Ninety-three percent voted against the so-called Icesave bill, according to preliminary results on national broadcaster RUV. Final results will be published today.

The bill would have obliged the island to take on $5.3 billion, or 45 percent of last year’s economic output, in loans from the U.K. and the Netherlands to compensate the two countries for depositor losses stemming from the collapse of Landsbanki Islands hf more than a year ago. The island’s political leaders say they’ve already moved on to talks over a new accord.

“The government’s survival doesn’t rest with this Icesave vote,” Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir told RUV after the preliminary count was announced. “The government coalition remains solid,” Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told RUV.

Failure to reach an agreement on the bill has left Iceland’s International Monetary Fund-led loan in limbo and prompted Fitch Ratings to cut its credit grade to junk. Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s have signaled they may follow suit if no settlement is reached.

‘Obsolete’

Iceland’s leaders are trying to negotiate a new deal with the U.K. and the Dutch that focuses on the interest rate payable on the loan, making the bill in yesterday’s vote “obsolete,” Sigurdardottir said on March 4.

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager in a statement posted on the Internet last night said he is “disappointed” the agreement hasn’t yet come into effect. The U.K. was “obviously disappointed,” while “not surprised,” said a Treasury official who declined to be identified in line with departmental policy.

Iceland’s government pointed to “steady progress toward a settlement” in the past three weeks in a statement.

“The British and Dutch Governments have indicated a willingness to accept a solution that will entail a significantly lower cost for Iceland than that envisaged in the prior agreement,” the statement said.

The U.K. and Netherlands have offered an interest rate of the London Interbank Offered Rate plus 2.75 percentage points, according to the U.K. Treasury official. That’s the same as the rate for the loan from the Nordic countries that the Icelandic Government accepted in July 2009. The new offer also gave relief on the first two years of interest for the loan, amounting to 450 million euros.

‘Ordinary People’

The three governments have declared their intention to continue the talks, the Iceland statement said.

Voters rejected the bill because “ordinary people, farmers and fishermen, taxpayers, doctors, nurses, teachers, are being asked to shoulder through their taxes a burden that was created by irresponsible greedy bankers,” said President Olafur R. Grimsson, whose rejection of the bill resulted in the plebiscite, in a Bloomberg Television interview on March 5.

The Icesave deal passed through parliament with a 33 to 30 vote majority. Grimsson blocked it after receiving a petition from a quarter of the population urging him to do so. The government has said it’s determined any new deal must have broader political backing to avoid meeting a similar fate.

Icelanders used the referendum to express their outrage at being asked to take on the obligations of bankers who allowed the island’s financial system to create a debt burden more than 10 times the size of the economy.

Protests

The nation’s three biggest banks, which were placed under state control in October 2008, had enjoyed a decade of market freedoms following the government’s privatizations through the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this decade.

Protesters have gathered every week, with regular numbers swelling to about 2,000, according to police estimates. The last time the island saw demonstrations on a similar scale was before the government of former Prime Minister Geir Haarde was toppled.

Icelanders have thrown red paint over house facades and cars of key employees at the failed banks, Kaupthing Bank hf, Landsbanki and Glitnir Bank hf, to vent their anger. The government has appointed a special commission to investigate financial malpractice and has identified more than 20 cases that will result in prosecution.

Economic Impact

The island’s economy shrank an annual 9.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the statistics office said on March 5, and contracted 6.5 percent in 2009 as a whole.

Household debt with major credit institutions has doubled in the past five years and reached about 1.8 trillion kronur ($14 billion) in 2009, compared with the island’s $12 billion gross domestic product, according to the central bank.

Icelanders, the world’s fifth-richest per capita as recently as 2007, ended 2009 18 percent poorer and will see their disposable incomes decline a further 10 percent this year, the central bank estimates.

Grimsson, who has described his decision to put the depositor bill to a referendum as the “pinnacle of democracy,” says he’s not concerned about the economic fallout of his decision.

“The referendum has drawn back the curtain and people see on the stage the matter in a new perspective,” he said in an interview. “That has strengthened our position and our cause.”

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For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the company reported net earnings of $10.5 million, up from nearly $7.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. American Railcar said its fourth-quarter 2009 profit was helped by other income of $17.8 million from net gains on short-term investment activity.

The company’s fourth-quarter 2009 revenue sank more than 61 percent to $78.5 million from $203 million in 2008 quarter. Revenue in the recent quarter was hit by a decrease in the number of railcars shipped and a decrease in surcharges reflected in selling prices. Those were partially offset by a change in product mix and an increase in revenue from the company’s railcar services segment.

The company said it shipped about 610 railcars in the three months ended Dec. 31, 2009, compared to about 1,870 in the same period in 2008.

For the full year 2009, American Railcar reported that its net earnings fell 51 percent to $15.5 million compared to $31.4 million in 2008 profit. The company said its short-term investment activity resulted in a net gain of $20.9 million last year.

However, the company said its losses from joint ventures were $7.5 million higher in 2009 than in 2008, primarily due to temporarily idling American Railcar’s castings joint venture and losses from its axle joint venture free credit report.

The company reported 2009 revenue of $423.4 million, down 48 percent from 2008 revenue of $808.8 million.

American Railcar said it shipped about 3,690 railcars last year compared with about 7,970 railcars in 2008, with last year’s lower shipments due to the weak economy’s effect on the railcar market.

“Our railcar services segment experienced a 13 percent growth in revenues in 2009 as compared to 2008 and an increase in gross profit margin due to the completion of several expansion projects in 2009 that have generated higher volumes and increased efficiencies,” President and Chief Executive James Cowan said in a statement.

Due to continued weakness in the railcar market, he said, the company expects its shipments and revenue to decrease this year from 2009.

Last month, American Railcar announced it planned to enter the passenger rail market in an effort to tap into some of the billions of dollars in federal stimulus money for trains. It formed a joint venture with Columbus, Ohio-based U.S. Railcar LLC to design, make and sell medium-speed passenger railcars.

American Railcar (NASDAQ: ARII) is majority owned by Icahn Enterprises LP (NYSE: IEP).

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The consumer price index rose 3.81 percent in February from a year earlier, the central statistics agency said in Jakarta today. That compares with the 3.97 percent median estimate of 20 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

“We have seen commodity prices start to pick up in February, putting pressure on inflation,” Winang Budoyo, an economist at Jakarta-based PT Bank CIMB Niaga, said before the report. The prospect of faster price gains may force the central bank to raise its policy rate to 6.75 percent in the coming months, he said.

Bank Indonesia, which meets on March 4 to review its policy, has kept the benchmark interest rate at 6.5 percent since August, following nine cuts that have helped Southeast Asia’s biggest economy avoid a recession. Faster inflation has prompted some Asian policy makers to start exiting monetary stimulus as the region leads the world out of its economic slump.

Indonesia’s central bank will probably maintain its benchmark interest rate at a record-low 6.5 percent this week, according to all 21 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Still, borrowing costs may rise by the third quarter, a survey of 12 economists showed easy payday loans.

Palm Oil, Rice

In neighboring Malaysia, which will also hold a policy meeting on March 4, five out of 16 economists surveyed expect Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz to raise the overnight rate to 2.25 percent from 2 percent.

Palm oil for May delivery rose 1 percent to 2,624 ringgit ($774) a metric ton on the Malaysia Derivatives Exchange as of 10:23 a.m. Jakarta time today. Prices for the edible oil have risen 37 percent in the past year. The cost of rice, the staple for Indonesia’s 230 million people, rose 4 percent to 8,100 rupiah ($0.87 ) a kilogram in February from the end of December, according to data from PT Food Station Tjipinang Jaya, Indonesia’s biggest market for the grain.

Indonesian consumer prices rose 0.3 percent in February from the previous month after gaining 0.84 percent in January.

Indonesia’s exports, which account for about 29 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, rose 59 percent to $11.57 billion in January from a year earlier after gaining 49.8 percent in the previous month.

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Houston-based Calpine (NYSE: CPN) reported a net loss of $43 million, or 9 cents a share, for the three months ended Dec. 31, compared to a net loss of $109 million, or 22 cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Revenue in the latest period was $1.57 billion, compared to nearly $2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Analysts on average had estimated a loss of 2 cents a share.

For the full year, the company reported net income of $149 million, or 31 cents a share, on revenue of $6.5 billion, compared to net income of $10 million, or 2 cents a share, on much higher revenue of $10 billion in 2008 cash advance payday loan.

“Looking ahead to 2010, we are reaffirming our Adjusted EBITDA guidance of $1.5 to $1.6 billion and our adjusted free cash flow guidance of $400 to $500 million,” said Jack Fusco, Calpine president and chief executive. “I am pleased that our proactive hedging efforts have substantially mitigated our exposure to natural gas price risk in 2010, allowing us to continue to focus on excellence in operations, customer-focused origination and disciplined strategic growth.”

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Raising taxes, cutting spending and reforming Medicare and Social Security are all fair game, and thought to be impossible without the backing of both Republicans and Democrats.

"Everything’s on the table. That’s how this thing is going to work," the president said immediately after signing the order.

The commission must deliver a report to the president by Dec. 1 that makes recommendations for bringing annual deficits to no more than 3% of the size of the economy, as measured by gross domestic product, or GDP. Currently annual deficits for the next decade are on track to be well above that level.

The commission will also be expected to suggest ways to permanently lower the country’s total debt - currently expected to hit 77% of GDP in 2020, according to the White House Budget Office.

The president formally named the two co-chairmen he has chosen for the commission: Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, a Democrat who served as White House chief of staff under President Clinton.

He said the two men "are taking on the impossible: they’re going to try to restore reason to the fiscal debate."

The commission will have 18 members. Six of them, including the co-chairmen, will be chosen by the president. Another six of them, divided evenly between the parties, will be chosen by the majority and minority leaders in the House. And six of them will be chosen by the leaders of both parties in the Senate.

It’s not clear yet when the Democratic leadership will name their choices.

It was also not clear before the president signed the executive order whether House and Senate Republicans would even choose to participate.

After the President signed the order, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told CNNMoney.com that McConnell will name three Senate Republicans to the panel. But his instructions to them will be to focus more on spending cuts than tax increases.

"After trillions in new and proposed spending, Americans know our problem is not that we tax too little, but that Washington spends too much - that should be the focus of this commission," McConnell said in a statement.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, gave some indication that House Republicans might participate but didn’t say it was confirmed.

"We still haven’t heard from the president on our proposal to start cutting spending right now," the spokesman said. "That doesn’t mean we won’t participate in this commission, but it does indicate that Washington Democrats aren’t serious yet about shutting down their spending binge."

Earlier this month, Boehner had asked the president if he would use certain legislative procedures to ensure that the House cannot ignore White House spending cut proposals.

Deficit hawks say that the country cannot adequately address the looming fiscal shortfalls without addressing both taxes and spending.

Tough calls ahead

Since the commission is being created by presidential order and not by statute, Congress isn’t legally required to vote on its recommendations. The Senate last month voted down a statutory commission which would have guaranteed that the commission’s recommendations would be given an up-or-down vote in the House and Senate - no amendments, no filibuster.

Nevertheless there is a chance that recommendations from the presidential commission will be given serious consideration. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have given their assurances — in writing — that they will bring the group’s recommendations to the floor for procedural votes before the end of the year. The House will only take them up, however, if they pass the Senate first.

Voting for the commission’s recommendations will likely be a tough pill for both parties. But the idea behind a bipartisan panel is that it can give political cover to lawmakers since no recommendation can be made unless it has the support of 14 of the 18 commissioners.

Whether lawmakers choose to face the challenge of addressing the country’s long-term fiscal challenges head-on is a matter of political will. So far that will has not been in evidence. It remains to be seen whether a bipartisan commission dedicated to the task can help turn that around.

"This is not a Republican or Democratic problem - this is a challenge for America," Bowles said in a White House statement announcing the commission.

Even if the panel’s work can’t push Congress to overcome its inertia on the issue, Simpson said, "The American people are going to know about a lot more where we are headed with an honest appraisal of our situation."  

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"WordPress.com will be back in a minute!" is the message that appeared shortly before 3 p.m. on some portion of the websites using the San Francisco blogging platform, which serves millions of blogs with a combined 72.2 million U.S. visitors and 237.3 million global visitors, according to Quantcast. Service was restored almost half an hour later.

WordPress, which is owned by San Francisco-based Automattic, is the brainchild of wunderkind Matt Mullenwag.

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That’s a total of 315,716 notices compared to 349,519 in December, according to RealtyTrac, which issues a monthly report on foreclosure activity.

Now, the bad news: Filings rose 15% compared to a year ago, and the number of people who actually had their homes repossessed jumped 31% to 87,648.

That year-over-year increase in bank repossessions is what Rick Sharga, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, finds most troubling. "A lot of properties that had been stalled in foreclosure are now going all the way through to auction," he said.

The repossession numbers for January indicate to Sharga that the nation will probably set a new record for homes lost this year. All that needs to happen is for repossession numbers to stay flat the rest of the year.

And the drop in filings might — or might not — be actual good news. The numbers followed a familiar theme: December foreclosure statistics tend to spike as households cope with increased spending preceding the holidays and end of year financial pressures.

"January foreclosure numbers are exhibiting a pattern very similar to a year ago," said James Saccacio, RealtyTrac’s CEO. "If history repeats itself, we will see a surge in the numbers over the next few months as lenders foreclose on delinquent loans where neither the existing loan-modification programs or the new short sale and deed-in-lieu of foreclosure alternatives works."

Most industry observers also expect home prices to decline further this year before they stabilize. That will push more homeowners underwater — meaning they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth — making them less likely or able to pay off their mortgage loans business cards.

Sharga does not think the problem is going away anytime soon. "We’ve settled into a plateau," he said, "with 11 straight months of 300,000-plus filings. I don’t see that changing the rest of the year."

Worst-hit places

Foreclosure filings dropped 18% year-over-year in Nevada, but it still remained the nation’s leading foreclosure state with one household in every 95 receiving at least one filing during the month.

Arizona was the second-worst performer, with a rate of one household for every 129 receiving a filing. Florida and California followed with one in every 187 households.

California, by far the nation’s most populated state, had the highest volume of filings, with 71,817. Florida was second, with 47,069.

The least affected state was South Dakota, which had a total of only 14 foreclosure filings during the month, one household in nearly 26,000. Vermont also maintained a nearly pristine record with just one household in every 20,841 getting hit.

The hardest hit metropolitan area in January was Las Vegas, with a rate of one for every 82 households. Phoenix was next, with one in every 102.

The next six hardest-hit metro areas all are located in California, led by number three Modesto and Stockton, both with one in every 107. Two Florida places made the top 10 list: Cape Coral-Ft. Myers (one in 121) and Orlando (one in 143).

Are you underwater on your mortgage? Money Magazine can help. Send your name, age, hometown and photo to donna_rosato@moneymail.com and you could be profiled in an upcoming story.  

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Gambling revenue at the region’s six casinos fell by 4 percent in the month compared to last year, according to figures out Wednesday from Missouri and Illinois regulators. Every casino saw business fall. Every casino except one, that is.

The President Casino — which the Missouri Gaming Commission moved to shut down in late January for "inadequate declining performance" — was the only casino in Missouri to post an increase in revenue for the year. Its business grew 3 percent, to $1.99 million, though it still earns just one-third of the revenue it did in January 2007.

The President’s owner, Pinnacle Entertainment, is still mulling its options after the Missouri Gaming Commission moved to close the riverboat in July. But a bill to prohibit regulators from closing a casino simply for declining revenue is moving through the Missouri Senate payday loan lenders.

The measure, proposed by Sen. Robin Wright-Jones, D-St. Louis, was voted out of the Ways and Means Committee on Monday and will move to the full Senate for a hearing. A similar version in the House has the support of Speaker Ron Richard.

Elsewhere, revenue dropped at all other area casinos, as gamblers stayed home even more than they normally do in the typically slow month of January.

Lumière Place suffered its first year-over-year decline since opening in late 2007. Revenue was off 6.7 percent at Ameristar St. Charles, the region’s biggest casino, and revenue slumped at Harrah’s in Maryland Heights, the Casino Queen and Argosy Alton Casino.

Overall, the 4 percent drop was the steepest year-over-year decline for St. Louis-area gambling in more than a year.

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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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"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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