Financial life in a big town

Union contracts for thousands of AT&T workers expired at midnight but officials said early Sunday that talks were continuing.

The passage of the deadline left the Communications Workers of America free to call a strike, but spokeswoman Candice Johnson says employees would report for work without a contract. She says that could change at any time.

Two separate contracts in eastern areas covering 10,000 workers expired at midnight, while talks were still going on for 33,000 other workers as midnight deadlines approached in the Midwest and West Coast.

The workers are on the shrinking local-phone and long-haul data side of the business, and located mainly in the Midwest and California cash advance payday loan.

When the last big batch of contracts was negotiated three years ago, the parties kept talking past the contract expiration, and reached agreements without a strike.

Dallas-based AT&T Inc. is the country’s largest employer of unionized workers. About 140,000 of its 256,000 employees are union members.

At issue in the negotiations are job protection clauses and health care premiums and co-payments.

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Yahoo said Wednesday that it will eliminate 2,000 employees, around 14% of its workforce, as new CEO Scott Thompson begins radically streamlining the company.

The long-rumored job cuts could be the first of several rounds, as Thompson pares Yahoo (, Fortune 500) down to focus on what he views as the company’s core business lines.

Thompson, who joined Yahoo in January, plans to provide more information about his strategy during the company’s first-quarter earnings announcement, which is scheduled for April 17.

In a written statement, Thompson said the cuts "are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate. Our goal is to get back to our core purpose — putting our users and advertisers first."

Yahoo said its job cuts will save the company $375 million a year when they are completed. It expects to take a $125 million to $145 million charge this quarter for severance costs.

Thompson is aiming to do something his recent predecessors — including Carol Bartz, who was forced out in September — have repeatedly failed to do: articulate a vision of what Yahoo is.

The Internet’s first giant portal has retained a massive user base, but has lost its edge in nearly every field to newer, nimbler rivals. The company gave up on search in 2009, and it’s losing ground in display advertising to new entrants to the market such as Google (, Fortune 500) and Facebook fast cash advance.

Thompson’s busy 2012: Wednesday’s layoffs come three months to the day that Thompson took over at Yahoo — and his tenure has already been a busy one. In February, four longtime board members, including chairman Roy Bostock, announced they would not seek re-election.

Exactly one week after that, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb and his hedge fund Third Point launched a proxy fight. Third Point, which owns a 5.56% stake in Yahoo, is proposing four new Yahoo board members, including Loeb himself.

Mere weeks later, in March, Yahoo filed a lawsuit against Facebook. The high-profile suit alleges that Facebook infringed on 10 of Yahoo’s patents related to advertising, privacy, customization, messaging and social networking.

Facebook called the lawsuit "puzzling," while outside critics decried the move as "pathetic" and "desperate."

Still, considering that his predecessors failed at fixing Yahoo, Thompson clearly knows he has to make bold moves. Whether they’re enough for the long-promised but so far elusive Yahoo turnaround remains to be seen. 

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A growing number of U.S. cities are choosing to fund essential services like public safety and garbage collection over making payments on their outstanding debt, as rising costs and falling revenue deplete their budgets.

So far, the bond defaults are not roiling the $3.7 trillion municipal market because insurance companies are stepping in to make payments to bond holders in some cases. But defaults on insured bonds are putting pressure on these insurers, which never fully recovered from the last decade’s financial crisis.

The California cities of Stockton and Hercules, as well as Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, have opted to default on some of their insured debt in recent months.

“Municipalities are saying this is what bond insurance is for - bond holders get paid,” said Richard Lehmann, publisher of Distressed Debt Securities Newsletter.

So far in 2012, there have been 21 muni defaults totaling $978 million, versus 28 defaults totaling $522 million for the same period in 2011, said Lehmann, who sees the number rising. A breakdown of defaults on insured munis was not available.

Although issuers contend they are not singling out insured munis for defaults, some believe that municipalities are strategically protecting bond buyers by relying on insurers to pay the debt service.

“Such a default may signal changing attitudes by distressed municipalities to contemplate a strategic default or bankruptcy on insured debt, knowing that bond holders will not suffer losses,” Moody’s Investors Service said in a report this week.

The credit rating agency added that municipal issuers “may be willing to damage their relationship” with insurers, which in turn could potentially be exposed to large losses.

CITY SERVICES TRUMP BOND-HOLDERS

Harrisburg’s state-appointed receiver said earlier this month that $5.3 million of payments due on general obligation bonds insured by Ambac Assurance Corp will be skipped.

“I was aware they were insured bonds when we made the decision,” David Unkovic, the receiver, told Reuters, adding that the city’s financial condition was more important than bond-holders.

“My first concern as receiver is to maintain vital and necessary service in the city,” he said. “In order to do that I need sufficient cash flows.”

The city of Stockton, nestled among the farms of California’s Central Valley, is defaulting on about $2 million in bond payments for debt sold in 2004, 2007 and 2009. Wells Fargo & Co is the trustee on each of the debt issues and has filed a lawsuit against Stockton for missing its February 28 payment on its $32.8 million of 2004 parking facilities debt, said bank spokeswoman Elise Wilkinson.

Hercules, which had considered bankruptcy, reached a settlement this month with Ambac after defaulting on a $2.4 million bond payment due in February.

Some of the companies are starting to feel the pressure. Syncora Guarantee Inc last month told a federal judge in Alabama that the prospect of it having to make good on millions of dollars a month in debt payments owed by bankrupt Jefferson County might sink the company.

In addition, the once-widespread use of insurance on new issuance has shrunk to a sliver of the muni market. After the financial crisis, so-called monoline insurers left the business, and the largest remaining insurer, Assured Guaranty, is scaling back, depending on states’ bankruptcy laws.

Insured bonds, which accounted for 57.3 percent of muni issuance in 2005, sank to only 5.5 percent of issuance in 2011, according to Thomson Reuters data cash advance today.

Insurers do not appear to perceive an immediate risk. “We don’t feel picked on,” said a senior executive at a bond insurer. “I’m not sure it’s correct to say issuers are deciding to default on insured bonds over uninsured ones. The market does not care whether a bond’s insured or not. The fact they defaulted is what the market remembers.” The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said struggling issuers get no tangible benefit from skipping payments on an insured obligation over an uninsured one since any money must eventually be repaid to the insurer.

“It’s not a get-out-of-jail card,” the executive said.

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS LEGACY

There was a time when bond insurers confined themselves to the dull but steady business of underwriting municipal debt, effectively lending their superior credit ratings to cities and towns for a fee. The insurers branched out into structured financial products, which resulted in huge payouts when the credit crisis hit. One-time market leader MBIA chose to restructure, and its municipal National Public Finance business is no longer writing new policies, pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by a number of banks challenging the restructuring. Ambac, once the second-largest U.S. bond insurer, went bankrupt in 2010, as did the parent of bond insurer FGIC. Syncora went through a major restructuring in 2009 and stopped writing new business as well. The carnage left one bond insurer standing, Assured Guaranty. On Tuesday Moody’s placed its ratings, including the A3 senior unsecured rating of Assured Guaranty US Holding and Assured Guaranty Municipal Holdings, on review for possible downgrade.

“Assured Guaranty’s business and financial profiles may have meaningfully deteriorated due to the firm’s narrower business opportunities and substantial exposure to sectors adversely affected by the financial crisis and current economic stress,” commented Moody’s Associate Managing Director Stanislas Rouyer in a statement.

The company has argued it can still effectively underwrite smaller municipalities with lower-tier ratings. Even so, it is threatening to pull out of some states without tight bankruptcy controls.

“This is weighing more heavily in our underwriting as we examine the legal framework for bankruptcy in every state that we insure municipal securities,” Assured said in a written reply to Reuters. “While some defaults have occurred on insured transactions, most have been on uninsured transactions.”

Assured Guaranty said it believes defaults will remain infrequent, saying its municipal portfolio has experienced “only modest loss development on a few isolated transactions.” As of the end of 2011, Assured Guaranty enhanced $15.2 billion of munis - a drop of 45.1 percent from 2010, when it was also the market’s sole active guarantor. Assured listed exposure to $3.9 billion of debt sold by non-investment grade issuers on its 2011 financial statements. It includes notorious names like Alabama’s Jefferson County sewer system, Harrisburg, Detroit, and Detroit Public Schools. Radian Group, which wrote bond insurance until 2008, said last September it was considering starting a new unit with dormant bond insurance assets it purchased from Macquarie Group. The Financial Times reported this week that Goldman, Sachs & Co has also been hiring for a bond insurance specialist.

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As spring approaches, Occupy Wall Street protesters who mostly hibernated all winter are beginning to stir with plans for renewed demonstrations six months after the movement was born.

The global protests against corporate excess and economic inequality are generally thought to have begun Sept. 17 when tents sprang up in a small granite plaza in lower Manhattan. The movement has lost steam in recent months, with media attention and donations dropping off as Occupy encampments across the country were dismantled, some by force.

On March 7, the finance accounting group in New York City reported that just about $119,000 remained in Occupy’s bank account _ the equivalent of about two weeks’ worth of expenses.

The Occupy movement has influenced the national dialogue about economic equality, with the word “occupy” itself becoming part of the public lexicon. In his third State of the Union address, President Barack Obama issued a populist call for income equality that echoed the movement’s message. But has anything really changed in the past six months?

Some achievements that can be connected to the efforts of the Occupy movement, and some plans for the near future:

WHAT GOT DONE

In Albany, N.Y., Occupy protesters dubbed Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo “Gov. 1 Percent” for his refusal since the 2010 campaign to agree to a millionaire tax, and because his major campaign financial support comes from corporate executives.

Cuomo tried to evict Occupy Albany from the park co-owned by the city and the state. But the Democratic mayor, Gerald Jennings, agreed to allow Occupy Albany to stay on the city-owned side. Local Democratic District Attorney David Soares also announced he wouldn’t prosecute anyone for disorderly conduct at Occupy Albany who might be arrested by state police _ who answer to Cuomo.

In a surprise, Cuomo reversed his position on the millionaire tax in December to avoid further cuts to schools and health care. Part of the $2 billion in revenue went to a modest but rare income tax cut of $200 to $400 for most middle class families. Cuomo refers to the millionaire tax as the biggest tax cut for the middle class in decades.

Democratic lawmakers attributed Cuomo’s move in part to the Occupy protesters who had targeted him across the street from the Capitol for months and had begun demonstrating just outside his office.

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An Atlanta pastor, whose church struggled to pay its bills after its building was struck by a 2008 tornado, credits Occupy Atlanta with helping it to avoid foreclosure. The Rev. Dexter Johnson’s church, the Higher Ground Empowerment Center, took out a loan to rebuild and has struggled to pay its mortgage in recent months.

Johnson said the bank had agreed to work with the church to help pay its mortgage after demonstrations by Occupy members. Demonstrators had set up a camp at the church in Atlanta’s Vine City neighborhood, just west of downtown.

In January, Johnson learned his congregation would be allowed to stay in the building.

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In Rhode Island, Occupy Providence pushed for _ and won _ a temporary day center to serve the homeless during the winter. Protesters made the center’s opening a condition of their departure from a public park downtown, where they had camped against the city’s wishes for more than three months.

While the city didn’t fund the center, officials pledged to help its operator, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, find money for it.

“It shows that with pressure from people, a government can be made to move,” protester Robert Malin said at the time of the center’s opening.

The city had threatened legal action to remove the protesters and their tents from the park, but the two sides instead went into mediation before a judge.

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Also in Rhode Island, the state’s junior U.S. senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, introduced a bill in November to crack down on high credit card interest rates _ the same week he visited the Providence encampment. While there was no direct relationship between Occupy and the bill, Whitehouse spokesman Seth Larson said Thursday, the legislation no doubt resonated with the protesters.

“It was timely, and I’m sure the Occupy folks appreciated this bill,” Larson said.

Whitehouse had introduced similar legislation a year earlier.

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Occupy protesters helped save an Iraq war veteran’s home from foreclosure in Atlanta, the Huffington Post reported. “I strongly believe Occupy Atlanta accelerated the process and helped save my home,” Brigitte Walker, whose home activists began occupying Dec. 6, told the website. “If it had not been for them standing up, I probably wouldn’t be having this happy ending.” Walker had left Iraq in May 2004 when she was injured by the shock from mortar rounds, the Post reported.

Occupy Minneapolis also worked with community organizers to help a former Marine who faced eviction from his home strike a deal with his bank, the Post reported.

WHAT’S NEXT

Occupiers in New York City will commemorate the six-month mark with a rally Saturday in Zuccotti Park, where protesters camped out for months until the city ousted them in November.

Organizers are hoping donations will start to flow in as protests begin anew this spring, including a global day of “economic disruption” on May 1.

And in some states, Occupy supporters are making forays into politics. Asher Platts is running for the state senate in Maine as a “Clean Elections” candidate. Platts, an activist who attended the protests last fall, is running on an Occupy platform.

In suburban Philadelphia, Occupy protester Nathan I. Kleinman is running a write-in campaign for Congress against four-term Rep. Allyson Schwartz in the Democratic primary on April 24. The 29-year-old said he never would have mounted a run without his Occupy experience. Kleinman withdrew from the ballot after a court hearing in which Schwartz’s supporters questioned some of the 1,500 required signatures he had gathered to appear on the ballot.

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With little more than three months until the interest rates on federally subsidized student loans double, students are pushing lawmakers to help them out.

On July 1, the interest rate on federal subsidized loans will double to 6.8%. That means students taking out loans for the next school year will eventually dig deeper in their pockets to pay them off.

Quiz: What the rich really pay in taxes

Nearly 8 million students have subsidized student loans, which means the federal government subsidizes the interest rate for lower- and middle-income families based on financial need.

Without congressional help, students borrowing the maximum $23,000 in subsidized loans are poised to pay an extra $5,000 over a 10-year repayment period.

That’s why the consumer advocacy group U.S. Public Interest Research Group delivered 130,000 student petitions to lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, asking Congress to stop the rates from doubling.

College degree = $650,000 more in earnings

"We’ve got 110 days to fix this problem," said Rep. Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat, who is sponsoring a bill to extend current interest rates. "Middle class families, every single day, are struggling in terms of making sure their kids have a chance to succeed in life."

Subsidized student loan interest rates used to be 6.8%. But when Democrats took over the House in 2007, they passed phased-in cheaper rates for subsidized student loans. The rates fell to a current low of 3.4% for subsidized Stafford loans this past school year. The rates are scheduled to revert back to 6.8% for the 2012-2013 school year.

Student loans are a big deal. The Federal Reserve of New York last week reported that the $870 billion in student loan debt tops $693 billion in credit card debt and $730 billion car loan debt.

And with unemployment just below 24% for teenagers and 14% for those ages 20 to 24, more young people are going back to school or staying in school, according to new data by Equifax. Last year, new student loans grew by 4%, the firm reported Tuesday in its National Consumer Credit Trends Report.

Additionally more students struggle to pay back those loans. Student loan delinquencies involving payments more than three months late rose 14.6% in 2011 from the year before, according to Equifax.

President Obama urged lawmakers in his State of the Union address to stop this student loan rate hike from going into effect. But the deficit-conscious Congress has yet to act, especially since extending the 3.4% rate would cost $5.6 billion a year, according to FinAid.org.

While the president has focused on expanding access to college for low- and middle-income children, lawmakers have taken several steps to whittle away at student aid.

Congress has eliminated subsidized loans for graduate students, as well as most discounts. They also cut $8 billion out of the Pell Grant program for low-income students and reduced the income threshold for eligibility for a full Pell Grant.

The impending higher interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans worries Samantha Durdock, a sophomore at the University of Maryland in College Park, who currently has $8,000 in subsidized Stafford loans and expects to borrow another $15,000.

"Even though graduation is several years away, I am worried about the amount of debt I will have," Durdock said at the Capitol Hill event. "If interest rates double, the extra debt might also impact my ability to pay basic expenses like rent." 

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Retail sales in the U.S. probably rose in February by the most in five months, spurred by the strongest demand for automobiles since 2008, economists said before a report today.

The 1.1 percent rise would follow a 0.4 percent gain in January, according to the median forecast of 81 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Excluding autos, purchases may have climbed 0.7 percent.

Sales at chains like Gap Inc. (GPS) and Target Corp. (TGT) last month beat analysts

A top European Central Bank official says the 17 countries that use the euro will probably see a “very mild recession” this year and that higher oil prices should not have a lasting impact on inflation.

Benoit Coeure, an ECB executive board member, told Japan’s Nikkei newspaper that growth was held back by scarce bank credit and necessary government budget-cutting because of problems with debt in some eurozone countries.

He added that higher oil prices and increased value-added taxes on consumer purchases in some countries had led the bank to raise its outlook for inflation but that “insofar as they are temporary, higher energy prices should not have a lasting impact on inflation.”

Coeure said that whether inflation rose over the longer term would depend on whether higher oil prices were reflected in higher wages, creating so-called second round effects or a wage-price spiral.

He said in an interview text made public Sunday that “there are good reasons to believe that second-round effects will be limited.”

Coeure is one of six members of the ECB’s executive board, the body that runs the bank day to day at its Frankfurt headquarters. He also sits on the 23-member governing council, which decides interest rates.

Higher prices have become part of the bank’s discussion of the economy in recent days thanks to higher prices for crude and an easing of the eurozone debt crisis with a successful debt reduction and second bailout for Greece. Fears of a deeper recession and financial crisis pushed inflation concerns to the background in the last two months of last year when the bank cut interest rates.

But inflation increased in February to 2.7 percent, above the bank’s goal of just under two percent, and ECB President Mario Draghi said at his news conference last week that it was likely to remain over 2 percent for all of this year before falling payday advance. For 2013 the bank projects inflation between 0.9 and 2.3 percent.

Draghi made renewed mention of the bank’s primary mission of keeping inflation under control, as spelled out in the basic EU treaty, saying that task was “of the essence.”

That, along with expectations of a mild rather than deep recession, lead some analyst to think the ECB will not lower its benchmark rate below the current record low of 1 percent and may leave them unchanged into next year. Lower rates help growth but can worsen inflation if done at the wrong time.

The bank has helped bring a period of respite from the eurozone debt crisis with two offerings of more than euro1 trillion ($1.32 trillion) in cheap, 3-year loans to banks. The loans added around euro500 billion net in new cash to the banking system, given that some of the money was moved to the new loan offering from previous ECB loan programs.

The money has helped weaker banks repair their finances and led some of them to buy government bonds. That lowered borrowing costs for indebted governments such as Italy and Spain. High borrowing costs fed by fears of default are what drove Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailout loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

The eurozone economy shrank 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter, and two quarters of negative growth is one definition of recession.

The ECB’s staff projections foresee growth between minus 0.5 percent and plus 0.3 percent this year.

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Markets were buoyant on Thursday on hopes Greece will get enough support from private investors in a crucial bond swap plan that aims to slash euro107 billion ($140 billion) off its national debt.

Athens is asking private creditors to swap their Greek bonds for new ones with a 53.5 percent lower face value, lower interest rates and longer maturity dates. The hope is that by lowering the amount of debt it has to repay, the country can gradually return to growth.

If not enough investors agree and the bond deal fails, the country could default on its debt in less than two weeks, prompting renewed turmoil in financial markets and knocking confidence in the global economic recovery.

Investors have until 10 p.m. local time (2000 GMT) to sign up, though official results aren’t expected until Friday morning. Only bonds held by private investors are part of the deal, meaning that amounts held by the European Central Bank and other central banks are exempt.

“The markets are in a better mood this morning supported by growing confidence that Greece will be successful this evening in its private sector debt swap,” said Jane Foley, an analyst at Rabobank International.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 1.3 percent at 5,866 while Germany’s DAX rose 2.1 percent to 6,810. The CAC-40 in France was 2 percent higher at 3,460. The euro was also buoyant, trading 0.6 percent higher at $1.3220.

Wall Street is poised for a solid open, too, with both Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures up 0.8 percent.

As well as keeping a close watch on Greece’s bond swap results, investors will monitor interest rate decisions from both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England to digest.

Both are expected to keep interest rates unchanged at 1 percent and 0 payday loans no faxing.5 percent, respectively.

Most interest will center on what ECB chief Mario Draghi says at his news conference about warnings from Germany’s Bundesbank about the risk the ECB has taken on by loosening rules for collateral on emergency loans to banks.

The ECB is credited with pulling Europe back from the debt crisis brink by offering a total of euro1 trillion ($1.32 trillion) to banks on Dec. 21 and Feb. 29. That eased a looming credit crunch, supported investor confidence, and caused borrowing rates to ease for financially weak countries like Italy and Spain.

Investors will also monitor another round of U.S. economic figures later. Most interest will center on the weekly jobless claims figures in the run-up to Friday’s nonfarm payrolls data for February. The payrolls figures often set the market tone for a week or two after their release _ a marked improvement in the U.S. jobs picture in recent months has buoyed hopes over the economic recovery in the U.S. and that’s fed through into the performance of stock markets all round the world.

Earlier in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index climbed 2 percent to 9,768.96. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.3 percent to 20,900.73 and South Korea’s Kospi edged up 0.9 percent to 2,000.76

In mainland China, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.1 percent to 2,420.28.

Oil markets tracked equities higher _ the benchmark New York rate was up 79 cents at $106.95 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

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China set a 2012 target for inflation that

Gas prices are spiking. But this time, Detroit is ready.

When prices soared in 2008, the city’s three U.S. automakers were caught flat-footed. They didn’t have competitive small cars and relied on trucks and SUVs for profits. When gas prices peaked at $4.12 in July of that year, sales from the Big Three plummeted more than 20 percent. That same month, sales of the fuel-sipping Toyota Corolla jumped 16 percent.

Fast forward to February 2012. Overall U.S. auto sales rose 16 percent to 1.1 million last month, largely on the strength of Detroit’s small cars. The annual sales pace hit 15.1 million, the best rate in four years.

This time, the Detroit Three saw a 13-percent sales increase. The difference: They have spent billions since 2008 to roll out new models such as the Dodge Dart and Chevrolet Cruze.

The timing is fortunate. Buyers are shifting to small cars again. Twenty-three percent of new-car sales were small cars in February, up from 17.9 percent in December, according to auto information site Edmunds.com.

So far, the shift isn’t as dramatic as it was in 2008, when small-car sales leaped to 27 percent of the market in May as gas suddenly spiked to near $4 per gallon. But prices have never been as high for this time of year. The price of a gallon of gas is up 46 cents this year to an average of $3.74. Analysts say gas could hit $4.25 by late April.

It bodes well for Detroit, which has a newfound confidence that it can weather the pain at the pump.

“We are very well positioned as a company to thrive in a world of escalating gasoline prices,” Bill Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Co, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Sales of the Focus small car, which Ford rolled out last year, more than doubled to 23,350, making it the best February for the Focus in 12 years. The new Focus gets up to 40 mpg on the highway, seven miles per gallon better than the 2008 model. The company’s sales were up 14 percent in February compared to the same month last year.

The story is the same at General Motors Co. In July 2008, Honda Motor Co. sold 12,266 Fit subcompacts, besting the Chevrolet Aveo by nearly 5,000 cars. But GM recently replaced the unappealing, underpowered Aveo with the sportier Sonic, which gets up to 40 mpg on the highway and has luxurious options like heated side mirrors. The company sold 8,000 Sonics in February, outselling the Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris combined.

Don Johnson, GM’s U.S. sales chief, said that three years ago, just 16 percent of the cars and trucks GM sold got over 30 mpg on the highway. Now, it’s close to 40 percent.

“We believe that this puts us in a very strong competitive position,” Johnson said Thursday. GM’s sales rose 1 percent in February.

Even Chrysler Group, whose lineup is weighted toward SUVs and big cars, will become a bigger player in the small car market this spring, when the new Dodge Dart goes on sale. In the meantime, its Fiat 500 subcompact had its best month ever in February, helping Chrysler’s sales climb 40 percent.

Carl Galeana, who owns a Fiat dealership north of Detroit, said sales were flat in the first part of the month but picked up the last two weeks as gas prices jumped. Shoppers were constantly asking about the fuel economy of the 500, which can get up to 38 mpg on the highway, Galeana said.

“All of the sudden, boom! We’re starting to sell Fiats,” Galeana said.

Japanese carmakers are also benefitting. In 2008, they saw sales slide because they couldn’t make their most efficient cars, like the Toyota Prius hybrid, quickly enough to satisfy demands. But this February, Toyota’s sales rose, led by a 52-percent jump in the Prius hybrid. Honda’s sales were also up, thanks to a 36-percent increase for the small Civic.

Bigger vehicles from both U.S. and Japanese automakers are also less vulnerable to gas spikes, since they get better gas mileage than they did in 2008. Ford’s new Explorer SUV, which came out last year, sits lower and is more aerodynamic to save fuel. It gets up to 28 mpg on the highway; its 2008 predecessor didn’t even get 20. Honda’s new CR-V gets up to 31 mpg compared to 27 for the 2008 model.

But many buyers are still choosing to downsize. Dennis Beshear of Monument, Colo., recently bought a new Focus for his 100-mile round-trip commute to Denver. The advertising salesman now gets around 35 miles per gallon, up from just 21 mpg in the 2006 Nissan Murano crossover SUV he used to drive. He fills up the Focus every third day, compared with every day and a half with the Murano.

Gas prices were his main motive for buying.

“I had a feeling they were going to go up. They were just too good to be true,” he said.

For automakers, there’s tough competition ahead for small cars. They’re trying to make them more profitable by loading them up with pricey features such as leather seats and navigation systems. As a result, prices are rising. Vehicles sold for an average of $30,605 last month, up almost 7 percent from a year earlier, mostly due to more luxurious small cars, according to the TrueCar.com automotive website.

Companies that don’t move fast enough in the small-car market will be hurt.

The Honda Civic, Chevrolet Cruze and Ford Focus all gained market share in the compact car segment last month, with some of the sales coming at the expense of Toyota’s aging Corolla, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of forecasting for the LMC Automotive consulting firm. That’s a very different story than 2008, when the Corolla was the runaway best-seller in the segment.

The shift to smaller cars is becoming a regular pattern. Buyers also leaned toward smaller cars at the beginning of last year, when gas prices jumped 80 cents between February and May before moderating in the summer. Last March, when gas prices reached $3.74 per gallon, 23 percent of buyers purchased small cars. But they went back into bigger cars once gas prices eased.

Edmunds chief economist Lacey Plache said rising gas prices won’t make car buyers hold off on purchases altogether. That’s because they’re more confident about the jobs market and because cars on U.S. roads are getting so old that they have to be replaced. She says people will simply put more emphasis on fuel economy and cut back on the miles they drive.

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