divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/89165?ns=guardianpageName=Money%3A+Tracker+warning+ahead+of+rate+decisionch=Moneyc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Mortgages+%28Money%29%2CProperty%2CBorrowing+and+debt%2CBanks+and+building+societies%2CMoney%2CHousing+market+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CUK+news%2CInterest+rates+%28Money%29%2CInterest+rates+%28Business%29c5=Personal+Finance%2CInvestments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Staff+and+agenciesc7=2008_12_03c8=1128025c9=articlec10=GUc11=Moneyc12=Mortgagesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FMoney%2FMortgages" width="1" height="1" //divpAt least half a million tracker a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"mortgage/a customers may not see their repayments fall in line with this week's expected a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/interestrates"interest rate/a cut, it was predicted today./ppThat figure could more than double if the UK's largest lender, Halifax, implements a clause in its home loans allowing it to change borrowers' rates./ppThe Bank of England's monetary policy committee (MPC) is widely expected to reduce the base rate by between 0.5% and 1% when it announces the result of its two-day meeting tomorrow. But clauses in some tracker mortgages will mean lenders no longer have to pass on the cut to their customers, while those on standard variable rate (SVR) deals are also unlikely to benefit from the full reduction./ppDespite the fact that tracker deals automatically move up and down in line with the base rate, some have so-called floors or collars which state that lenders will stop passing on rate cuts once the base rate falls below a certain level./ppOn Nationwide deals a collar kicks in when a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/nov/01/mortgages-property"official interest rates fall below 2.75%/a, while on a Skipton or Yorkshire building society tracker the cut off point is 3%./ppRay Boulger, senior technical manager at mortgage broker John Charcol, said up to 1.2 million people - a sizeable proportion of the estimated 3.9 million who have tracker deals - may not see the full reduction passed on to them./ppHe said up to 600,000 people had tracker mortgages with lenders such as Nationwide and Skipton, while up to a further 600,000 have a tracker deal with Halifax, which may choose to exercise its option not to pass on the rate cut in full./ph2Halifax/h2pThe small print in Halifax's mortgage gives it the option not to pass on all or any cut once the base rate falls below 3%. It tells customers: "We can also change the tracker margin to your disadvantage, but only at a time when the tracker base rate is less than 3% per year. /pp"By 'to your disadvantage' we mean increasing the tracker margin where it is positive or zero, reducing the tracker margin where it is negative, or changing a negative tracker margin to a positive one." /ppHowever, comments made yesterday by a representative of the City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), suggest the bank could be in trouble if it a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/dec/02/mortgages-banks"tries to implement the clause/a./ppJon Pain, the FSA's retail markets managing director, told the Council of Mortgage Lenders annual conference that while tracker interest rate collars could be a legitimate term of a mortgage, "it can only be if it is clear and unambiguous to the consumer, and is consistently and prominently spelt out in the initial KFI [key facts illustration] and offer document throughout the sales process"./ppA spokesman for the FSA said it would not comment on individual companies, but it seems likely Halifax will be under pressure to pass on any reduction in full. /ppIf it doesn't, Boulger said it could face a legal challenge from borrowers. "I had a call last week from one borrower with a large Halifax lifetime tracker mortgage who said he would do just that," he said./ph2Standard variable rates/h2pBorrowers on SVRs are also unlikely to benefit from the full reduction. Lloyds TSB, which also lends under the Cheltenham Gloucester brand, is the only major lender which links its SVR to the Bank base rate. /ppIts terms and conditions pledge that its SVR will never be more than 2% above the base rate, which means it could fall as low as 4% if the MPC does opt for a full 1% cut./ppLast month, a number of major lenders were quick to reduce their SVR by the full 1.5% after coming under pressure from the government, but many others only passed on smaller cuts./ppOverall, 87 out of 95 lenders with an SVR passed on some of the reduction, but 57 did not pass it on in full, with some only reducing their rates by 0.25%. The Woolwich, Barclays' lending arm, has not passed on anything./ppLouise Cuming, head of mortgages at moneysupermarket.com, said: "If we see a 1% cut to [an overall rate of] 2%, it will be very, very difficult for lenders to pass that on./pp"They have to have an eye on profitability and 2008 has been about lenders wanting to get profit rather than volume lending."/ppBoulger agreed, saying that if rates were cut by 1% he would expect lenders to pass on between 0.25% to 0.5% to SVR customers, unless the government puts pressure on the major lenders to pass on the cut in full again./ppIf the MPC cuts interest rates by 0.5% and lenders pass on the reduction in full it would save borrowers with a typical £150,000 mortgage around £43 a month, while a 1% reduction would reduce monthly repayments by £85./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"Mortgages/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/property"Property/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/debt"Borrowing debt/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/banks"Banks and building societies/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/housingmarket"Housing market/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/interestrates"Interest rates/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/interestrates"Interest rates/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/vFowmOJr7LLH_KbczF13xURKTeE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/vFowmOJr7LLH_KbczF13xURKTeE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=49359696796c7a9c00cbb5bcmaxX=200maxY=131" border="0" alt="JayAdelsonDigg.jpg" title="JayAdelsonDigg.jpg" width="200" height="131" /After years of throwing itself after potential buyers (Google, Fox, Al Gore) a href="http://valleywag.com/378994/kevin-rose-has-basically-plowed-through-everybody"like some kind of partyboy startup founder/a, social news site Digg has a new plan: Keep costs low and turn a profit./p pWe're skeptical and figure the company has decided to play-hard-to-get and tidy up for a future buyer because it can't find one right now. But a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2008/tc2008121_004686.htm?campaign_id=yhoo"emBusinessWeek/em's Spencer Ante says no/a. He reports:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"In an interview with citeBusinessWeek/cite, Digg Chief Executive Officer Jay Adelson says the popular news aggregation Web site is no longer for sale. The focus of the company is to build an independent business that reaches profitability as quickly as possible./p pAdelson told Ante he expects Digg will triple its revenues before next year and turn a profit within two years -- "hopefully happen within a year." Here's how Adelson plans to do it:/p ul liAnte says Digg will have to "strongdial back some of its expansion plans/strong." Says Adelson: "Now I am pressured to keep costs reasonable and focus more on the top-line revenue, which we really haven't done ever." After its last round of funding Digg said it would double headcount before December 2009. Maybe not now.br //li listrongInsert /strongstrongads into its RSS feeds./strong/li liAnte says Digg is "on the verge" of improving its search and strongsell ads against search results./strong /li liDigg is "within a month of closing a deal with a mobile ad provider to strongsell more ads on cell phones,"/strongsays Ante.strongbr //strong/li listrongBuy Digg clones to expand internationally./strong "There are Digg clones around the world in every country," says Adelson. "I could go into those markets and clean up those sites. If I needed more capital to do a deal, I could probably do it." /li liAdd new features to strongmake users click more/strong./li /ul pstrongSee Also:/stronga href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/digg-still-not-sold-raises-28-7-million"br /Digg Still Not Sold, Raises $28.7 Million/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/bciynyQAykbeMZe1xJ7Eou45PEM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/bciynyQAykbeMZe1xJ7Eou45PEM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=tHq6nIy7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=tHq6nIy7" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=SsOheEPF"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=X2HaZuc1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=u2NdaopV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=u2NdaopV" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=RbDTB8Nk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=lk5TjfTi"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=XWvbA5VK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=y5xpai14"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/nbgwM_Ho2bE" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/government-legal/" rel="tag"Government/Legal/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/ford/" rel="tag"Ford/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/gm/" rel="tag"GM/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a/pimg vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" align="right" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/onedollar_opta.jpg" /Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli was the only auto exec who readily offered to work for a buck if it meant securing federal aid from Congress in the form of bridge loans. Ford CEO Alan Mulally famously told the politicians sitting before him, "I think I'm OK where I am." We would be OK too with the tens of millions of dollars that Mulally has received as compensation so far from Ford. GM CEO Rick Wagoner was described as being "demur" when asked about lowering his salary to a $1. br /br /Now it seems that the boy from Boeing and the Ricker are reconsidering their previous reluctance to take a pay cut. The Detroit Free Press is reporting that both CEOs are prepared to tell Congress on Thursday that they would be willing to work for $1 if it meant getting the approval of Congress for federal loans. br /br /Congress had previously demanded the each of the Detroit 3 automakers submit a detailed plan to Congress outlining how they would use the federal loans to return to profitability and ensure the long term viability of their companies. Ford is the first to turn their homework in, which reveals the Blue Oval expects to be a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/"making money again in 2011/a and will have an a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/"all-electric sedan/a on sale by then. All it's asking in return is a $9 billion slice of the $25 billion federal aid package that would only be used if necessary. Ford already has enough credit to survive through 2010 and only envisions needing the fed's money if something happens to either GM or Chrysler.br /br /[Source: a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20081202/BUSINESS01/81202050/1014/rss13"Detroit Free Press/a]p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/mulally-and-wagoner-reconsider-1-salary-for-federal-aid/"Mulally and Wagoner reconsider $1 salary for federal aid/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:27:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/mulally-and-wagoner-reconsider-1-salary-for-federal-aid/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1388057/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/mulally-and-wagoner-reconsider-1-salary-for-federal-aid/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z0qRvKccUCTZo-Er87AHserSCx0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z0qRvKccUCTZo-Er87AHserSCx0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=tRRqEyum"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=tRRqEyum" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=octZeaLU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=octZeaLU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/fqTI3RKVzuM" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hybrids/" rel="tag"Hybrids/Alternative/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/government-legal/" rel="tag"Government/Legal/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/green/" rel="tag"Green/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hirings-firings/" rel="tag"Hirings/Firings/Layoffs/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/ford/" rel="tag"Ford/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a/pimg vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/back_in_black_optford.jpg" alt="" /In just a few short days, Ford and its two cross-town rivals will be required to lay down a plan before Congress that points a clear path towards profitability and global competitiveness. These days, any automaker's future will involve plenty of greenery, and as the first of the three automakers to submit its comprehensive business plan to the lawmakers in DC, Ford's plan includes electric vehicles slated for launch starting in 2010. First up will be a new electric van for commercial use, followed in 2011 by a new electric sedan. Other highlights include U.S. versions of the European-designed automobiles that are currently making their way across the pond, the sale of all its private jets, further plant closings and continued negotiations with the UAW.br /br /So, what kind of money are we talking? The Blue Oval's plan calls for a bridge loan of $9 million to be made available, though it hopes it doesn't need it. You may remember that Ford bet Henry's farm already when Mulally first took office at the automaker, so it's already got a load of financed cash on hand to weather the current stormy climate through 2010. What's more, Ford hopes to get $5B of loans under the already-promised $25B for fuel efficient cars. On the negative side, the plan suggests that a bankruptcy of either General Motors or Chrysler would be enough to cripple Ford's operations. Barring that, even with a forecast of flat sales of 12.5 million units per year for the next three years for the U.S. auto industry, Ford believes it's on its way back to profitability as early as 2011. Check out the Blue Oval's official press release detailing its proposed plan to Congress after the jump.br /br /[Source: Ford]pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emFord claims to be back in black by 2011, release EV sedan same year/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/"Ford claims to be back in black by 2011, release EV sedan same year/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:58:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1388704/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/ford-claims-to-be-back-in-the-black-in-2011-release-ev-sedan-sa/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/sOcomEZGJwTmQrTY5bu66WuW2ek/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/sOcomEZGJwTmQrTY5bu66WuW2ek/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=MXXx2U6D"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=MXXx2U6D" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=8nIuCOy1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=8nIuCOy1" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/-ELRWJyzCLY" height="1" width="1"/

The battle against spammers rages on, both in the a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081119/0351542884.shtml"tech/a and a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081124/1616292938.shtml"legal/a worlds, but sadly, with a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081020/1834542597.shtml"little/a success. Despite the advances in anti-spam technology and spammers getting sued, shutting down and having their service providers cut off their operations, the torrent of spam hitting email inboxes continues unabated. While there are several anti-spam tools that may be good enough for most users, it's clear that a technological solution alone to stopping spam remains far off. But perhaps the biggest hope is to take aim at spammers' profitability, as their margins a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7740511.stm"look a little vulnerable/a. A BBC story cites some a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081110/1414372789.shtml"earlier research/a that says spammers sending out 350 million messages a month can earn roughly $100 per day, while the entire massive Storm botnet could generate around $2 million per year. Neither is a figure to sniff at, but nor are they really huge sums of money -- suggesting that frustrating spammers by disrupting their services and raising costs, as well as trying to hold down responses even more, could diminish the profitability of spam to the point where it's no longer attractive. Ironically, the rise in spam plays a part, too, since spammers are in essence competing with each other for users' attention and clicks, so the more spam that gets sent, the worse the response rate for the individual message or campaign (for instance, the researchers' response rate was less than 0.00001%). But the underlying issue remains the fact that people click on spam and a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20050712/1836212.shtml"buy stuff/a through it. Changing that might be even harder than developing the perfect spam filter.p style="border-top: 1px #aaaaaa dashed;padding-top: 5px;margin-top: 10px;"emCarlo Longino is an expert at the a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Insight Community/a. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"click here/a./em/p br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081125/0822502946.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081125/0822502946.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081125/0822502946op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a6b19a87308e78bfa366b6177e9b2ce0p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a6b19a87308e78bfa366b6177e9b2ce0p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a6b19a87308e78bfa366b6177e9b2ce0" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=Svogo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=Svogo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/472505874" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=4900a23c796c7afc0024ed1fmaxX=290maxY=155" border="0" alt="Titanic.jpg" title="Titanic.jpg" width="290" height="155" /The dean of newspaper analysts, Alan Mutter, says that a href="http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/12/where-extreme-cuts-may-come-at-papers.html"demolished newspaper companies are finally preparing to make extreme cost cuts to save themselves/a. The level of these cuts will vary depending on the speed with which the companies' revenues disappear, but at least the industry appears to finally be moving beyond denial:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"[P]ublishers are systematically reviewing every aspect of their businesses with an eye to saving a buck any way they can.br /br /They are preparing cascading contingency plans that can be implemented according to the degree that sales might decline. The industry's revenue crisis is detailed a href="http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/11/newspapers-eye-extreme-cuts-as-crisis.html"here/a in the first installment of this series... Here's a glimpse of what may lie ahead:br /br /The list of potential expense reductions includes strongsqueezing staffing, shuttering bureaus, carving out layers of middle management, telescoping multiple sections of the paper into one, tightening newshole, scrapping syndicated features and wire serevices, axing op-ed pages and book sections and eliminating classified ads on certain days of the week./strongbr /br /In an example of what could become commonplace, the Newark Star-Ledger stronga href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9415AC00show_article=1"reduced headcount/a by almost half in the fall by threatening to close the paper by the end of the year if its cost-cutting targets were not met/strong. The reduction was enabled through enriched severance benefits and concessions from labor unions throughout the plant.br /br /Another alternative will be to strongask employees to accept voluntary pay cuts, to agree to work longer hours, and to ease manning requirements and other work rules. Bonuses may be reduced or eliminated/strong for the fortunate few who still would have qualified for them.br /br /Publishers will strongoutsource anything that makes sense, including ad sales, ad composition, copyediting, page layout, printing, customer service, fleet maintenance and delivery/strong.br /br /Many newspapers will look to strongselling their historic downtown edifices/strong to raise operating capital and repay debt. If they can't outsource printing, they will move their presses to the warehouse district of town and relocate the administrative, ad and editorial staffs to rental space in class-B locations.br /br /Continuing a trend that began this year, publishers will be seeking to strongpartner with neighboring papers /strongto save costs on ad sales, content generation, printing and delivery.br /br /If the economy deteriorates too far too fast, partnerships of convenience may give way tostrong outright mergers/strong in markets shared by multiple newspapers.br /br /This would be especially likely in cities where one or both of the properties is financially distressed, enabling the publishers to argue that the traditional antitrust objections to such transactions should be waived in the interests of preserving the editorial voice of at least one surviving publication. To make a merger more palatable to regulatrs, the publishers might agree for a while to have the surviving paper continue printing some features carried over from the one that does out of business...br /br /Things could get particularly dicey for individual, free-standing publishing companies like the Star Tribune, Boston Herald and Philadelphia Media Holdings, the latter of which may find it increasingly difficult to sustain the publication of both the Inquirer and Daily News.br /br /Even though this is the worst time in history to be selling or financing a newspaper company, several operators, including Copley, Cox and Journal Register, have put publications on the block. Journal Register, which was among the first of the many precariously financed publishers to default on its debt, has stated that it will close papers it cannot sell.br /br /Companies like GateHouse Media, Lee Enterprises, McClatchy, MediaNews, Morris, New York Times Co., Philadelphia Media, Star Tribune and Tribune are obligated to improve their profitability in the coming years to repay the principal and interest on money they have borrowed to make acquisitions.br /br /In the event the publishers are unable to meet those obligations, their creditors will move in to slash expenses; attempt to sell off assets to generate cash, and take every other step necessary to sustain the properties as going concerns.br /br /This will last as long as the newspapers continue to generate operating profits. But it is highly unlikely in this environment that any creditor would provide additional cash to prop up a money-losing newspaper./p pRead more on a href="http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/12/where-extreme-cuts-may-come-at-papers.html"Reflections of a Newsosaur /a/p pstrongSee Also: /strongbr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/cash-crunch-at-new-york-times-nyt-400-million-due-in-may"New York Times Cash Crunch: $400 Million Due In May/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/m9iM9z-k-ILLsnAaNM84jKtOaK4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/m9iM9z-k-ILLsnAaNM84jKtOaK4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=2MwUdKkb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=2MwUdKkb" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=IpcvDAxc"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=97UzrSK0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=vjzbAlXv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=vjzbAlXv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Lh6c3FsQ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=WwGrign0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=EI8IsfM1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=dYFWroBG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/UTwS4YHez34" height="1" width="1"/