, Edwards would look to create a new universal
retirement account requiring every business to automatically enroll its
workers in at least one plan: a traditional pension, a 401(k) or an IRA.
Edwards said that fundamentally healthy companies should not be allowed
to go into bankruptcy just to avoid keeping their promises to employees,
or to emerge from bankruptcy with millions for executives and nothing
for workers. Third, Edwards said that he would immediately cap untaxed
deferred compensation for executives and give shareholders new rights
and responsibilities so that they can call shareholder meetings, remove
directors who aren't acting responsibly, and have a say on executive
pay.
href='http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB119923919194861441.html'>Read
more.
AMS
Health Sciences Files for Chapter 11
AMS Health Sciences filed for
chapter 11 protection after a verdict and subsequent judgment rendered
against the company in its November 2007 jury trial relating to its 2005
acquisition of Heartland Cup, BankruptcyData.com reported today. AMS
Health Sciences said that it believes that certain legal errors rendered
the verdict and judgment improper and 'has identified approximately 19
substantive points of error that it believes occurred in the trial and
intends to pursue them in an appeal of the judgment.' The chapter 11
filing has the support of the company's secured lender, Laurus Capital
Management.
name='8'>Analysts Predicting Citigroup May Write Down $12
Billion
Sanford C. Bernstein
& Co. analysts wrote that Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank, may
have to reduce the value of holdings by $12 billion in the fourth
quarter because of financial-market swings, Bloomberg News reported.
Citigroup, based in
w:st='on'>New
York
$3.3 billion, or about 65 cents a share, in the quarter because of a
writedown of collateralized debt obligations, according to Bernstein
analysts.
w:st='on'>
size='3'>U.S.
size='3'>subprime-mortgage defaults have already forced the world's
biggest financial institutions to write down about $100 billion in
fixed-income securities and prompted concern about a global economic
slowdown. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said last month that Citigroup may
discount the value of its investments by $18.7 billion in the fourth
quarter.
href='http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aNjYH4i1I8Y8&refer=us'>Read
more.
International
name='9'>Bankruptcy Looms for Thousands of Brits
Bankruptcy is likely to
strike 10,000 people a month in the coming year, according to one
of
face='Times New Roman'
size='3'>Britain
size='3'>'s top insolvency practices, ITV.com reported today.
Excessive
size='3'>Chris
fuel at least a third of all personal insolvencies in the first three
months of this year with 28,000 individuals likely to become insolvent
in the first quarter of 2008.
size='3'>According to Grant Thornton, personal insolvency numbers for
the next quarter will be down slightly from the figures for the
equivalent period last year. However, the firm predicted that things
will get worse with banks tightening their lending, the housing market
slowdown and rapidly increasing cost of commodities all beginning to
bite during 2008.
href='http://www.itv.com/News/Articles/Bankruptcy-looms-for-thousands-of-Brits.html'>Read
more.
name='10'>Strain on Mexican Auto Parts Industry Reflects
size='3'>U.S.
size='3'>Woes
Not so long ago, Mexico
was seen as a low-cost producer to the auto parts world, but much like
the rest of the global auto industry, it is threatened by global rivals
paying lower salaries while producing superior quality products,
according to the Chicago
Tribune yesterday. As a result, Mexican auto
parts firms keep pressing to trim costs, and Mexican workers find
themselves working longer, harder and sometimes for less. It's a mirror
of the process that plunged a number of U.S. auto parts firms into
bankruptcy and that wiped out 200,000 auto parts jobs in the United
States in the last seven years — nearly one-fifth of the nation's
auto parts industry. Chinese companies are quickly siphoning away auto
parts work that would have been done not so long ago in
size='3'>Mexico.
Eastern European companies, which boast higher levels of productivity
and technological expertise, also threaten to pull away
business.
href='http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5416936.html'>Read
more.
href='http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5416936.html'>