Number of homes entering foreclosure drops 22.1% to six-year low

California's foreclosure crisis eased considerably during the final quarter of last year, with the number of homes entering foreclosure dropping to a six-year low.

The steep decline, accompanied by a similar drop in home repossessions, clears the path for a quickened pace of recovery this year. Fewer foreclosures on the market should lead to higher home prices and a healthier real estate market.

"Ultimately, fewer foreclosures means an even tighter market, which means a more rapid recovery," said Christopher Thornberg, a principal at Beacon Economics. "I see very little to forestall the real estate market this year."

The real estate research firm DataQuick reported a 22.1% decline in default notices during the final three months of 2012 compared with the previous quarter — and a 37.9% drop from a year earlier. A total of 38,212 default notices were logged on California houses and condominiums last quarter, the lowest number since the final quarter of 2006. A default notice is the first formal step in the state's foreclosure process.

Since the number of new foreclosure cases peaked in early 2009, experts and analysts have feared a second wave of home loan defaults flooding the market. Three years later, that appears unlikely as banks turn to foreclosure alternatives and home prices rise.

"We are past the peak of this," said Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

A steadily improving economy has helped ease homeowner woes. And the vast number of underwater borrowers — those owing more on their homes than they're worth — have continued to pay their mortgages instead of walking away. Rising home prices should help more underwater homeowners come up for air, allowing them to regain equity and sell their homes if they run into financial trouble.

"Home values increased through most of 2012, and the rate of increase picked up toward the end of the year," DataQuick President John Walsh said in a news release. "That means fewer and fewer homeowners are underwater."

California's median home price rose 22.4% last quarter to $300,000.

California has also been able to work through its foreclosure problem faster than other states, in part because foreclosures take place largely outside the courtroom, said Celia Chen, a housing economist with Moody's Economy.com. That means California has not been bogged down with the same level of paperwork issues and delays that states such as Florida or New York have experienced.

California has also benefited from economic growth from Asian trade and from the technology industry centered around Silicon Valley. Indeed, the technology-rich Bay Area's declines in default notices outpaced both the statewide drops and those in every other region.

Those foreclosed homes that are hitting the market are being snapped up by investors to either rent or flip. Investors bought 42% of all homes sold at foreclosure auctions statewide last quarter, according to DataQuick.

Big hedge funds have become so interested in cheaply priced homes that flippers are now increasingly searching for homes in the $400,000 to $600,000 range throughout Los Angeles County, said Robert Fragoso, executive vice president for Anchor Loans, which makes short-term loans to investors. The new interest among renovators in pricier homes should also push up prices. Already, some homes are selling for more than the asking price, Fragoso said.

"I am seeing the inventory levels right now at very, very, very low rates, especially when you are talking about the product that has already been remodeled," he said. "We are getting multiple offers on almost everything within days of it hitting the market."

Banks have been increasingly averse to foreclosure because state and federal regulators increased scrutiny on the process, which led to huge settlements as well as new laws. Major lenders have now stepped up short sales and other kinds of loan modifications to deal with troubled borrowers.

Although the foreclosure crisis has abated, the number of people losing their homes remains at a very high level compared with historical averages, said Paul Leonard, California director for the Center for Responsible Lending. Those entering foreclosure are most likely people suffering from California's still tough economy or those with the most limited resources. Aid programs and reforms by federal and state authorities are still needed, he said.

"One has to be very cautious," Leonard said, "even as we have seen substantial declines in the overall levels of default and foreclosure."

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

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Let’s Welcome Back Hockey with This ESPN Commercial

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:  

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Hockey, schmockey. As a whole, the Atlantic Wire staff is sort of ambivalent that the NHL is finally back. (Our Canadian correspondent, however, is thrilled.) But you know what we are thankful for? The ESPN commercial reminding us that the NHL is finally back: 

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These people are awesome (and, hey, maybe some of them play hockey):

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People are awesome, and also quite strange. Like this guy, who offers the world a video review of the Astor CB-100 (totally SFW), and the 33,000+ views his video has already gotten:

And finally, these are ponies in sweaters. Ponies in sweaters, people:

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Sundance stars sound off on gun violence in film

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — The Sundance Film Festival isn't home to many shoot-em-up movies, but action-oriented actors at the festival are facing questions about Hollywood's role in American gun violence.

Guy Pearce, Alexander Skarsgard, Kristen Bell and director Roger Corman were among those discussing the issue at the annual independent-film showcase.

Pearce is in Park City, Utah, to support the family drama "Breathe In," but he's pulled plenty of imaginary triggers in violent films such as "Lockdown" and "Lawless." He says Hollywood may make guns seem more appealing to the broader culture, but there are vast variations in films' approach to violence.

"Hollywood probably does play a role," Pearce said. "It's a broad spectrum though. There are films that use guns flippantly, then there are films that use guns in a way that would make you never want to look at a gun ever again — because of the effect that it's had on the other people in the story at the time. So to sort of just say Hollywood and guns, it's a broad palette that you're dealing with, I think. But I'm sure it does have an effect. As does video games, as do stories on the news. All sorts of things probably seep into the consciousness."

Skarsgard, who blasted away aliens in "Battleship," agreed that Hollywood has some responsibility for how it depicts violence on-screen.

"When (NRA executive director) Wayne LaPierre blames it on Hollywood and says guns have nothing to do with it, there is a reason," he said. "I mean, I'm from Sweden. . We do have violent video games in Sweden. My teenage brother plays them. He watches Hollywood movies. We do have insane people in Sweden and in Canada. But we don't have 30,000 gun deaths a year.

"Yes, there's only 10 million people in Sweden as opposed to over 300 (million) in the United States. But the numbers just don't add up. There are over 300 million weapons in this country. And they help. They do kill people."

Bell, who stars in in the dramatic competition film "The Lifeguard," said the issue is far more complicated than simply blaming Hollywood.

"There's a lot of things that are emphasized in our entertainment industry as plot points or interesting shorelines, but none of them seem to be as affecting the American public as the gun control," she said. "So I don't necessarily know that it's blamable on Hollywood, though I think there's a certain responsibility and we need to re-examine everything that we do."

Bell's co-star, Mamie Gummer, said she's often "perturbed" by on-screen violence.

"I really hate Quentin Tarantino's movies generally, and I thought 'Django Unchained' especially was really tough to bear in light of everything," she said. "Just the deep romanticizing of it, the fetishizing of it is creepy to me. Or maybe it's lost on me. I don't enjoy it."

Bell doesn't mind seeing violent films but advocates for greater awareness of mental illness and for stricter gun control.

"It's such a paradoxical issue. Because those movies don't bother me at all. And it doesn't bother me when I see people shoot guns. Yet I'm fully for more gun control in reality," she said. "Because I'm smart enough to recognize what's reality and what's not. And I think that's an issue that needs to be addressed... A lot of the people that are picking up guns have an inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. And I think that's probably — though I do support gun control, a tighter gun control than we have now — that's an issue that deserves to be addressed because that's probably the root of it."

Ellen Page, who co-stars with Skarsgard in "The East," noted that gun restrictions are much more pervasive in her home country, Canada.

"You can't buy some crazy assault rifle that is made for the military to kill people. And like that to me is just like a no-brainer," she said. "Why should that just be out and be able to be purchased? That does not make me feel safe as a person."

Corman also cited Canada's response to movie violence.

"Canada sees the same motion pictures that we do. They play the same video games that we do. They see the same television that we do. Their crime rate — and specifically their murder rate — is a tiny fraction of ours," he said. The only difference is they have strong gun control laws and we (don't). I wish somebody would ask the head of the NRA how he explains that."

Skarsgard suggested it may be time to revisit the Second Amendment.

"The whole Second Amendment discussion is ridiculous to me. Because that was written over 200 years ago, and it was a militia to have muskets to fight off Brits," he said. "The Brits aren't coming. It's 2013. Things have changed. And for someone to mail-order an assault rifle is crazy to me. They don't belong anywhere but the military to me. You don't need that to protect your home or shoot deer, you know."

___

AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ryanwrd .

___

AP Movie Writer David Germain contributed to this report.

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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WellPoint's 4th quarter profit jumps

Health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. gave a lower-than-expected profit outlook for 2013 as it prepares for the federal healthcare overhaul and continues to search for a new chief executive.

WellPoint, which runs Anthem Blue Cross in California and health plans in 13 other states, reported a bigger-than-expected 38% jump in fourth-quarter net income Wednesday, boosted by one-time gains related to an income tax settlement and investments.

But the company said it remains cautious about the year ahead in light of federal budget battles over Medicare and Medicaid and upheaval in the health insurance markets from the federal Affordable Care Act. WellPoint estimated full-year earnings of $7.60 a share, below analysts' expectations of $7.94 a share compiled by FactSet.

The Indianapolis company said the search is still underway for a new CEO to replace Angela Braly, who stepped down in August after major shareholders expressed dissatisfaction with the company's performance. John Cannon, WellPoint's interim chief executive, said the company expects to name a new leader some time in the first quarter.

The company's shares rose $1.03, or 1.6%, to $64.83 in trading Wednesday.

The health insurer said its fourth-quarter net income was $464.2 million, or $1.51 a share, up from $335.3 million, or 96 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding certain one-time items, the company said adjusted fourth-quarter profit was $1.03 a share, up 4% from 99 cents a share in the year-earlier quarter.

WellPoint is the nation's second-largest health insurer, with 36 million customers nationwide, just behind UnitedHealth Group Inc. WellPoint said revenue in the fourth quarter inched up 1% to $15.3 billion compared with a year ago.

The company said it is spending about $300 million this year to bolster its Medicare Advantage business and to prepare for insurance exchanges in California and other states that are opening next January under the federal healthcare law.

WellPoint is also pursuing growth from the federal government's planned expansion of Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor. Last month, WellPoint completed its $4.5-billion acquisition of Medicaid insurer Amerigroup Corp.

Overall, the company said it serves 4.5 million Medicaid patients in 20 states, making it the industry leader. But it said that business has been "underperforming," and in California it was recently hurt by higher-than-expected medical costs for about 90,000 people enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program.

WellPoint said California officials have agreed to increase payments for those patients to reflect the higher costs, but that change is awaiting federal approval.

The company is also a major player in an upcoming program aimed at improving care and lowering costs for patients enrolled in both Medicare and Medi-Cal. Enrollment in that state initiative has been delayed until September.

chad.terhune@latimes.com

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Hans Massaquoi dies at 87; wrote of growing up black in Nazi Germany

Hans Massaquoi, a former managing editor of Ebony magazine who wrote a distinctive memoir about his unusual childhood growing up black in Nazi Germany, died in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday, his 87th birthday.

He had been hospitalized over the Christmas holidays, said his son, Hans J. Massaquoi Jr.

Inspired by the late Alex Haley, the author of "Roots," Massaquoi decided to share his experience of being "both an insider in Nazi Germany and, paradoxically, an endangered outsider." His autobiography, "Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany," was published in the U.S. in 1999, followed by a German translation.

Massaquoi was born Jan. 19, 1926, in the port city of Hamburg. His mother was a German nurse and his father the son of a Liberian diplomat. When his grandfather was recalled to Liberia, Massaquoi's father decided to return to Africa too, but his mother insisted on staying behind.

Living with his mother, Massaquoi grew up in working-class neighborhoods of Hamburg. There were other black Germans, but not many; some were offspring of European colonial troops who occupied the Rhineland after World War I.

In his book, he recounted a story from 1933, when he was in second grade. Wanting to show what a good German he was, Massaquoi said he cajoled his baby-sitter into sewing a swastika onto his sweater. When his mother spotted it that evening, she snipped it off, but a teacher had already taken a snapshot. Massaquoi, the only dark-skinned child in the photo, is also the only one wearing a swastika.

He wrote that one of his saddest moments as a child was when his homeroom teacher told him he couldn't join the Hitler Youth.

"Of course I wanted to join. I was a kid and most of my friends were joining," he said. "They had cool uniforms and they did exciting things — camping, parades, playing drums."

Germany was at war by the time he was a teenager, and he describes in the book the near-destruction of Hamburg during the Operation Gomorrah bombing attack in the summer of 1943.

Massaquoi had a theory to explain why he avoided deportation to concentration camps during the Nazi reign.

"Unlike Jews, blacks were so few in numbers that they were relegated to low-priority status in the Nazis' lineup for extermination," he said in a 2001 interview with London's Independent newspaper.

After the collapse of Germany at the end of the war, he played saxophone in clubs that catered to the American Merchant Marine and worked as a translator for the British occupying forces.

Eventually he left Germany, first joining his father's family in Liberia, before moving to Chicago on a student visa to attend an aviation mechanics school. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951 and served stateside during the Korean War. Afterward, he became a U.S. citizen, earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois and began a career as a journalist.

He worked first for Jet magazine before moving to Chicago-based Ebony, where he rose to managing editor of the magazine aimed at African American readers.

Chicago author Studs Terkel interviewed Massaquoi for his 1984 book, "The Good War: An Oral History of World War II." By the late 1990s, approaching retirement, Massaquoi decided to tell his own story in an autobiography.

He was surprised by its reception in Germany.

"I had expected some interest there, but this has surpassed all my expectations," he told the Contra Costa Times in 2000. "I think the Germans want to get some closure about those years."

news.obits@latimes.com

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‘Atari’ Is in Trouble Again

Atari is declaring bankruptcy — twice. Both the U.S. video game company and its French parent have done so, the latest twist for the company which largely invented the video game industry and remains synonymous with it, despite having seen its glory days end by the mid-1980s.

But wait. Even though the Atari name celebrated its fortieth anniversary last year, it’s a mistake to talk about Atari as if it’s a corporate entity which has been around for four decades. (The Los Angeles Times’ Ben Fritz, for instance, refers to it as an “iconic but long-troubled video game maker.”) Instead, it’s a famous name which has drifted from owner to owner. It keeps being applied to different businesses, and yes, for all its fame, it does seem to be a bit of a jinx.

Here’s a quick rundown of what “Atari” has meant at different times (thanks, Wikipedia, for refreshing my memory):

1972-1976: It’s an up-and-coming, innovative startup cofounded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.

1976-1984: It’s part of Warner Communications (which, years later, merged with Time Inc. to form Time Warner, overlord of this website). It’s a massively successful maker of video games and consoles, but then it crashes, along with the rest of the industry.

1984-1996: Atari morphs into a semi-successful maker of PCs when it’s acquired by Tramel Technology, a company started by Jack Tramiel, the ousted founder of Commodore.

1996-1998: Tramiel runs Atari into the ground. After merging with hard-disk maker JTS, the company and brand are largely dormant.

1998-2000: Atari resurfaces under the ownership of  toy kingpin Hasbro as a line of games published under the Atari Interactive name.

2000-present: It becomes a corporate entity controlled by French game publisher Infogrames, which increasingly emphasizes the Atari moniker over its own and takes over completely in 2008. In recent years, it’s focused on digital downloads, mobile games and licensing of its familiar brand and logo.

The above chronology doesn’t account for Atari’s original business: arcade games. As far as I can tell, the arcade arm was owned at different times by Warner Communications/Time Warner (twice!), Pac-Man purveyor Namco and arcade icon Midway, among other companies. But use of the Atari brand on arcade hardware petered out in 2001.

Basically, Atari has never been one well-defined thing for more than twelve years, max, at a time. That the name has survived at all is a testament to its power and appeal. And even though the current Atari has fallen on hard times, I’ll bet that the brand survives for at least a few more decades, in one form or another. Several forms, probably.

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Al Green: Turned down 'Together' time with Obamas

Al Green says if things had worked out, it would have been him serenading President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle at the inaugural ball.

Jennifer Hudson sang Green's classic "Let's Stay Together," leaving many to wonder why the soul legend wasn't singing his own hit for the first couple.

In a statement to The Associated Press, his representative said Green had been asked to sing, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from attending Monday's festivities. Green said he'd be honored to sing for the president in the future.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Obama famously sang a snippet of the song at an event last year that Green attended.

___

Nekesa Mumbi Moody is the AP's global entertainment and lifestyles editor. Follow her at http://www.twitter.com/nekesamumbi

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The Well Column: Facing Cancer, a Stark Choice

In the 1970s, women’s health advocates were highly suspicious of mastectomies. They argued that surgeons — in those days, pretty much an all-male club — were far too quick to remove a breast after a diagnosis of cancer, with disfiguring results.

But today, the pendulum has swung the other way. A new generation of women want doctors to take a more aggressive approach, and more and more are asking that even healthy breasts be removed to ward off cancer before it can strike.

Researchers estimate that as many as 15 percent of women with breast cancer — 30,000 a year — opt to have both breasts removed, up from less than 3 percent in the late 1990s. Notably, it appears that the vast majority of these women have never received genetic testing or counseling and are basing the decision on exaggerated fears about their risk of recurrence.

In addition, doctors say an increasing number of women who have never had a cancer diagnosis are demanding mastectomies based on genetic risk. (Cancer databases don’t track these women, so their numbers are unknown.)

“We are confronting almost an epidemic of prophylactic mastectomy,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “I think the medical community has taken notice. We don’t have data that say oncologically this is a necessity, so why are women making this choice?”

One reason may be the never-ending awareness campaigns that have left many women in perpetual fear of the disease. Improvements in breast reconstruction may also be driving the trend, along with celebrities who go public with their decision to undergo preventive mastectomy.

This month Allyn Rose, a 24-year-old Miss America contestant from Washington, D.C., made headlines when she announced plans to have both her healthy breasts removed after the pageant; both her mother and her grandmother died from breast cancer. The television personality Giuliana Rancic, 37, and the actress Christina Applegate, 41, also talked publicly about having double mastectomies after diagnoses of early-stage breast cancer.

“You’re not going to find other organs that people cut out of their bodies because they’re worried about disease,” said the medical historian Dr. Barron H. Lerner, author of “The Breast Cancer Wars” (2001). “Because breast cancer is a disease that is so emotionally charged and gets so much attention, I think at times women feel almost obligated to be as proactive as possible — that’s the culture of breast cancer.”

Most of the data on prophylactic mastectomy come from the University of Minnesota, where researchers tracked contralateral mastectomy trends (removing a healthy breast alongside one with cancer) from 1998 to 2006. Dr. Todd M. Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology, said double mastectomy rates more than doubled during that period and the rise showed no signs of slowing.

From those trends as well as anecdotal reports, Dr. Tuttle estimates that at least 15 percent of women who receive a breast cancer diagnosis will have the second, healthy breast removed. “It’s younger women who are doing it,” he said.

The risk that a woman with breast cancer will develop cancer in the other breast is about 5 percent over 10 years, Dr. Tuttle said. Yet a University of Minnesota study found that women estimated their risk to be more than 30 percent.

“I think there are women who markedly overestimate their risk of getting cancer,” he said.

Most experts agree that double mastectomy is a reasonable option for women who have a strong genetic risk and have tested positive for a breast cancer gene. That was the case with Allison Gilbert, 42, a writer in Westchester County who discovered her genetic risk after her grandmother died of breast cancer and her mother died of ovarian cancer.

Even so, she delayed the decision to get prophylactic mastectomy until her aunt died from an aggressive breast cancer. In August, she had a double mastectomy. (She had her ovaries removed earlier.)

“I feel the women in my family didn’t have a way to avoid their fate,” said Ms. Gilbert, author of the 2011 book “Parentless Parents,” about how losing a parent influences one’s own style of parenting. “Here I was given an incredible opportunity to know what I have and to do something about it and, God willing, be around for my kids longer.”

Even so, she said her decisions were not made lightly. The double mastectomy and reconstruction required an initial 11 1/2-hour surgery and an “intense” recovery. She got genetic counseling, joined support groups and researched her options.

But doctors say many women are not making such informed decisions. Last month, University of Michigan researchers reported on a study of more than 1,446 women who had breast cancer. Four years after their diagnosis, 35 percent were considering removing their healthy breast and 7 percent had already done so.

Notably, most of the women who had a double mastectomy were not at high risk for a cancer recurrence. In fact, studies suggest that most women who have double mastectomies never seek genetic testing or counseling.

“Breast cancer becomes very emotional for people, and they view a breast differently than an arm or a required body part that you use every day,” said Sarah T. Hawley, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. “Women feel like it’s a body part over which they totally have a choice, and they say, ‘I want to put this behind me — I don’t want to worry about it anymore.’ ”

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Scrap the debt limit, some lawmakers and economists say

WASHINGTON — With the White House and Congress engaged in their second major battle in 18 months over the debt limit, some lawmakers, economists and analysts are offering a simple solution: Just get rid of it.

The U.S. is one of the few nations with such a borrowing mechanism. And as political fights over raising the limit have escalated in recent years, chilling financial markets and triggering the first-ever U.S. credit rating downgrade, critics said the time has come to make a change in Washington.

"Congress has gone from grandstanding on the debt ceiling to actual use of it as an economic weapon of mass destruction," Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said. "It's extremely dangerous."

Welch and several Democratic House colleagues last week proposed eliminating the debt limit, which has been in place since 1939, to avoid the risk of a default.

They're joined by a growing chorus of analysts who have called the U.S. debt limit "ridiculous," "screwy" and just plain "nuts."

QUIZ: Test your knowledge about the debt limit

"The debt ceiling is a dumb idea with no benefits and potentially catastrophic costs if ever used," Richard Thaler, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, wrote in response to a University of Chicago poll of economists released this month.

House Republican leaders, for now at least, want to put off a showdown. They have scheduled a vote for Wednesday on suspending the limit until mid-May. In effect, there would be no debt limit for four months.

The White House backed the short-term plan Tuesday, and House Republican leaders appeared confident that the measure would pass. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declined to say whether he would take up the bill, but indications were that the Senate would go along with the strategy.

The move would delay the looming threat of a default, but the broader debate over the debt limit and its role would continue to simmer.

In each year's budget, Congress decides how much money should be spent, which also determines how much must be borrowed to cover any shortfall in revenue. So Congress also must frequently increase the debt limit to allow for the borrowing.

The debt limit has been raised 76 times since 1962. It now stands at $16.4 trillion, a level the government will hit as early as mid-February.

The University of Chicago's survey of 38 academic economists found that 84% agreed that "a separate debt ceiling that has to be increased periodically creates unneeded uncertainty and can potentially lead to worse fiscal outcomes." Just 3% disagreed.

"It's a very unusual provision because in most countries, if they vote for a budget, they either have to borrow the money to pay for it or they have to raise taxes or cut someplace else," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

"Separating out the spending from the actual payment for the spending is just a reckless fiscal policy," Kirkegaard said.

Those sentiments were echoed last week by Fitch Ratings.

The company, one of three leading credit rating firms, called the debt limit "an ineffective and potentially dangerous mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline." But a Fitch executive said the company was not taking a stand on whether the debt limit should be eliminated.

Still, most Republicans said the debt limit is a vital check on long-term government spending.

The Constitution gives Congress the power "to borrow money on the credit of the United States." And the frequent votes over raising the limit on how much can be borrowed offer "a moment of reflection to consider the policies that have led to the current debt" and consider ways to reduce its growth, the Senate Republican Policy Committee said.

"In the simplest of terms, the debt limit helps hold Washington accountable to hardworking taxpayers, who ultimately foot the bill for Washington's spending habits," Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) said Tuesday during a House hearing on the issue.

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