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WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has an stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase.

Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Barack Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration Cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

Just two years after Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.

“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.

“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”

A spokesman for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on its political action committee’s contributions or relations with the Democrats. But many Wall Street lobbyists and executives said they, too, were rethinking their giving.

“The expectation in Washington is that ‘We can kick you around, and you are still going to give us money,’” said a top official at a major Wall Street firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House. “We are not going to play that game anymore.”

Wall Street fundraisers for the Democrats say they are feeling under attack from all sides. The president is lashing out at their “arrogance and greed.” Republican friends are saying “I told you so.” And contributors are wishing they had their money back.

“I am a big fan of the president,” said Thomas R. Nides, a prominent Democrat who is also a Morgan Stanley executive and chairman of a major Wall Street trade group, the Securities and Financial Markets Association. “But even if you are a big fan, when you are the pinata at the party, it doesn’t really feel good.”

Roger C. Altman, a former Clinton administration Treasury official who founded the Wall Street boutique Evercore Partners, called the Wall Street backlash against Obama “a constant topic of conversation.” Many bankers, he said, failed to appreciate the “white hot anger” at Wall Street for the financial crisis. (Altman said he personally supported “the substance” of the president’s recent proposals, though he questioned their feasibility and declined to comment at all on what he called “the rhetoric.”)

Obama’s fight with Wall Street began last year with his proposals for greater oversight of compensation and a consumer financial protection commission. It escalated with verbal attacks this year on what he called Wall Street’s “obscene bonuses.” And it reached a new level in his calls for policies Wall Street finds even more infuriating: a “financial crisis responsibility” tax aimed only at the biggest banks, and a restriction on “proprietary trading” that banks do with their own money for their own profit.

“If the president wanted to turn every Democrat on Wall Street into a Republican,” one industry lobbyist said, “he is doing everything right.”

Though Wall Street has long been a major source of Democratic campaign money (alongside Hollywood and Silicon Valley), Obama built unusually direct ties to his contributors there. He is the first president since Richard M. Nixon whose campaign relied solely on private donations, not public financing.

Wall Street lobbyists say the financial industry’s big Democratic donors help ensure that their arguments reach the ears of the president and Congress. White House visitors’ logs show dozens of meetings with big Wall Street fundraisers, including Gary D. Cohn, a president of Goldman Sachs; Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; and Robert Wolf, the chief of the American division of the Swiss bank UBS, who has also played golf, had lunch and watched July 4 fireworks with the president.

Lobbyists say they routinely brief top executives on policy talking points before they meet with the president or others in the administration. Wolf, in particular, also serves on the Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board led by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker.

Wolf was the only Wall Street executive on the panel, and became the board’s leading opponent of what became known as the Volcker rule against so-called proprietary trading, according to participants. Such trading did nothing to cause the crisis, Wolf argued, as the industry lobbyists do now. (The panel concluded that the crisis established a precedent for government rescue that could enable big banks to speculate for their own gain while taxpayers took the biggest risks.)

Wolf and Dimon, who was in Washington last week for meetings on Capitol Hill and lunch with the president, have both pressed the industry’s arguments against other proposed regulations and the bank tax as well — saying the rules could cramp needed lending and send business abroad, according to lobbyists.

Both men are said to remain personally supportive of the president. But UBS’s political action committee has shifted its contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. After dividing its money evenly between the parties for 2008, it has given about 56 percent to Republicans this cycle.

Most of its biggest contributions, of $10,000 each, went to five Republican opponents of Obama’s regulatory proposals, including Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking minority member of the Banking Committee.

The Democratic campaign committees declined to comment on Wall Street money. But their Republican rivals are actively courting it.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Cornyn said.

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Toyota drivers are feeling mounting confusion and frustration as they attempt to fix their recalled cars. And Toyota dealers are under the gun as they face sometimes angry customers.

"It’s just getting crazy," said Andy Phillips who heads the service department at Sandy Springs Toyota in Georgia. "Well, you know. I’m tired, the phones are exploding and, basically, I’ve had enough."

Toyota Motor Corp. has said it will begin sending dealers parts to make recall repairs this week with actual repairs expected to begin this weekend.

Some dealers now say they’ll be ready to make repairs even earlier.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood inadvertently frightened many Toyota owners early Wednesday morning when he said, during a hearing on Capitol Hill, that any owner of a car affected by the recall should "stop driving it and take it to a dealer."

LaHood later corrected himself, saying that he only meant that owners should get their cars fixed as soon as possible. But the comment had already been widely reported by then.

"I was at the gym when that was announced and people were freaking out. They were on the treadmill. I can’t drive my car, how am I going to get home?" said Lauren Fix, an independent auto writer and consultant.

Toyota released a statement Wednesday afternoon thanking LaHood for the clarification.

Toyota said that owners of vehicles involved in the most recent recall could safely continue to drive them since the problem develops gradually over time and, even in the worst case, is easy to bring under control by simply applying the brakes. In an extreme case drivers may need to shift the car into neutral.

But that advice has already failed to calm many owners who now fear their cars may run out of control.

"I got this beautiful car, now I’m afraid to drive it," said Maria Ciresi of Smithtown, New York. Ciresi owns a Toyota Corolla she bought in November.

After the recall Ciresi spoke to a Toyota Motor Corp. customer service agent who told her it was still safe to drive the car.

"I told her, ‘Alright I’ll drive the car, and I’ll get killed and my children will own Toyota and you’ll be first the first one to lose your job,’" she said.

Not every customer is as agitated as Ciresi. Laurie Roberts, a customer at Bay Ridge Toyota in Brooklyn, N.Y., described himself as a "Toyota guy."

Roberts owns a Highlander now and he said he plans to continue driving it until it gets fixed. He’s owned seven Toyotas in the past.

Rick Doran, general manager at Arlington Toyota in Jacksonville, Florida, said his customers are mostly taking it all in stride.

"I would have expected it to be completely different than what it is," he said. "We’ve had people who are concerned, but once we explain what the repairs are going to be and let them know it’s a voluntary recall they calm down."

Still, there are some worriers, he said.

"I had a lady yesterday that called me on the phone and just blasted me," he said. "She said she had a scratch on her car but didn’t want to drive to the dealer because she didn’t want the pedal to stick."

Her car, it turned out, wasn’t even part of the recall.

Doran’s dealership will be ready to start making recall repairs as early as Wednesday night, he said.

Michael Ianelli, general manager of Bay Ridge Toyota in Brooklyn, N.Y., said his telephones are ringing constantly with customer calls. He sent a letter to his customers, a copy of which is posted at the dealership’s Web site.

"Please know that this current news, however troubling, will be handled with the swiftness, precision and care that you have become accustomed to as a Toyota owner," the letter reads.

Toyota dealers are going to extremes to take care of customers.

Bob Carter, Toyota’s sales administration manager, sent a letter to dealers on Tuesday thanking them for their efforts and urging more.

Dealers are extending their hours, he wrote, opening additional repair stations and offering car washes. In return, Toyota is paying dealers as much as $75,000, depending on their sales volume, to cover additional expenses caused by the recalls.

"Bottom line - Toyota dealers ‘Get It,’" Carter wrote. "Toyota dealers already know the first and most critical step of rebuilding the confidence and trust of Toyota owners is the interaction and service they receive in your dealership."

Ciresi said the manager of her local Toyota dealer arranged for a dinner meeting at the dealership with customers.

"He’s going to have to have earplugs in his ears," she sad, "because we’re going to tell him what to do."

CNNMoney.com’s Poppy Harlow, Aaron Smith and Blake Ellis and CNN’s Debra Krajnak contributed to this report. 

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The losses continued for Great Florida Bank in the fourth quarter, but it succeeded in paring down its problem loans.

The Miami Lakes-based bank (NASDAQ: GFLB) suffered a net loss of $15.9 million in the fourth quarter, following a $13.3 million loss in the third quarter, according to its filing with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. The bank has yet to announce its earnings in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Great Florida Bank CFO Gary Laurasch said in an interview that $6.9 million of the loss in the fourth quarter was a non-cash charge from writing off a deferred tax asset – an income tax reimbursement that the bank could have recovered if it had turned a profit last year. The actual cash loss was lower in the fourth quarter than in the previous quarter, he noted.

For the full year, Great Florida Bank’s losses more than doubled to $46.8 million, from $19.2 million in 2008.

Great Florida Bank’s results were hurt in the fourth quarter by a drop in net interest income, to $7.8 million from $8.9 million in the previous quarter. The decline was the result of a combination of more loans going delinquent and lower interest yields on its securities portfolio as the bank sold some mortgage-backed securities, Laurasch said. It also lost $2 million on sales of repossessed property.

The bank recorded a $7 million expense to reserve for future loan losses and charged off $8.7 million in bad loans in the fourth quarter, down from $15.7 million and $16 million, respectively, in the third quarter.

Although its level of problem loans remains high compared to most banks, Great Florida reduced it to $149.1 million in late or unpaid loans, or 12.14 percent of total loans, as of Dec. 31, from $161.2 million, or 12.84 percent, as of Sept. 30. Laurasch said that $11 million of its noncurrent loans at year-end have started generating payments again and could return to current status if they continue to do so.

However, Great Florida Bank’s repossessed property total increased to $9.7 million by year-end from $7.5 million at the end of the third quarter. It’s bank-owned property includes Courthouse Commons in West Palm Beach and the Palladium Building in Davie. Laurasch said it could open a Great Florida Bank branch in Courthouse Commons by the end of the year. The bank shares an interest with HSBC Bank in a $12.7 million foreclosure judgment covering Miami’s Havana Lofts, which is set for public sale in April. It also has a pending foreclosure lawsuit against Miami Springs Golf Villas over a 99-unit apartment complex that received a $5 million mortgage.

Great Florida Bank’s $35.7 million reserve for future loan losses covered nearly 24 percent of its noncurrent loans at year-end.

While the bank remained “well-capitalized” under regulatory guidelines, it’s concerning that it has more problem assets than capital and reserves. At year-end, Great Florida Bank had $105.6 million in Tier 1 capital and $35.7 million in reserves for loan losses against the $149.1 million in noncurrent loans and the $9.7 million in repossessed property, a difference of $17.5 million in problem assets.

Laurasch said the bank is in a comfortable position with its reserves because it already has written down the value of its noncurrent loans to market prices.

“Delinquencies and nonperforming loans are trending down, and barring another lay down in the economy or further price depreciations in the real estate market, we feel these trends should hold as far as the credit quality of the portfolio,” he said. “We don’t know what the future holds, but, at this point, we feel we are adequately reserved with the level of reserves we have on the books today.”

Great Florida Bank was the 11th-largest bank chartered in South Florida on Sept. 30, with $1.72 billion in assets. By the end of 2009, it increased that to $1.77 billion in assets. During the same period, the bank grew its total deposits to $1.35 billion from $1.26 billion.

However, Great Florida Bank’s total loans dipped to $1.18 billion at the end of the year from $1.22 billion as of Sept. 30. Laurasch said it would not have much loan growth this year as the bank focuses on reducing its problem assets. It will continue making residential mortgages and selling them to government agencies and making U.S. Small Business Administration-backed loans.

NASDAQ warned Great Florida Bank in January that it could fast delisting because its stock traded below $1 for too long. A boost in its stock price recently put the bank back in compliance.

Great Florida Bank shares were down 8 cents to $1.46 in afternoon trading. The 52-week high was $2 on May 11. The 52-week low was 49 cents on Dec. 31.

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St. Louis-based HOK architects provided the design, planning, structural engineering and interior design work on the new 254-bed Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in Mishawaka, Ind.

The $224 million project includes a two-story diagnostic and treatment center with a six-story tower that has an emergency department, imaging center, diagnostics and 16 operating rooms. Inpatient units include maternity, pediatrics, neonatal intensive care, as well as medical, surgical and intensive care.

The project also features a 155,000-square-foot medical office building, connected to the hospital. The building contains a comprehensive cancer center, physician offices and retail space.

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LOS ANGELES—Both U.S. and Canadian governments have imposed major conditions upon Live Nation and Ticketmaster in approving the companies’ merger.

Shares in both companies jumped in trading Monday after reports surfaced earlier that the merger would be approved.

Included in the settlement is a requirement that Ticketmaster would have to license its ticketing software to competitor AEG and sell its subsidiary Paciolan to Comcast Spectacor.

The conditions would result in two large competitors — AEG and Comcast Spectacor — that would vie for ticketing contracts with the merged entity of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

The merged company would also be under a 10-year court order prohibiting it from retaliating against venues that choose to sign ticket-selling contracts with competitors.

The Canadian Competition Bureau announced the conditions on Monday, after working with the U.S. Department of Justice on the specifics.

“The agreement strengthens competition by providing rival companies with the tools they need to compete more effectively against Ticketmaster,” said commissioner Melanie Aitken said in a release.

Ticketmaster, based in West Hollywood, Calif., is the world’s largest seller of tickets to live concerts and other entertainment events online payday loans. It also owns an artist management company, Front Line Management, and a ticket-reselling company called TicketsNow.com.

Live Nation, based in Los Angeles, is the largest U.S. concert producer. It also owns entertainment venues and in January launched its own ticket-selling business, which currently competes with Ticketmaster.

In the U.S., assistant attorney general Christine Varney said that the merger would have the effect of lowering ticket prices.

Varney said the deal as proposed would have been “anticompetitive.”

“It’s going to benefit competition and benefit consumers,” she said. “Generally when you see robust competition, you would expect to see prices coming down.”

The companies had no immediate comment.

Shares in Ticketmaster rose $2.22 (U.S.), or nearly 17 per cent, to $15.52 in afternoon trading, while shares in Live Nation went up $1.47, or 16 per cent, to $10.63.

With files from The Canadian Press

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The much-loved “cheap-chic” discount chain, Target Corp., referred to by fans as "Tar-Jay," says it has Canada in its sights as part of a future international expansion plan.

Like many U.S. retailers, Target is mulling a move outside its home market after sales and profits took a nosedive in the past year.

The announcement comes years after Target was rumoured to be eyeing an entry into Canada through the purchase of Hudson’s Bay Co.-owned discounter, Zellers. Hudson’s Bay was publicly traded and widely held at the time.

Instead, HBC was bought first by South Carolina businessman Jerry Zucker and, after his untimely death, sold to its current owners, NRDC Equity Partners.

Target said it would be at least three years before the international expansion plan takes place. In the meantime, the Minneapolis-based retailer said it would focus on updating its existing United States stores.

Target plans to invest $1 billion (U.S.) renovating 340 stores, adding more groceries to its general merchandise as hard-pressed consumers continue to buy staple goods.

The retailer said it also plans to improve its beauty, home, electronic and video-game departments.

Depending on economic, real estate and internal retailer conditions, Target said it would open at most 10 new stores this year in existing markets cash advance. That’s well below the 58 it opened in the 2009 fiscal year ending Jan. 31 and the 91 it opened in fiscal 2008

It’s also developing a new smaller store format, which it plans to open in the "next few years," the company said at an investor meeting in Philadelphia Thursday.

"We are excited about the growth potential for Target and believe we have the capital, talent, and right blend of discipline and innovation to deliver meaningful value to our guests and shareholders," Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said in a statement.

The chain has faced tough competition from Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer. Customers turned away from Target’s cheap-chic styles toward retailers they believed were offering lower prices during the recession.

But holiday sales improved as Target trumpeted its lower prices and expanded its selection of groceries, necessities that bring in shoppers more frequently. Better-than-expected customer traffic boosted December sales by 1.8 per cent at stores open at least a year. Analysts were expecting a 0.2 per cent drop.

With files from the Star’s wire services

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The new year has barely begun and already one of 2010s most important analyses of economics has appeared.

It’s John Cassidy’s rather brave confrontation with the so-called "Chicago School" of neo-con economists, whose free-market doctrines laid the groundwork for the epic global financial crisis we’ve just endured.

We have paid a heavy price for the dangerous primacy given unfettered capitalism by conservative economists at the University of Chicago beginning in the 1940s, and achieving its peak influence in the late 1990s.

That’s when U.S. policy makers, infused with Chicago thinking, began deregulating financial markets and setting the stage for the epic global financial collapse of 2007-08 that triggered the current devastating recession.

It was the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, more than anything, with its unleashing of Western triumphalism, that lifted the laissez faire ideology of the Chicago School from the realm of untested theory to respectability among public policy makers.

It was they who in the late 1990s revoked Franklin Roosevelt’s ban on the co-mingling of traditional and investment banking, and allowed financial institutions to decide for themselves how much capital to set aside for tough times.

(Which was never enough, since it would eat into profits – hence the need for a $700 billion (U.S.) bailout of banks and other financial institutions that otherwise would have cratered the global economy).

It was the Chicago-influenced lawmakers who relaxed government supervision of financiers with their eyes on the main chance, oblivious of the consequences if their ego and avarice led us all over a cliff.

This rankly irresponsible behaviour by the masters of the economy seemed to be validated by the Chicago school’s unshakable belief in "efficient-markets hypothesis" and the "rational-expectations theory."

The former assumes that the prices of stocks, houses and other assets accurately reflect all available information about economic conditions.

The latter insists that all economic players, from everyday citizens to high-rolling CEOs and investors, are both acutely knowledgeable about the economy and act wisely on that knowledge.

Both theories are pure bunkum. And never has there been a shortage of experts with a sense of history to explain why – John Kenneth Galbraith, an economic adviser to three U.S. presidents – being a prime example with his steady output of corrective tomes until his death in 2006.

The tripling of house prices in California and Florida earlier this decade bore no relation to economic conditions, but resulted from a euphoric buying panic. As for acting wisely out of full knowledge of circumstances, even bank and brokerage CEOs seldom knew what pockets of cowboy risk-takers in their organizations were betting the company on.

That being the case, pity the working-class wannabe owner of a split-level beyond his means in the predatory grasp of an unscrupulous mortgage broker who convinces him that house prices only rise.

What becomes evident, and is downright frightening, in Cassidy’s account is how deliberately untutored are the free-market Chicago school economists in … economics.

Richard Posner is among the most prominent of the Chicago School propagandists, a jurist who for decades worked with considerable success at incorporating free-market principles into U.S. jurisprudence.

But the recent crisis has made Posner a convert to Keynesianism. This illustrious economist did not trouble to read Keynes’ central work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (always called the General Theory, and published in 1936) until the latest global banking meltdown.

I find this incomprehensible, like purporting expertise in Western philosophy having chosen not to at least breeze through Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. In making my high school case for the superior virtues of capitalism, I was told to first absorb The Communist Manifesto to better know what I was arguing against. Even the Cliff Notes version of Keynes tells you that he argued vehemently for fiscal prudence in prosperous times to be equipped for the necessary pump-priming in times of crisis. Keynes also was the Warren Buffett of his time, one of the sagest stock-market investors in history.

The man knew capital markets and the periodic euphoria that distorts them from prolonged, intimate experience.

Embarrassing confessions abound in Cassidy’s account ("After the Blowup," in the Jan. 11 New Yorker). The central role of banks in hurtling the global economy toward the abyss didn’t figure into the Chicago school’s thinking because, as Posner tells Cassidy: "You have to know a lot about banking, and that was not the case with economists."

Yet this same school was supremely self-assured in successfully arguing for ultimately catastrophic bank deregulation.

One has to wonder if some of these esteemed academics ever read a newspaper. Eugene Fama, one of the Chicago professors still in denial, attributes the crash to the unwise purchase by government agencies of all those faulty subprime mortgages. It’s been widely reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – whose job is to backstop the mortgage industry, after all – account for only one-third of those purchases, the others being made by look-before-you-leap Wall Street banks.

Robert Lucas, one of the Chicago school’s many Nobel laureates, ascribes mass unemployment to workers refusing to accept low-paying jobs and preferring to remain out of work, making government job-creating stimulus futile.

Never mind that Obama’s February stimulus had the U.S. economy growing again by the summer. (The pure Keynesianism was replicated in Beijing, Berlin and Ottawa, and it’s working.)

The plain fact is that millions of Canadians and Americans laid off from full-time employment have promptly taken part-time, low-paying jobs to keep bread on the table.

And those still in full-time employment have accepted pay and benefit cuts to retain their jobs. Such a slur on the working class, coming from tenured Chicago professors suffering not a day of job insecurity, is a bit rich, to say the least.

It’s a popular canard just now that economists are useless, having failed, in the main, to warn us of either of the two unsustainable booms and crashes of the past decade. (The first was the dot-com mania.)

Economic theory tested in behavioural science and taking all players into account, from ego-driven CEOs to low-income earners, is very much needed. We might, and should, be on the threshold of a new era of truly useful economic strategy.

This won’t be coming from those of the famous Chicago school still in denial.

Asked if his Chicago peers had learned anything in the past two years of tumult, a candid Posner says: "Well, one possibility is that they have learned nothing … they have techniques that they know and are comfortable with. It takes a great deal to drive them out of their accustomed way of doing business."

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JEFFERSON CITY — Foreclosures are running at an all-time high. And few think that will change any time soon.

So what do you do about them?

That was the subject of a conference here Thursday, where dozens of foreclosure counselors and experts from across the state gathered to talk about ways to try to stanch the flow of mortgage trouble that is swamping St. Louis and the nation’s economy.

They met the day after new figures were released by real estate data firm RealtyTrac, showing foreclosure activity in 2009 in the St. Louis region basically matched record highs set the year before. Nationwide, it grew 21 percent on the year, as joblessness and falling home prices replaced subprime lending as a leading cause of mortgage trouble.

But joblessness and a weak housing market don’t appear to be going away any time soon, said William Emmons, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. And so, he said, neither will foreclosures.

"I think it’s really not an exaggeration to say this is something like a 100-year flood that’s hit us," Emmons said. "And unlike the ‘93 flood, this is not going to recede in a few weeks or even months. This is going to last years."

There is growing debate on what should be done about it.

In recent months, some economists have begun to argue that massive government efforts to prevent foreclosures are only dragging the crisis out and slowing economic recovery. Most of those efforts hinge on getting banks to reduce monthly payments for borrowers. But too many borrowers, some experts say, simply cannot afford their homes. The only way to fix the mortgages would be to write down their principle, something banks have been unwilling to do on any mass scale.

Through mid-December, some 759,000 borrowers nationwide — about 9,000 in Missouri and 37,500 in Illinois — had mortgages modified through the government’s $75 billion Making Home Affordable Program, which gives banks an incentive to lower monthly payments. But only 31,000 of those people — about 4 percent — have received permanent modifications; most of the rest received several months of interest rate reductions small personal loans. That raises worries about what will happen when these trial runs end.

"This program is not working the way we had hoped it would work," said Todd Swanstrom, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

And 13,000 permanent modifications is just a drop in the bucket, said Diane Standaert, legislative counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending.

About 6 million in loans have gone into foreclosure since 2007, she said, and projections range from 8 million to 13 million before this wave is through. One in 10 borrowers is behind on their mortgages, and there’s no quick fix in sight. Meanwhile, complex, case-by-case counseling programs have had a hard time keeping up.

"So far, foreclosure prevention efforts have been woefully unable to keep pace," she said.

Still, when they happen, they have helped.

Swanstrom pointed to a recent study by the Urban Institute, which found that troubled borrowers who sought help from free, government-certified counselors were 60 percent more likely to avoid foreclosure than those who did not. And they were able to cut monthly payments by an average of $454 million.

That kind of front-line counseling needs to be strengthened, Standaert said, but it’s just one part of what she called a "multipronged strategy" to tackle the root causes of the mortgage crisis.

Federal and state governments also should take a harder line against risky lending, she said, and strengthen consumer protections and loan underwriting requirements.

"The stakes are high," Standaert said. "We need to translate the lessons of this crisis into sensible rules to make sure this doesn’t happen again."

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Stocks seesawed Monday as investors eyed a weak dollar, higher commodity prices and a selloff in technology shares ahead of the start of the quarterly reporting period, which began after the closing bell with Alcoa.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) gained 46 points, or 0.4%. The S&P 500 index (SPX) added 2 points, or 0.2%. The Nasdaq composite (COMP) lost 5 points, or 0.2%.

The fourth-quarter reporting period got underway Monday after the close, when Dow component Alcoa (AA, Fortune 500) issued its results.

The aluminum maker reported a profit of 1 cent per share, versus a loss of 28 cents per share a year ago. Analysts expected the company to have earned 6 cents a share, according to earnings tracker Thomson Reuters. Revenue fell less than expected.

Stocks gained Friday as a tech rally helped investors look past a surprisingly weak jobs report, leaving all three major indexes at 15-month highs. After that run, stocks struggled Monday.

"I think the market is on hold, waiting for the fourth-quarter reporting period to start," said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist at RidgeWorth Investments.

"From a statistical standpoint it’s supposed to be a phenomenal quarter, but companies are stepping over a very low bar," Gayle said. "The focus is going to be on earnings guidance for later in 2010."

Company results: In addition to Alcoa, Dow components Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) report results later this week.

S&P 500 earnings are expected to have jumped 213% in the fourth quarter of 2009, thanks to easy comparisons to the fourth-quarter of 2008, the worst quarter in Thomson’s history. A substantial improvement in financial sector results is expected to fuel the gains.

Company news: Heineken (HINKY) said Monday that it will buy the beer operations of Mexico’s Femsa for about $7.6 billion, including key export brands Dos Equis, Tecate and Sol.

McMoRan (MMR) and Energy XXI (EXXI) shares jumped after the energy companies announced a key discovery at one of their oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tech decliners included Dow components IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Fortune 500) also slid.

Dow gainers included Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500), Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500), Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) and United Technologies (UTX, Fortune 500).

World markets: Asian markets hit 17-month highs after a report showed China’s exports jumped 17.7% in December versus a year ago, raising hopes about the nation’s economic outlook.

European markets were mixed.

Commodities and the dollar: The dollar tumbled versus the euro and the yen.

Dollar-traded gold inched higher. COMEX gold for February delivery rose $13.20 to settle at $1,151.40 an ounce. Gold closed at an all-time high of $1,218.30 an ounce last month.

U.S. light crude oil for February delivery fell 47 cents to settle at $82.28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Bonds: Treasury prices rose, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 3.82% from 3.83% late Friday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Market breadth was mixed. On the New York Stock Exchange, winners beat losers by three to two on volume of 970 million shares. On the Nasdaq, decliners topped advancers by a narrow margin on volume of 2.08 billion shares.

Talkback: With the economy in recovery mode and a new year underway, what’s your 2010 plan for your portfolio? Will you invest more, less or not at all? Are you willing to take on more risk? E-mail your story to realstories@cnnmoney.com and you could be featured in an upcoming article. For the CNNMoney.com Comment Policy, click here. 

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The U.S. auto industry has been decimated in recent years by a rash of plant closings. But according to a survey of top industry executives, more shutdowns could be on the way.

The survey, conducted annually by accounting firm KPMG, found that 88% of top industry executives thought there is still too much capacity at North American auto plants.

Even with recent closings, the 200 executives at automakers and suppliers around the world surveyed in the fall of 2009 indicated overcapacity is a bigger problem today than a year ago.

General Motors announced last year it would shed 12 plants as part of its bankruptcy, while Chrysler Group said it would close another four during its reorganization.

Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) also announced closings of parts plants that had been run by Visteon, its former parts unit. Even Toyota Motor (TM) closed a North American plant for the first time and it delayed construction of another plant.

Wards Automotive, a research firm, estimates that plant closings cut North American capacity by about 1.5 million vehicles in 2009, down to 18 million vehicles.

But U.S. auto sales plunged 21% last year to 10.4 million vehicles, and forecasts are for sales to rebound to only about 11 direct payday loans.5 million this year. Most analysts and company forecasts acknowledge it will be many years before U.S. sales return to the average annual sales level of 16.7 million the industry achieved in the decade before the recession.

"Despite the fact we’ve taken out capacity, if volumes remain low we will continue to be in an overcapacity situation," said Betsy Meter, the auto industry audit leader at KPMG. She said executives believe it’s likely there will be additional mergers and consolidation in the sector that could lead to plant closings.

The closings in 2009 were only the latest of dozens of plants shut in the previous five years by the three U.S. automakers as their market share continued to slide.

Employment at U.S. auto plants has fallen by more than half since the start of the decade, even as overseas manufacturers have opened new plants here. Last year alone, employment at U.S. auto and parts factories fell by 123,000 workers, or 16%, according to the Labor Department. 

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