Marine motorcycle deaths top their Iraq combat fatalities

Motorcycle accidents have killed more Marines in the past 12 months than enemy fire in Iraq, a rate that's so alarming it has prompted top brass to call a meeting to address the issue, officials say.

Twenty-five Marines have died in motorcycle crashes since last November -- all but one of them involving sport bikes that can reach speeds of well over 100 mph, according to Marine officials. In that same period, 20 Marines have been killed in action in Iraq.
The 25 deaths are the highest motorcycle death toll ever for the Marine Corps.
Gen. James Amos, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, told reporters that commanders are trying to drill down on what "we need to do to help our Marines survive on these sport bikes." "The Marines are very serious about it," he said.

Exxon Mobil: Biggest profit in U.S. history

Largest U.S. oil company surges past analyst estimates to post net income of $14.83 billion.

Exxon Mobil Corp. set a quarterly profit record for a U.S. company Thursday, surging past analyst estimates.
Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500), the leading U.S. oil company, said its third-quarter net profit was $14.83 billion, or $2.86 per share, up from $9.41 billion, or $1.70, a year earlier. That profit included $1.45 billion in special items.
The company's prior record was $11.68 billion in the second quarter of 2008.
The latest quarter's net income equaled $1,865.69 per second, nearly $400 a second more than the prior mark.
The company said its revenue totaled $137.7 billion in the third quarter.
Analysts had expected Exxon to report a 40% jump in earnings to $2.38 per share, or net income of $12.2 billion, and a 28% surge in revenue to $131.13 billion, according to a consensus of estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters.
Exxon's stock price slipped by nearly 1% in morning trading.
The company's earnings were buoyed by oil prices, which reached record highs in the quarter before declining. Oil prices were trading at $140.97 a barrel at the beginning of the third quarter, and had fallen to $100.64 at the end.
Compare that to 2007, when prices traded at $71.09 a barrel at the beginning of the third quarter, and rose to $81.66 by the end.
Exxon's special charges include the gain of $1.62 billion from the sale of a German natural gas company. It also includes the $170 million charge in interest related to punitive damages from the Valdez oil spill off the Alaskan coast in 1989.
The Irving, Texas-based company said it lost $50 million, before taxes, in oil revenue because of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. The company expects damages related to these hurricanes to reduce fourth-quarter earnings by $500 million.
Despite the surge in profit, Exxon said oil production was down 8% in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year.
The company also said it is spending more money to locate new sources of oil. Exxon said it spent $6.9 billion on oil exploration in the third quarter, a jump of 26% from the same period last year.
Phil Weiss, analyst for Argus Research, said he doesn't expect Exxon to break any more profit records in future quarters.
"I don't expect the fourth quarter to be nearly as good as the third because of lower oil prices," said Weiss.
He also said that demand for gasoline is falling, which could impact Exxon and other oil companies.
Earlier Thursday, Europe's leading oil company, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA), reported a 22% gain in net profit for the third quarter, to $8.45 billion. The company said sales rose 45% to $132 billion.
Exxon is the second-largest company in the Fortune 500 in terms of annual sales, behind Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, Fortune 500).
Exxon's stock price has fallen about 20% so far this year, The S&P 500, of which it is a member, has fallen about 36%.

Battling for votes: Students weigh economics, ethics

Katie Ulrich, a junior at the University of Colorado, is worried about paying for the next two years at college -- and the effect the economic downturn is having on her chances of getting a job after college.
While the 20-year-old native of Huntington Beach, California, has survived on savings her parents established for her at birth, the money has run out -- and that has her looking for new ways to get by financially.
"I've had enough to cover my first two years of college, but this year I have been having to apply for financial aid and loans and the same thing next year," she said.
She said it's hard getting a job because restaurants in Boulder -- and jobs on campus -- are cutting back on employees. Ulrich, who registered to vote in Colorado this year, voted in her first presidential election on October 21.
While at first she wouldn't say who got her vote, Ulrich later said: "I hope Obama wins."
"The person who I voted for has a better plan of getting us out of this [economic] crisis that we're in, and so I took a lot of time to research... both the presidential candidates," she said.
She added: "I really hope we can get the economy turned around. I think it's hard right now as a student because it's fearful to go into our futures without the hope that our economy will be better. We all want job opportunities. We all want the chance to get to have a great future, and with this crisis it doesn't look good. Hopefully, we can get it turned around."

Battling for votes: Small businesses weigh choices

Small-business owner Susan Melching is frightened by the country's economic future.
Melching said this is the first time in 26 years that she is worried her company won't survive.
"This is the first year that I have actually really felt on the verge of 'is it worth hanging in for it?' And it's a very frightening experience. First time ever," she said.
Her company, Susan Melching Inc., provides skin care treatments. Businesses that focus on beauty and luxury goods are usually hit especially hard during economic troubles.
The 53-year-old said she's had to downsize her business by cutting jobs -- from five full-time staff members down to a couple of part-time workers and herself. It's because, she said, customers are simply not coming in as often or at all.
"I'm pretty much relying on myself to get through this," she added. "Everything that I do is focused on keeping the business going. There's not much left for me."
Melching said she'd like the next president to focus on economic policies helping small businesses in small communities -- "financial support in those areas that would in turn benefit the whole country," she said.

Two suspects held, two sought in Arkansas campus shooting

Police are searching for two suspects in the fatal shooting of two University of Central Arkansas students Sunday night, while two other suspects are in custody, authorities said Monday.
The first suspect was apprehended in his car shortly after the shooting, and a second turned himself in, said University of Central Arkansas police Lt. Preston Grumbles.
The four suspects are not university students, he said.
The shooting, which happened outside a dorm, prompted a campus lockdown and the cancellation of Monday classes at the university, which serves about 12,500 full-time students in Conway, Arkansas.
"This is something you pray never happens," a visibly upset Tom Courtway, interim university president, said Monday. "Our campus is safe."
Police said students Ryan Henderson, 18, of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Charvareas Block, 19, of Dermott, Arkansas, were killed. Henderson died at the scene, and Block died at Conway Regional Medical Center.
Martrevis Norman, 19, who is not a student, was treated at a hospital and released, according to Lt. Rhonda Swindle. Norman is from Blytheville, Arkansas, she said. A hospital representative earlier told CNN that the survivor was shot in the leg.

Recession fears batter markets

U.S. stocks slumped on Friday morning, joining the worldwide selloff on fears of a global recession, yet the major gauges managed to fight back from morning lows.
Around 90 minutes into the session, the Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) had fallen 320 points, or 3.7%, after having been down as much as 504 points in the early going.
The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index lost 3.8% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) lost 3.5%. All three indexes were hovering around five-year lows.
"There's a lot of nervousness out there, but I think people are surprised it isn't down even more considering what we were looking at before the open," said Joseph Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading.
Stocks have been mostly lower this week as the credit crisis, sluggish corporate forecasts and slump in commodity prices exacerbated fears of a steeper slowdown. The weakness hasn't been limited to U.S. stocks, with markets in Asia and Europe tumbling this week as well.

Oprah sued over man's arrest on extortion charge

A Louisiana man has filed a lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey, claiming she and an attorney made false statements that led the FBI to arrest him on charges that he tried to extort the talk-show host.

Keifer Bonvillain, who had the charges dismissed, seeks damages of $180 million from Winfrey, her attorney and the FBI in the federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Bonvillain, of Houma, Louisiana, was arrested in December 2006 after he allegedly recorded telephone conversations with an employee of Winfrey's production company and told a company associate he wanted to publish a book based on the recordings.
The FBI said he claimed to have offers from publishers and tabloids ranging from $500,000 to $3 million.
The FBI arrested Bonvillain when another company associate agreed to pay him $1.5 million, wired him $3,000 and arranged to meet him. Bonvillain claims in the lawsuit that he did everything he could to avoid doing anything illegal.
"There was substantial damage done to my name and reputation on a world level," he wrote. "The extent of my damages is vast."
Federal officials agreed to dismiss the charges last year on the condition that Bonvillain perform 50 hours of community service, undergo drug testing and pay $3,000 in restitution.
Chip Babcock, a lawyer for Winfrey's Harpo Productions, denied the allegations in Bonvillain's suit.
"And we know that this whole episode started when the plaintiff wiretapped a Harpo employee in California," he said. "We advised (Bonvillain) that we believe that wiretapping was illegal, and this case will give us an opportunity to determine whether we were right about that."

McCain: Mortgage crisis a 'drive-by shooting'

"Homeowners are the innocent bystanders in a drive-by shooting by Wall Street and Washington," Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday.
"It never should have happened," he said of the mortgage crisis that has shaken financial markets, and it would not have happened if he had been president, he said.
McCain defended his vote in favor of the government's $700 billion plan to prop up the lending industry, despite his insistence that as president he would cut spending.
"Extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary actions," he told Wolf Blitzer in Manchester, New Hampshire. The interview is to air on "The Situation Room" at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday.
McCain said he will consider a second economic stimulus package if he is elected president.

Man found guilty in murder of couple tossed off yacht, 1 other

A former child actor was convicted Monday of murdering three people, including a couple who were tied to an anchor and thrown off their yacht off the California coast.
An Orange County jury found Skylar Deleon, 29, guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and special circumstances for financial gain and multiple victims.
Deleon's attorney had conceded to the jury from the outset that Deleon was guilty but should not be put to death. The penalty phase of the trial will begin Wednesday.
Ryan Hawks, Tom Hawks' son, called the verdict a "warm up" for the penalty phase.
"It felt like a little tiny piece of the puzzle was put in justice," he said.
Deleon's attorney Gary Pohlson told reporters that he plans to convince the jury to spare his client's life by having Deleon's relatives and doctors testify during the punishment phase about his troubled past.
"He's had a horrible, horrible life," Pohlson said, noting that Deleon's father abused him and later died of AIDS.
Tom and Jackie Hawks were thrown from their yacht in 2004 during a cruise to show the vessel to Deleon, whom they believed was a prospective buyer.
Deleon was also found guilty of murdering Jon Jarvi, of Anaheim, in 2003. Prosecutors had said Deleon met Jarvi in a work furlough program while serving jail time for burglary, and killed him in Mexico after Jarvi gave him $50,000.

106-year-old voter shares hopes, secrets

Ann Nixon Cooper, 106 years old, has seen presidents come and go in her lifetime and has outlived most of them. On a sunny fall morning, she left her weathered but well-kept Tudor home in Atlanta, Georgia, to vote early this time for Barack Obama.
The African-American centenarian remembers a time not long ago when she was barred from voting because of her race. Now she hopes to see the day that Obama is elected as the nation's first black president.
"I ain't got time to die," Cooper said with a smile.
"Even if he didn't win, I was happy for him just to be nominated," said the former socialite. "The first black president isn't that something, at 106 years old?"
At the Fulton County government center, Cooper was greeted by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
"I thought that I would accompany her today to support her, but also to say to all people that this is a choice we have," Franklin said.
"As all Americans, we should cherish the right to vote and take every opportunity we have to vote our opinions. She is an inspiration to me personally, but she is also quite an inspiration to all Atlanta."

Bush defends bailout

President Bush on Friday defended recent federal intervention in the financial system as necessary to ward off a wider economic crisis and said the actions were not just a Wall Street bailout.
"People look at the crisis and say, 'Oh, it's only Wall Street,' " said Bush, addressing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "I don't think so. In fact, I know that if we had not acted, it would have affected the American people directly."
"If the government had not acted, the hole in our financial system would have gotten larger," he added.
Bush's comments - his 34th public statement on the economic crisis since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September - came just minutes after the Commerce Department reported that initial construction of U.S. homes fell to a fresh 17-year low in September. Housing starts fell to 817,000 residential units, down 6.3% from 872,000 housing starts the prior month.

McCain comes out swinging, but no game changer

John McCain came out of the gate strong, but Barack Obama gained strength as the night progressed Wednesday in the final presidential debate where each candidate tried to convince voters that he is better equipped to steer the nation through these troubled times.
For McCain, the final result of the debate is not great news. When the sun rises Thursday morning, very little will have changed in the race for the White House.
Obama is leading in national polls as well as in key battleground states. McCain faces a financial deficit in these closing days where expensive television advertising will play a key role in helping the candidates deliver their closing arguments.
Poll of debate watchers surveyed after the 90-minute match-up thought Obama did a better job than McCain by a wide margin, 58 percent to 31 percent. iReport.com: Who do you think won the debate
While McCain was more assertive and clearer in stating his policies in this debate than in the two previous head-to-head meetings, the Republican nominee did not deliver a "game changer" needed to turn momentum back towards his direction.

Candidates hit back hard, fast against online attacks

Barack Obama is not a Muslim, and John McCain did not tell the television show "60 Minutes" he was a war criminal who intentionally bombed women and children in Vietnam.
Joe Biden is not planning to step aside in favor of Hillary Clinton as vice president, and Sarah Palin did not order books banned from the library when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
But if you have spent any time browsing the Internet this year, you may have read rumors to the contrary.
All these stories and more are being e-mailed to friends and family and posted on blogs.
And they are all false.
Heard that Obama was really born in Kenya and thus not eligible to be president? Wrong.
Heard that Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party? Nope, she wasn't.
But these stories are potentially damaging to the presidential campaigns of Obama and McCain, Washington communications expert Ron Bonjean warned, so it is critical to rebut them as firmly as possible.
"Fighting rumors on the Internet takes hypervigilance and a lot of caffeine. Left unchecked, these rumors can get out of control, because perception is fact," he said.
Obama and Palin are the subject of the largest number of e-mails, said Rich Buhler, founder of the fact-checking Web site, truthorfiction.com.
"The last two election cycles, there have been rumors about each of the candidates, but there has been nothing like this election," said Buhler, who has been running his nonpartisan site for 10 years.
"The number of Obama e-rumors has been huge, the stuff claiming that he was a Muslim. There are probably 15 or 20 Obama e-rumors. They have circulated massively," he said.
Buhler attributes the popularity of Obama e-mails to the fact that he is a "phenomenon."
"He is new, he is a threat" to some people, Buhler said. "When McCain named Sarah Palin, she became a phenomenon, so there were immediately a number of rumors about her, and now it's the Obama-Palin hit parade."

Bulls keep running

Stocks surged Tuesday morning, adding to the prior session's historic rally, as investors cheered the Bush administration's plan to recapitalize major banks.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) jumped 363 points in the early going. The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index added 3.9% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) gained 2%.
Stocks surged Monday, with the Dow industrials soaring some 936 points, or 11%, marking the largest-ever point advance for the blue-chip index. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also hit point-gain records.
Investors reacted to global efforts over the weekend and into Monday aimed at unfreezing credit markets and getting money flowing through the pipelines.
Treasury trading resumed following the Columbus Day holiday, and could give a good indication of whether all the recent interventions are working.
On Tuesday, the Bush administration announced plans to recapitalize U.S. banks in an effort to end the credit freeze that has slammed the global economy. Among the moves announced: a $250 billion investment in nine major banks and a plan for the the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will back up new senior bank debt for three years.
"These efforts are designed to directly benefit the American people by stabilizing our overall financial system and helping our economy recover," President Bush said in a statement outside the White House.
Overseas markets extended their celebration, with Japan's Nikkei surging to a single-day record gain of 14.2%.
European markets rallied for the second straight day. London's FTSE-100 was up 5.5% in afternoon trading, while Frankfurt's DAX and Paris' CAC-40 climbed by 5%.

Great Depression holds lessons for surviving tough economy

Memories of salvaging and stealing to avoid going hungry are part of the legacy of the Great Depression. Some iReporters say they can't help but look at the current economy and feel the past holds lessons for the present.
Donna LeBlanc of Waxia, Louisiana, says she carries no credit to this day as a result of the frugality and self-reliance instilled in her by her family. Her husband keeps the couple's credit card and maintains a zero balance.
The Great Depression meant scary times for many households as a period of economic downturn spread throughout the world. Historians trace its start to the "Black Tuesday" stock crash on October 29, 1929, and argue that the resulting global desperation set the stage for World War II.
LeBlanc said her grandparents were fortunate that they didn't have investments and could grow or catch their own food during the Depression years.
Her grandfather Lester was a "Cajun cowboy" often seen wearing a cowboy hat, and her grandmother Ida was a resourceful woman who spent much of the 1930s working as a store clerk. LeBlanc, always told never to keep credit card debt, heard frightful stories from Ida.

McCain surrogate raises Obama's past drug use

A prominent surrogate for John McCain on Thursday raised Barack Obama's admitted cocaine use as a teenager and said the Illinois senator should speak candidly about it to the American people.
Speaking to Dennis Miller, a comedian and conservative radio talk show host, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said Obama should be more forthright about his background and what he called his "very extreme" record.
"He ought to admit, ‘You know, I've got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I'm back at the center,'" Keating, a co-chair of McCain’s campaign, said Obama should tell voters. "I mean, I understand the big picture of America. But he hasn't done that."
An aide to John McCain said Keating was not directed by the campaign to make the comments.
"We didn’t ask him to do it,” the aide said. “He didn’t clear it with us, but obviously he’s read Senator Obama’s books.”
The Obama campaign has not responded to the comments.
The remarks ring similar to comments made by prominent New Hampshire Democrat Bill Shaheen, a Hillary Clinton supporter, during the primary. Shaheen, who predicted in December that Obama’s drug past would be a major Republican talking point if her were the Democratic nominee. He later apologized for the comments, but stepped down from his role in the Clinton campaign. Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson, another Hillary Clinton backer, also had to apologize after making overt references to Obama's drug use at campaign rally in South Carolina.
In Obama's 1995 book Dreams of My Father, he writes that he was once headed in the direction of a "junkie" and a "pothead. Referring to his emotional struggles as a young man, Obama writes, "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."
Obama did speak during his primary campaign about his past experimentation with drugs and alcohol in high school.
"I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about," he told New Hampshire high school students last November. "There were times when I, you know, got into drinking, experimented with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time where I didn't really apply myself a lot."

Stocks rebound

Stocks jumped at the open Thursday, as investors welcomed IBM's earnings report and talk that the government could take a stake in troubled banks, in the latest attempt to stabilize financial markets. A rally in European markets helped too. The Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard & Poor's 500 index and the Nasdaq composite all gained in the early going.
Markets have gotten hammered this week, with the Dow industrials shedding roughly 1,600 in the past week. And Wednesday wasn't much better. It was another disappointing session despite a half-point rate cut from the Federal Reserve. Stocks were volatile amid market turmoil in Europe and Asia. The Dow ended trading with a slump of 200 points, or 2%, while the Nasdaq dropped nearly 1%.
The Labor Department said initial claims for unemployment fell by 20,000 to 478,000 in the week ended Oct. 4. That's slightly worse than the 475,000 expected by economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
Much of what had been pushing markets higher was "the IBM effect and a technical bounce from new lows" in the stock market, said Peter Cardillo, economist for Avalon Partners, before the jobless report came out.
On Wednesday, IBM surprised investors by releasing its quarterly results earlier than expected. Big Blue reported a 20% jump in third-quarter profit to $2.05 a share, handily topping analyst estimates by 4 cents a share. IBM also reaffirmed its full-year outlook. Shares of IBM rose 3% Thursday morning.
Cardillo also said the markets could also be getting relief from "a new government intervention by taking a stake in some of the banks."
To help bolster the markets, the Bush administration is considering taking ownership stakes in certain U.S. banks, as part of the $700 billion bailout package that was approved last week, according to the Associated Press.
Also, the New York Federal Reserve said late Wednesday that it is lending up to $37.8 billion to AIG, just three weeks after the Fed extended an $85 billion taxpayer-funded credit line to the troubled insurance giant. AIG recently disclosed that it had already taken out $61 billion of the debt.
Meanwhile, credit markets remain tight as lenders stay wary of taking on any unnecessary risk. Libor, the overnight bank lending rate, slipped to the still-high 5.09% from the previous rate of 5.38%, according to Bloomberg.com data. The 3-month Libor rate rose to 4.75% from 4.52%.
Economy: At 10 a.m. ET, the Census Bureau will report its August sales and inventory statistics for wholesale inventories. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expect a gain of 0.4%, compared to a gain of 1.4% in July.
Markets, money and oil: The Nikkei closed down about 0.5%, but markets were higher in London, Frankfurt and Paris, rallying after a dismal Wednesday that was trailing the turmoil of the U.S. markets. The U.S. dollar slipped against the euro and the British pound but rose against the yen. The price of oil traded within a narrow range, dropping 32 cents a barrel to $88.63.

Stocks slide after rate cut

Stocks fell Wednesday as investors welcomed the Federal Reserve's emergency rate cut, but remained wary about financial markets.
Credit markets remained tight following the news, with banks continuing to hoard cash. Treasury bond prices spiked as investors rushed to the comparative safe haven of U.S. government debt. The dollar tumbled versus the euro and yen. Oil prices slipped and gold prices rose.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 140 points, or 1.4%, with Alcoa and Bank of America dragging after the two companies reported weak results in the past two days.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 1.2% and the Nasdaq composite lost 1%.
All three major gauges had tumbled at the open, then seesawed through the morning as investors considered the emergency rate cut.
Also in the mix: a surprise rise in the August pending home sales index.
The Federal Reserve, in coordination with banks around the world, said it was cutting the fed funds rate by half a percentage point to 1.5%. The fed funds rate is a key short-term lending rate that impacts loans on credit cards, home equity lines and business loans. The Fed also cut the discount rate, a bank lending rate, by half a percentage point.
This is the latest step taken by various agencies over the past week in an attempt to get banks to start lending to each other again. The Dow has lost 1,400 points and the three major stock gauges have fallen to five-year lows as panicked investors have fled stocks.

Obama gaining in 5 battleground states, polls say

Polls in five key battleground states in the race for the White House released Tuesday suggest that Sen. Barack Obama is making major gains.
The CNN/Time magazine/Opinion Research Corp. polls of likely voters in Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin reflect a significant nationwide shift toward the Democratic presidential nominee.
Obama has made significant strides in New Hampshire, the state credited with reviving Sen. John McCain's Republican primary campaign in both 2000 and 2008.
Fifty-three percent of New Hampshire's likely voters are backing Obama, while 45 percent are supporting McCain. Obama held a lead of 5 percentage points in the last CNN New Hampshire poll, taken in early September.

U.S. bank failures almost certain to increase in next year

Here's a safe bet for uncertain times: A lot of banks won't survive the next year of upheaval despite the The biggest questions are how many will perish and how they will be put out of their misery, whether it's outright closures by regulators scrambling to preserve the dwindling deposit insurance fund or in fire sales made under government pressure.
Weakened by huge losses on risky home loans, the banking industry is now on the shakiest ground since the early 1990s, when more than 800 federally insured institutions failed in a three-year period. That was during the clean-up phase of a decade-long savings-and-loan meltdown that wound up costing U.S. taxpayers $170 billion to $205 billion, after adjusting for inflation.
The government's commitment to spend up to $700 billion buying bad debts from ailing banks is likely to save some institutions that would have otherwise died, but analysts doubt it will be enough to avert a major shakeout. "It will help, but it's not going to be the saving grace" because a lot of banks are holding construction loans and other types of deteriorating assets that the government won't take off their books, predicted Stanford Financial analyst Jaret Seiberg. He expects more than 100 banks nationwide to fail next year. U.S. government's $700 billion rescue plan to restore order to the financial industry.

California may need $7 billion federal loan

California may need a $7 billion emergency loan from the federal government to pay for "teachers' salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and every other state-funded service" this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warns.
Schwarzenegger gave the warning in a letter sent Thursday to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
The letter, published in Friday's Los Angeles Times, was written on the eve of an expected vote in the U.S. House on the federal bailout of the financial system.
"The federal rescue package is not a bailout of Wall Street tycoons -- it is a lifeboat for millions of Americans whose life savings, businesses, retirement plans and jobs are at stake," Schwarzenegger said.
California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer issued a statement a day earlier saying because of the national financial crisis, California "has been locked out of credit markets for the past 10 days."
"Absent a clear resolution to this financial crisis that restores confidence and liquidity to the credit markets, California and other states may be unable to obtain the necessary level of financing to maintain government operations and may be forced to turn to the federal Treasury for short-term financing," Schwarzenegger wrote.

Engineer sent text 22 seconds before fatal train crash

A Metrolink engineer driving a commuter train sent a text message about 22 seconds before the train collided with a Union Pacific freight train last month, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.
The crash killed 25 people, including the engineer, Robert Sanchez, during Friday rush hour in Chatsworth, a northwest Los Angeles suburb.
Meanwhile, the Senate on Wednesday night cleared a rail safety reform bill that would give Amtrak $13 billion dollars over five years, its passage partly pushed by the September 12 collision, according to The Associated Press.
The bill, which passed by a 74-24 vote, will go before President Bush who has not said if he'll sign it. The Federal Railroad Administration told the AP that safety technology mandated by the legislation would have prevented the crash.
The bill adds 200 new safety inspectors and requires technology be installed by 2015 that can slow a train that runs a red light or jumps off track.
The NTSB earlier determined the brakes on the Metrolink train were not applied before the collision and that stop signals at the scene were working properly, said Kitty Higgins, an NTSB member assigned to the investigation.
The bill also limits the hours a week rail crews can work, and prohibits shifts longer than 12 hours, the AP said.
On Wednesday, the NTSB said that Sanchez, 46, sent a text message at 4:22:01 p.m. on September 12, the NTSB said, citing information on his cell phone activity that the safety board subpoenaed from his service provider.

Grenade found in D.C. park

Several homes have been evacuated in northwest Washington, D.C., after a grenade was found at a park. U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. Robert Lachance says a maintenance worker found the explosive Wednesday morning at Rock Creek Park. He says authorities determined it's a grenade and a police bomb squad is working to remove it.
Some nearby homes have been evacuated as a precaution, but Lachance didn't know exactly how many. Police temporarily closed 16th Street, a busy commuter route, and two side streets.