His small apartment on the Disneyland property (above the little red fire station on Main Street USA) hasn't been touched. The hideaway is decorated with antiques, cranberry red glass lampshades, vintage instruments, and a grandfather clock - a "cozy family place," Diane Disney Miller tells the Huffington Post. In case you're wondering, it's not open to the public.

Could you tell me a little bit about the apartment? What your favorite part was, the important features?

It was their refuge, it was their little place. The decor, it was all little things that they picked up when they were traveling around the country various times, and it was decorated by Emile Kuri, who had decorated many of the films, including "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," and it was lovingly done. It was really a very cozy, family place.

Did a lot of people get to go up there, or it was a very private place?

Very private. It was for them. It was their residence there and they would invite people up, if there were special people in the park, mother and dad would go out and they would invite them up. Early, it was during "Davy Crockett," I remember there was some event there that day and Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen were both out there for it, and dad was looking out that window and saw them and he said, "Hey, come on up!"

What is the one thing about him that you think people should know?

No one understands that he was really a dad. He drove my sister and me to school every morning. Every weekend, either Saturday or Sunday, he'd say it was Daddy's day, where he'd take us all day to the local park where they had a beautiful carousel or take us to the studio -- we'd run around the studio on weekends when there was nobody there, we'd go into every animation room and prowl around the lot. He was really a dad. He went to every school function, every Father's Night.

By the way, Disney earnings rose 12 percent in the final quarter of 2011, beating Wall Street estimates. But revenue fell short of expectations. (Bloomberg)

That would be Nouriel Roubini, the sourpuss economist who sounded early warning signs about the extent of the recession and has managed to find something negative to say about the recovery. Until now. Yes, the skies are clearing in Roubini-ville. From CNBC:

"We think the rally has legs," explains Gina Sanchez, Roubini's director of equity and allocation strategy. She tells us that Roubini's firm currently recommends being overweight equities, playing cyclical areas of the market such as technology. "Also we'd take some tilts into staples and telecom to collect yield. And we'd also be overweight ag and livestock. Generally we'd take advantage of the risk rally." She topped off the forecast by adding that investors have months to make money. And that's when this song came to a screeching halt - months.

Enjoy it while you can - he's only bullish until mid-year.

Roubini does not believe global markets are past the point of crisis - not by a long shot. "Liquidity doesn't solve solvency problems - we can either write them off - inflate them or default - those are the only choices," she says. In addition, Roubini remains concerned by payrolls. "We're seeing a lot of positive (headline) numbers in employment but payrolls aren't going anywhere," Sanchez says. "And in the second half Sanchez expects earnings will start to disappoint.

Not to state the obvious, but that's where the money is. Specifically, tax money. California households making more than $200,000 a year contributed almost two-thirds of the state's total tax bill in 2008 (the last year data is available). Because the tax system is so progressive, low- and even middle-income households pay little or no state income tax. In other words, without rich people state government would be effectively wiped out. This is why Sacramento has been so excited about the positive effect that Facebook's IPO will have on state coffers. But there's an obvious flaw in the system: When the economy goes south, high-end personal income taxes plummet and the coffers quickly thin out. I write about California's reliance on the wealthy in the February issue of Los Angeles magazine. Excerpts.:

L.A., of course, is among the nation's most affluent locales. Roughly 41,000 households in the county reported more than $400,000 in adjusted gross income in 2009, according to the Franchise Tax Board. Perhaps more astounding is that postrecession, 20,000 households have a net worth of at least $10 million. This represents the 1 percent--serious money, Beverly Hills-Brentwood-Malibu kind of money. Yet it's considerably less money than before. Financial managers and others I spoke to say that as a rule, portfolios at the highest end shrank anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent. Ballparking, that translates into losses of $40 billion to $80 billion (though some of that money has been made back).

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Revenue from Californians in the $200,000-plus category totaled $25.1 billion in 2000--right before the dot-com downturn--and then fell to $13.8 billion in 2002. By 2007, at the height of the economic bubble, it soared to $33 billion. The next year it collapsed. The state could have controlled such unpredictability by putting aside enough money during the flush years to cover expenditures during the lean ones--commonly referred to as a "rainy day fund." Former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to expand the fund as the economy grew worse, but he had only limited success. The budget deficit, in turn, got bigger and bigger, and state officials were stuck having to make drastic cuts. The long-term solution, overhauling the tax system so that most everyone has a little skin in the game, is impossible because of the fractured political system.

Brown is focusing on interim steps, such as a November ballot measure that would boost the income taxes of wealthy households over the next five years. In other words, he wants to bankroll the economy by depending largely on the 1 percent--the very system that helped get us into this mess.

Her stop in L.A. on October 10 is part of a world tour that will cover 20 cities and five continents. Today's announcement comes just two days after her Super Bowl appearance (probably just a coincidence, right?). It's her first road trip since 2009 - she starts in Tel Aviv in May and wraps up in Australia early next year. Bev Hills-based Live Nation is the packager/promoter. Arthur Fogel, CEO of Live Nation Global Touring, tells Billboard that "If this doesn't work, I'm going into plumbing."

Her last tour, 2008-2009's Sticky & Sweet, grossed $408 million according to Billboard Boxscore, the highest ever for a solo artist and third-highest of all time. Prior to that, Madonna's 2006 Confessions Tour grossed $194 million, according to Boxscore, then the highest ever for a female artist. The 2012 tour will follow the release of Madonna's new album "MDNA," due March 26 on Live Nation Entertainment/Interscope Records, which creates myriad cross-promotional opportunities, according to [Arthur Fogel, CEO of Live Nation Global Touring]. Having the recording and touring (not to mention merchandising and other rights) under one umbrella "gives you the freedom to line up all the different elements to sell tickets and to sell records," he says. "It's as great a set-up as you could have.

Tickets go on sale next Monday at 10 a.m. Prices range from $47 to $368.

The process of collecting and analyzing economic data is occasionally the subject of criticism - and now we have commentator Bruce Krasting taking aim at the mostly positive January employment report. Former Reagan budget director David Stockman, who seconds Krasting's position, writes in an email, "If you spend a little time with these numbers you will know that they are being made up." Via Business Insider:

All of these mainstream economists treat the BLS and BEA data like it's holy writ--when it's evident that the reports are so massaged, estimated, deemed, revised, re-bench marked and seasonally adjusted that any month-to-month change has a decent chance of being noise. What deep secret might they be hiding?

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The mainstream narrative never gets to the trend. In this case, the plain fact is that we are warehousing a larger and larger population of adults who are one way or another living off transfer payments, relatives, sub-prime credit, and the black market. My suspicion is that this negative trend and many others like it get buried by the monthly change chatter from mainstream economists and on bubble vision, and that these monthly deltas are so heavily manipulated as to be almost a made-up reality. Call it the economists' Truman Show.

Stockman's criticism might well be valid, but if the numbers are suspect now, they've certainly been suspect for many years and administrations. In other words, don't take aim at a specific set of figures that provide support to the guy you want to see lose in November.

*From Bloomberg:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the 8.3 percent rate of unemployment in January understates weakness in the U.S. labor market. "It is very important to look not just at the unemployment rate, which reflects only people who are actively seeking work," Bernanke said today in response to questions at a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee in Washington. "There are also a lot of people who are either out of the labor force because they don't think they can find work" or in part- time jobs.

Yes, there are plenty of them in L.A., but many more are located in red or near-red states. In fact, a kind of "dollar store belt" stretches from Ohio and Indiana in the north, through Kentucky and Tennessee to the Gulf Coast. Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana have the largest concentrations of dollar stores. Using data from UCLA grad student Patrick Adler and other researchers, the Atlantic's Richard Florida provides a breakout of the dollar store shopper.

--Overwhelmingly concentrated in low income states.

--Concentrated in states with lower levels of education or human capital.

--Positively correlated with voters who backed McCain in 2008.

--Shoppers are more likely to be obese and smoke.

--Associated with people who say religion plays an important role in their daily life.

From a Colliers research paper:

When the recession began, nearly everyone traded down either out of necessity or a desire to spend more prudently. Many consumers may have expected to resume their pre-recession shopping habits when the economy improved, but the slow recovery has kept them in a cautious mode. Retail is habit-forming, though, and the longer shoppers patronize a particular store or category, the more likely it is to become a permanent shopping destination. Regardless of the pace of recovery, dollar stores are hoping their real estate and merchandising expansions will keep them top-of-mind with consumers for years to come.

Stocks drift lower: Could be another sluggish session, as investors keep an eye on Greece. Dow is down about 30 points.

California says no to bank deal: At least for now. More than 40 states have signed onto a proposed settlement with mortgage servicers, but state Attorney General Kamala Harris is looking for better terms. NY is also holding out. From the LAT:

The long-sought deal would provide relief for homeowners and settle a host of investigations into the foreclosure paperwork practices of the five largest mortgage servicers. The size of California's mortgage market -- about 14% of existing home loans nationwide, according to industry data company CoreLogic Inc. -- makes Harris a major player in the down-to-the wire talks with Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc.

Gas prices inch higher: An average gallon of regular in the L.A. area is $3.849, according to a government survey, up a couple of pennies from last week. Gas is unusually expensive for this time of year.

Another Dodger bidder: He's Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump and publisher of the New York Observer. The Kushner bid is one of at least nine to advance to the second round. From the LAT:

The bid would be funded primarily by the Kushner family, whose net worth is not publicly available. In 2006, the Kushner Cos. bought a Manhattan office complex for $1.8 billion -- at the time, the highest price paid for an office building in the United States, according to the New York Times.

Protesting FAA bill: The Senate finally passed legislation aimed at moving the nation's aviation system into a new era of GPS-dominated air traffic control. But the bill included a controversial provision that would make it difficult for transportation workers to unionize. From the Daily Breeze:

Just hours before the Senate voted, about 200 flight attendants and their supporters held a so-called "Occu-Fly" demonstration at Los Angeles International Airport to urge lawmakers to reject the reauthorization bill. The group opposed the compromise struck up by House Republicans and Senate Democrats that calls for a 50 percent support rate among transportation workers to hold union elections, a significant hike from the current 35 percent threshold.

Brown's tax measure has company: Proponents of two other plans are still seeking to get on the November ballot, despite concern that multiple initiatives might be confusing to voters and result in defeats for everyone. From the Mercury News:

The campaign to raise taxes on millionaires, headed by the California Federation of Teachers, kicked off its signature-gathering campaign with rush-hour banner displays on highway overpasses throughout California. And wealthy civil rights attorney Molly Munger gave a full-throated defense of her separate tax-hike initiative at the California PTA's state conference, promising she'd reach into her own deep pockets to ensure a win on behalf of schools. "We're going to get this on the ballot and we're going to win, too," Munger told reporters after addressing the PTA group.

Cutbacks at Fisker Automotive: Work has been stopped at a former GM plant in Delaware, where the Anaheim-based company plans to build a plug-in hybrid. Fisker says it delayed work because of "ongoing discussions" with the Department of Energy regarding funding. (LAT)

The $100-million-a-year giveaway program isn't providing that much of a return to taxpayers, according to a UCLA study. For ever dollar of tax allocated, the return is about $1.04 - not $1.13, as had been estimated in a study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. (and commissioned by the Motion Picture Association of America). The LAEDC study assumed that productions applying for a subsidy will leave the state if they don't receive one. But UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment said that some productions stay in California even without a tax credit. From the LAT:

Nonetheless, the study, which included a survey of filmmakers, highlights the important role that state tax credits play in determining where they choose to shoot. "Even though there is likely a small benefit to the state, I think the California film and television tax credit is a worthy program because, without it, in the long run, California is likely to lose dominance in an industry that is very important to the state's economy," said Lauren Appelbaum, research director for the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

I'm not surprised there are variances on how much the tax incentive program returns. In other states, cost/benefit studies have also produced conflicting results. It's important to keep in mind that producers can be tempted to stay in California for reasons other than a tax credit. That includes proximity to talent and production facilities.