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It handles a fraction of the passenger load as LAX - without nearly as many hassles. No wonder a new survey ranks it as the best in the U.S. Of course, it's easy to be small and empty.
LA Biz Observed archive
Mark Lacter covered business, the economy and more here from 2006 until his death on Nov. 13, 2013.
The entire LA Biz Observed archive — more than 10,000 blog posts by Mark —
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April 2013
It handles a fraction of the passenger load as LAX - without nearly as many hassles. No wonder a new survey ranks it as the best in the U.S. Of course, it's easy to be small and empty.
The 10-3 vote, part of a proposed airport makeover, came after impassioned arguments on both sides about moving the northernmost runway 260 feet closer closer to residents and businesses in Westchester (but within LAX's existing property.)
Talk about misinformation: The guy accuses me of taking pot shots at him for his column on the Koch brothers possibly buying the LAT. But I never even mentioned Meyerson or his column.
The paper's Monday-Friday numbers are up 6 percent, to 653,868, for the October through March reporting period. But print fell 11.5 percent, to a stunningly low 432,873.
Despite the FAA signing off on Boeing's battery fix to its 787 Dreamliner, the airlines face a PR puzzle in convincing passengers that the cutting-edge jet is safe to fly.
Personal spending is up a healthy 3.2 percent for the first three months of the year, and yet hiring, along with the overall economy, continues to lag. Makes no sense, right?
At this stage of the recovery the pace should be picking up, not slowing down, especially with an unemployment rate that's still running over 10 percent.
Congress has decided, forcefully and unequivocally, that air travelers are more important to them than poor kids and old folks.
While you do have to wonder how Brookfield Office Properties intends to handle all that space, the real estate company has assets of more than $20 billion - and downtown L.A. office towers don't often become available.
The little devil in me would almost like to see the Tribune guys do the deal with the Kochs and have all those self-anointed arbiters of journalistic propriety raise holy hell. Almost.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings seems to have a knack for identifying what viewers want (or don't want), and he's out with an 11-page essay on where he believes TV is headed. One of the big takeaways: Apps will replace channels.
It's axiomatic that this kind of construction (on the 405 freeway) is always a longer and pricier proposition than those smiling politicians promise at ground-breaking ceremonies.
The Anaheim-based automaker hasn't yet filed for bankruptcy, but they're already filings obits. Another DeLorean, they say, except worse because the federal government was knee-deep in Fisker's financing.
The early reviews on Politico's hit piece on Executive Editor Jill Abramson aren't great. Or maybe the reaction is less about the report itself, which relied heavily on unnamed sources, and more about the crybabies at the paper.
More recently it's been known as the Gibson Amphitheatre, but whatever the name it's being closed to make way for the new Harry Potter attraction at the Universal theme park.
Let there be no mistake: City government remains a mess. It's still bloated in some areas and virtually bankrupt in others. There's been no rhyme or reason to the many personnel and service cuts over the past five years, and zero willingness by elected officials to drill into the decayed and sometimes corrupt infrastructure.
No doubt there is some sort of connection, but flights get delayed for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with Washington's sequestration business.
Latest bit of bad news: Starter Chad Billingsley will undergo Tommy John elbow surgery and is out through the start of next season.
Credit higher home prices, an improving economy, and new foreclosure regulations.
What was Reese Witherspoon thinking when she put that condescending query to an Atlanta cop during a DUI stop involving her husband, the agent James Toth?
City officials are betting that the numbers will keep improving next year, and that will mean more tax revenue for the city. But are the projections realistic?
Sure she can - at least in theory. But making up such a large margin requires a charged, dynamic race, and the Greuel-Garcetti face-off has been anything but.
Most of the NY-bound flights are late this morning, not a great sign as the airlines cope with a reduced complement of air traffic controllers.
A central question is whether the Tribune Co. board will only accept offers for the entire newspaper group or consider selling off the properties in pieces.
Boston bombings, an explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant, poisoned letters sent to President Obama and a Mississippi senator, the arrest of a couple in connection with the murder of a prosecutor - this has been a very strange week.
Service was suspended in January after several incidents involving the plane's lithium-ion batteries, one of which resulted in fire. Service is expected to resume in a few weeks.
The state's unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent in March, down from 9.6 percent the previous month and the lowest level since late 2008. Also, 25,500 jobs were added. If only the rest of the country were growing that well...
The basic explanation is that U.S. demand is weak and oil supply seems plentiful. Assuming that refinery operations remain online, state and local prices should be stable to lower in the weeks leading up to the Memorial Day weekend.
That's when the FAA begins to implement furloughs involving its air traffic controllers. Arrivals at LAX will drop to 48 an hour from 80, a 40 percent cut.
That would be the media's hand-wringing over how a few news outlets screwed up by reporting that an arrest had been made in the Boston bombing. Man, I must say that journalists can be a constipated lot - so full of themselves and their high-and-mighty attitudes about news gathering.
This tells you a lot about the imbalance in housing these days: L.A. County had only a 2.7-month supply of homes in March. The normal level is six months.
The big exhibitors seem to be holding their own financially, but they're living on borrowed time, what with movie-goers finding alternatives to a night at the multiplex.
So call me nutty, but I've always been a little suspicious when "the human condition," "pushing boundaries," "unconventional structure," and references to "My Dinner With André" all wind up in the same press release.
The ball being the future of the franchise, which is basically entering a transitional, post-Kobe stage - and that's regardless of who wins tonight's pivotal game against Houston.
March's median price was up 23.4 percent, to $345,000, the highest level in more than four-and-a-half years, according to Dataquick (prices were a bit higher in L.A. County).
British parent Tesco is finally calling it quits on its neither-here-nor-there U.S. chain that never gained much traction. It'll take a few months to finalize an exit plan.
Molly Bloom, who organized high-stakes poker games in the L.A. area that allegedly involved the likes of Leonard Dicaprio, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Macaulay Culkin, and Alex Rodriguez, was charged with operating an illegal gambling business.
What a mess - the reservations system, otherwise known as Sabre, has been shut down this morning and now comes word that the FAA has grounded all flights until 2 p.m. L.A. time.
They're rare, often spectacular, and come out of nowhere. But security expert Bruce Schneier reminds everybody that there are other things in this world far more dangerous and which get little notice.
We're talking about a revolution in the way people are consuming content. That's the real story behind Dish Network's unsolicited bid for Sprint Nextel.
Lots of luck figuring out how she would handle the city's budget shortfall. With Wendy, it's all talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk - and say as little as possible.
Stocks were down sharply all day (big drops in the price of gold and other commodities, propelled by worse-than-expected data from China), but the decline worsened in the last hour on news of the bomb blasts in Boston.
All the usual precautions -- LAX is increasing patrols and using more bomb-sniffing dogs, while an increased police presence is planned for tonight's Dodger-Padre game at the Stadium.
Turns out that there's a shortage of younger health care workers willing to care for the elderly and disabled.
Of all the stocks they could have played with, why choose the widely watched Herbalife? You can imagine the honchos at KPMG wincing at Scott London's actions. Is this our lead auditor in L.A.?
At last a little outside-the-box thinking in this dullest of mayoral campaigns. It came during last night's hour-long debate when City Councilman Eric Garcetti suggested offering a $1 million prize to anyone who could offer the best solutions to L.A.'s traffic problems.
Assuming the city signs off on all the approvals, the storied venue will be shut down in late May for a major tech overhaul (new screen, sound system and digital projection system.)
The city claims that Los Angeles World Airports, the operating authority for LA/Ontario International Airport, has neglected and mismanaged the facility.
The reality is not many people feel the need to have an electric car, and when there's not much demand, fledgling industries are pretty much stuck.
The man who traded on information provided by former KPMG partner Scott London has been identified as Bryan Shaw, co-owner of Shaw Diamond, a small jewelry wholesaler in Encino.
Now it turns out that the FBI photographed L.A. accountant Scott London as a friend set him up by handing him an envelope containing $5,000, the LAT is reporting. Meantime, the guy keeps talking. But why?
What some consider to be the nation's best-run movie theater chain has signed a letter of intent to open an eight-screen multiplex in downtown L.A.
Not that it means much now, being a lame duck and all, but the mayor said this morning that the biggest mistake of his eight years in office was backing a deal that gave city workers raises of as much as 25 percent.
Today's 128-point gain puts the blue-chip index at a record-high 14,802, which is up almost 13 percent year to date. The big pullback that many investors have been waiting for keeps getting put off.
This latest round, which had been telegraphed in the trades for several days, will result in about 150 job cuts at Walt Disney Studios.
The increases are so sizable - and across so many categories - that you'd have to conclude that the entertainment industry is off to a strong year.
I'm not sure this is what white-collar defense attorneys would typically advise, but ousted KPMG partner Scott London said he regrets sharing inside information with a third party, though he stresses that the firm "had nothing to do with it."
Ah yes, the place where traffic never snarls, new businesses always flourish, schools keep getting better, and the people are .... well, gosh, darn, they're just as happy and friendly as can be.
He's a bit more visible than many accounting guys who disappear into the woodwork, but not much - certainly not nearly enough to get a slant on what's going on.
Ron Johnson was great at Target and Apple, but the circumstances at those companies were far different than what he faced at Penney. It happens.
KPMG says one of its senior partners passed on the information to a third party who traded in several West Coast companies.
One sure-fire way of telling a company is in trouble: The board issuing a statement saying the company is not in trouble.
It's the media giant's saber-rattling response to the startup Aereo, which pulls over-the-air signals from local stations (including the Fox network lineup) and then streams them to its subscribers for a fraction of what cable or satellite services cost.
That's enough to get his name on the museum's theater. The $25 million is the largest commitment to date for the $300 million capital campaign (more than half the goal has been met).
The two candidates for mayor have to toot their horns about something, and if it's not how they stand on an actual issue, it might as well be a race to see who is the most popular kid in class.
That's quite a discount from the $2 billion that Hulu's owners were asking for two years ago. Then again, the digital world has gotten more complicated and competitive.
Company that operates more than more than 2,000 portrait studios in the U.S., many of them in department stores, abruptly shuts down, leaving workers and customers in a lurch.
Here's one more nail for the OC-based electric car company, which was unable to find a sucker... er, partner to infuse more money into the place.
A frustrating pattern continues for the third consecutive year: Strong numbers in January and February, and then off the cliff in March. Only 88,000 payroll jobs were added in the U.S. last month, way, way below estimates.
All kinds of tributes to film critic Roger Ebert, who died today after a long bout with cancer, but one common theme is how he encouraged young writers interested in film criticism.
The Pulitzer Prize winner had been battling cancer for years, He was 70.
The dirty little secret in the soap powder game is that consumers use way too much than required - and that presents an unintended consequence of introducing pre-measured pods.
Lots of CEOs are making big money, largely because of the Wall Street rally. "I'm shell-shocked. I can't believe this can go on," says Vanguard founder John Bogle, who is a long-term critic of CEO pay.
In case you haven't been following, Ontario has become an airline wasteland - and where there are no flights, there are no revenues.
Seems like a long time ago when two women living in the Valley, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, came up with a casual fashion brand that made velour tracksuits, along with the famous Juicy logo, a not-so-subtle fashion statement.
"I got a call from my mom today," he says on tonight's show. "She says, 'Well, David, I see you didn't get the Tonight Show again.' "
Not too long ago condo developers were frantically converting their units to rentals because of the disastrous housing market. Nowadays, there aren't enough condos to meet demand.
Elon Musk is making a big deal about his car company being in the black for the first quarter - and indeed it's an important development. But the numbers are a bit misleading.
The late-night host signed off on NBC's plan to have Jimmy Fallon take over early next year, right after the Winter Olympics. The network also announced that the show will be moving to NY from Burbank. "This time it feels right," said Leno.
A fine newspaper has gone underground, and I have to wonder whether we'll ever hear from it again.
March was a very good month for GM, Ford, and Chrysler - and further proof that the recovery is moving along at a more than decent clip.
it's a tricky issue to take a definitive stand on, which makes the city councilman's announcement kind of refreshing in this often namby-pamby campaign.
It's been almost a year since city officials filed for protection, and creditors are still griping about whether the city was actually insolvent. On Monday, a U.S. bankruptcy judge said that Stockton officials were negotiating in good faith and that major creditors weren't.
Not every piece of California business needs to originate from a California company, but it does seem odd that the California Association of Realtors is using a Philadephia-based ad agency for its news series of spots.
The three stinking rich investors taking bets on the stock price of L.A.-based Herbalife are all making money - despite the fact that two of them are wagering that shares will go up and the third is insisting that shares will go down. But how can that happen?
Mark Lacter
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.The multi-talented Mark Lacter
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