The FT and NYT go high in their stories with a contrite founder, David Rubenstein, saying Carlyle will help its burned investors “deal with losses and maybe recover some capital,” though the papers don’t explain how that would be done.

The Washington Post has a good behind-the-scenes tick tock on how it all went down.

Yeah, but is it a train?

Credit-ratings firm Standard & Poors says it sees the light at the end of the subprime tunnel. It said yesterday that the era of multibillion-dollar write-downs on Wall Street and among other banks is nearing its conclusion. At least for subprime stuff, says an S&P analyst:

“We believe that any near-term positive impact of reducing subprime risk in the financial system via increased disclosure and write-downs will be offset by worsening problems in the broader U.S. real-estate market and in other segments of the credit markets”…

In addition, if wider credit spreads continue, financial companies will “suffer further market-value write-downs of a broad range of exposures, including leveraged loans,” he said.

The New Repo Men

In a story that otherwise seems oldish news, the NYT posts an interesting factoid on the debt-collection industry, which it says is on a major PR offensive:

So many people are in so much debt that the government says bill collecting is one of the fastest-growing businesses. By 2016, employment in it is projected to exceed half a million workers, up 23 percent in a decade.

The Times also says lawyers are playing an increasing part in the industry’s efforts to get money out of those in hock. That leads to this comically defensive quote from a debt-collection attorneys lobbyist:

“We’re trying to create an awareness that attorneys collect debt ethically,” Mr. Markoff, whose practice is in Chicago, said. “To lump us in with a high school graduate who has not received similar training is not fair.”

We’ll leave the light on

Chrysler says it is going to shut down the entire company for a couple weeks this summer to save cash. Taking advantage of a traditional summer shutdown of assembly lines, the privately-owned carmaker is forcing its office workers to take their vacations during the pause.

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