Friday morning headlines

Market rebound: Go figure - the Dow is up around 175 points after 90 minutes of trading. That's despite the terrible jobs report and Ford's dismal third-quarter numbers.

Big change at the pump: The average price of regular in the L.A. area is now $2.73 a gallon, which is 28.9 cents less than last week. That's almost four straight months of price declines, according to the Auto Club. The bad news, of course, is that we can't afford to go anywhere.

Layoffs at Mattel: About 1,000 jobs worldwide will be eliminated, or 3 percent of the company's workforce (including 170 positions at the El Segundo headquarters). Mattel has been hit with higher costs for commodities, transportation and labor. Also hurting has been a jump in legal expenses, much of it from the Bratz lawsuit. (Bloomberg, Daily Breeze)

Cubs sale stalls: Tribune Co. may wind up stuck with 50 percent or more of the franchise, the result of stalled sales talks. The WSJ reports that an early plan to sell a 95 percent stake is out the window for now because of the credit crunch. The company had been counting on the proceeds to pare down its debt.

The likelihood of selling a smaller stake raises the question of whether Mr. Zell erred by not pushing for a quick sale after he took control of Tribune. Mr. Zell had said the sale of the Cubs, the stadium and a 25% stake in a regional sports network was a priority when he struck a deal to buy Tribune for $8.2 billion in April 2007.

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By offering to sell such a small stake in the team, Mr. Zell is trying to keep as many bidders in the auction as possible while maintaining the value of the franchise, those people said. He also wants to inject some much-needed cash into Tribune's coffers without incurring a huge tax bill.

School gets big donation: Low-profile money manager David Booth is giving $300 million to the University of Chicago's business school, which has been renamed the Booth School of Business. Booth, a 1971 MBA graduate, is CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors, which is being moved from Santa Monica to Austin. From the LAT:

The investment philosophy of Dimensional Fund Advisors, manager of about $120 billion in mutual funds, is based on the efficient-market theory which maintains that almost no one can be smarter than the market as a whole in the long run. The theory was developed by University of Chicago professor Eugene Fama in the 1960s. Closely held DFA is a "passive" or "index" investor, buying and holding broad portfolios of shares in a bet that returns over time will trump the gains of most "active" managers who try to find stocks with the brightest prospects.