Budget Cuts’ Impact May Be Difficult to See Right Away

WASHINGTON — Seventeen months after President Obama signed doomsday budget legislation that was never intended to become law, the sweeping spending reductions in the measure have been imposed.

Late Friday night, Mr. Obama formally triggered spending cuts that will reach across the breadth of the federal government after he failed to persuade Congressional Republicans to replace them with a mix of cuts and tax increases.

In a 70-page report to Congress accompanying the order and detailing the reductions — agency by agency and program by program — Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Obama’s budget director, called them “deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions.”

But even as the cuts become official, some of the immediate impact is difficult to see.

The process of trimming government budgets is slow and cumbersome, involving lengthy notifications to unions about temporary furloughs, reductions in overtime pay and cuts in grant financing to state and local programs. Less federal money will, over time, mean fewer government contracts with private companies. Reduced overtime for airport security checkpoint officers will make lines longer, eventually.

And so as the first weekend began for the new, slimmer government, little of that is evident yet.

Letters to governors, informing them of the smaller grants are beginning to go out, officials said. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development, wrote to Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio: “You can expect reductions totaling approximately $35 million,” helpfully putting the amount in a bold type.

The Air Force Thunderbirds — the elite team of F-16 pilots who perform tricks at air shows — announced on its Web site that all of its shows have been canceled starting April 1. The last show will be in Titusville, Fla., on March 23.

Still, it will take some time, officials acknowledged, before the cuts begin to make life more difficult for teachers, defense contractors, Head Start students, border patrol agents or others who rely on the largess of the federal government.

Emerging from an Oval Office meeting on Friday with the lawmakers, the president called the cuts “just dumb.” He said they would slow the economic recovery and spoke emotionally about their impact on people who would feel the consequences of government layoffs and disruptions in public services.

“I don’t anticipate a huge financial crisis, but people are going to be hurt,” Mr. Obama said during a 35-minute news conference at the White House, in which he acknowledged that his campaign of highlighting fallout from the cuts had failed to persuade Republicans to consider tax increases as part of a package to avert the $85 billion in reductions over the next seven months.

But the president and his Republican adversaries said they would not carry the fight over the cuts into a coming legislative effort to finance the government through Sept. 30, essentially declaring a cease-fire in the budget wars that have dominated Washington since 2011.

The showdown in December over the so-called fiscal cliff yielded $620 billion in tax increases over 10 years. The across-the-board spending cuts now going into force will cut deficits an additional $1.2 trillion.

Both sides indicated that for now, that may be enough — a fiscal peace through political exhaustion. The two parties are now expected to move to a broader argument over the right level of taxes and spending as they seek to develop a new budget for the coming year and beyond. Republicans said they welcomed a return to a more orderly budget process but warned they would not give in on their basic principles.

“I will not be part of any back-room deal, and I will absolutely not agree to increase taxes,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

After a public relations blitz lasting weeks that was aimed at stopping the cuts, Mr. Obama said he was prepared to extend a stopgap law that finances the government to March 27 if Republicans stuck to an agreement worked out in 2011 about the level of federal spending. The decision will most likely allow the across-the-board spending reductions to remain in place for months if not years.

White House officials and Senate Democrats had considered making one last stand around the March 27 deadline, declaring the Senate would not pass another government spending plan unless it undid the across-the-board cuts. But Senate Democrats were leery. The first furloughs are likely to hit in April, and the Democrats feared that little political pressure would have built on Republicans before the current stopgap spending law expired.

On Friday, Mr. Obama used janitors and security guards as examples of federal employees whose pay will be cut because of the reductions. “They’ve got to figure out how to manage that,” he said.

In fact, as pointed out by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Capitol officials e-mailed the building’s staff to say that the president’s comment was not true. The Capitol’s sergeant-at-arms, who is in charge of the building’s officers, said that, “None of my employees will have their pay cut nor will they face furloughs.”

In his weekly address on Saturday morning, the president acknowledged that the reductions would not affect everyone equally.

“While not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away, the pain will be real,” Mr. Obama said. “Many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in a significant way.”

And heading into the weekend, some officials seemed eager to offer reassurance that government would continue to function despite the deep cuts.

While Leon E. Panetta, who just left the job of defense secretary, had thundered about the critical risk to national security — and lamented what he viewed as a shift of Washington’s political class away from good governance — his successor, Chuck Hagel, spoke in more conciliatory terms.

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Comings and goings at 'Downton Abbey' next season

NEW YORK (AP) — Shirley MacLaine will be returning to "Downton Abbey" next season, and opera star Kiri Te Kanawa is joining the cast.

MacLaine will reprise her role as Martha Levinson, Lord Robert Crawley's freewheeling American mother-in-law, Carnival Films and "Masterpiece" on PBS said Saturday. MacLaine appeared in episodes early last season.

New Zealand-born soprano Te Kanawa will play a house guest. She will sing during her visit.

Other new cast members and characters include:

— Tom Cullen as Lord Gillingham, described as an old family friend of the Crawleys who visits the family as a guest for a house party (and who might be the one to mend Lady Mary Crawley's broken heart).

— Nigel Harman will play a valet named Green.

— Harriet Walter plays Lady Shackleton, an old friend of the Dowager Countess.

— Joanna David will play a guest role as the Duchess of Yeovil.

— Julian Ovenden is cast as aristocrat Charles Blake.

"The addition of these characters can only mean more delicious drama, which is what 'Downton Abbey' is all about," said "Masterpiece" executive producer Rebecca Eaton.

Meanwhile, the producers have confirmed that villainous housemaid Sarah O'Brien won't be back. Siobhan Finneran, who played her, is leaving the show.

These announcements come shortly after the third season's airing in the United States. It concluded with the heartbreaking death of popular Matthew Crawley in a car crash, leaving behind his newborn child and loving wife, Lady Mary Crawley.

Matthew's untimely demise was the result of the departure from the series by actor Dan Stevens, who had starred in that role.

The third season also saw the shocking death of Lady Sybil Branson, who died during childbirth. She was played by the departing Jessica Brown Findlay.

Last season the wildly popular melodrama, set in early 20th century Britain, was the most-watched series on PBS since Ken Burns' epic "The Civil War," which first aired in 1990. The Nielsen Co. said 8.2 million viewers saw the "Downton" season conclusion.

"Downton Abbey," which airs on the "Masterpiece" anthology, won three Emmy awards last fall, including a best supporting actress trophy for Maggie Smith (the Dowager Countess), who also won a Golden Globe in January.

In all, the series has won nine Emmys, two Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the ensemble cast, which is the first time the cast of a British television show has won this award.

Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Jim Carter and Brendan Coyle are among its other returning stars.

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Online:

http://www.pbs.org/downton

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U.S. Judges Offer Addicts a Way to Avoid Prison

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Emily Leitch of Brooklyn, with her son, Nazir, 4, was arrested for importing cocaine but went to “drug court” to avoid prison.

Federal judges around the country are teaming up with prosecutors to create special treatment programs for drug-addicted defendants who would otherwise face significant prison time, an effort intended to sidestep drug laws widely seen as inflexible and overly punitive.

The Justice Department has tentatively embraced the new approach, allowing United States attorneys to reduce or even dismiss charges in some drug cases.

The effort follows decades of success for “drug courts” at the state level, which legal experts have long cited as a less expensive and more effective alternative to prison for dealing with many low-level repeat offenders.

But it is striking that the model is spreading at the federal level, where judges have increasingly pushed back against rules that restrict their ability to make their own determination of appropriate sentences.

So far, federal judges have instituted programs in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington. About 400 defendants have been involved nationwide.

In Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Thursday, Judge John Gleeson issued an opinion praising the new approach as a way to address swelling prison costs and disproportionate sentences for drug trafficking.

“Presentence programs like ours and those in other districts mean that a growing number of courts are no longer reflexively sentencing federal defendants who do not belong in prison to the costly prison terms recommended by the sentencing guidelines,” Judge Gleeson wrote.

The opinion came a year after Judge Gleeson, with the federal agency known as Pretrial Services, started a program that made achieving sobriety an incentive for drug-addicted defendants to avoid prison. The program had its first graduate this year: Emily Leitch, a Brooklyn woman with a long history of substance abuse who was arrested entering the country at Kennedy International Airport with over 13 kilograms of cocaine, about 30 pounds, in her luggage.

“I want to thank the federal government for giving me a chance,” Ms. Leitch said. “I always wanted to stand up as a sober person.”

The new approach is being prompted in part by the Obama administration, which previously supported legislation that scaled back sentences for crimes involving crack cocaine. The Justice Department has supported additional changes to the federal sentencing guidelines to permit the use of drug or mental health treatment as an alternative to incarceration for certain low-level offenders and changed its own policies to make those options more available.

“We recognize that imprisonment alone is not a complete strategy for reducing crime,” James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement. “Drug courts, re-entry courts and other related programs along with enforcement are all part of the solution.”

For nearly 30 years, the United States Sentencing Commission has established guidelines for sentencing, a role it was given in 1984 after studies found that federal judges were giving defendants widely varying sentences for similar crimes. The commission’s recommendations are approved by Congress, causing judges to bristle at what they consider interference with their judicial independence.

“When you impose a sentence that you believe is unjust, it is a very difficult thing to do,” Stefan R. Underhill, a federal judge in Connecticut, said in an interview. “It feels wrong.”

The development of drug courts may meet resistance from some Republicans in Congress.

“It is important that courts give deference to Congressional authority over sentencing,” Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, a member and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. He said sentencing should not depend “on what judge happens to decide the case or what judicial circuit the defendant happens to be in.”

At the state level, pretrial drug courts have benefited from bipartisan support, with liberals supporting the programs as more focused on rehabilitation, and conservatives supporting them as a way to cut spending.

Under the model being used in state and federal courts, defendants must accept responsibility for their crimes and agree to receive drug treatment and other social services and attend regular meetings with judges who monitor their progress. In return for successful participation, they receive a reduced sentence or no jail time at all. If they fail, they are sent to prison.

The drug court option is not available to those facing more serious charges, like people accused of being high-level dealers or traffickers, or accused of a violent crime. (These programs differ from re-entry drug courts, which federal judges have long used to help offenders integrate into society after prison.)

In interviews, the federal judges who run the other programs pointed to a mix of reasons for their involvement.

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DealBook: Buffett’s Annual Letter Plays Up Newspapers’ Value

Over the last half-century, Warren E. Buffett has built a reputation as a contrarian investor, betting against the crowd to amass a fortune estimated at $54 billion.

Mr. Buffett underscored that contrarian instinct in his annual letter to shareholders published on Friday. In a year when Mr. Buffett did not make any large acquisitions, he bought dozens of newspapers, a business others have shunned. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has bought 28 dailies in the last 15 months.

“There is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job,” he wrote.

Those purchases, which cost Mr. Buffett a total of $344 million, are relatively minor deals for Berkshire, and just a small part of the giant conglomerate. Mr. Buffett bemoaned his inability to do a major deal in 2012. “I pursued a couple of elephants, but came up empty-handed,” he said. “Our luck, however, changed earlier this year.”

Mr. Buffett was making a reference to one of his largest-ever deals. Last month, Berkshire, along with a Brazilian investment group, announced a $23.6 billion takeover,of the ketchup maker H. J. Heinz.

Written in accessible prose largely free of financial jargon, Berkshire’s annual letter holds appeal far beyond Wall Street. This year’s dispatch contained plenty of Mr. Buffett’s folksy observations about investing and business that his devotees relish.

“More than 50 years ago, Charlie told me that it was far better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price than to buy a fair business at a wonderful price,” Mr. Buffett wrote, referring to his longtime partner at Berkshire, Charlie Munger.

Mr. Buffett also struck a patriotic tone, directly appealing to his fellow chief executives “that opportunities abound in America.” He noted that the United States gross domestic product, on an inflation-adjusted basis, had more than quadrupled over the last six decades.

“Throughout that period, every tomorrow has been uncertain,” he wrote. “America’s destiny, however, has always been clear: ever-increasing abundance.”

The letter provides more than entertainment value and patriotic stirrings, delivering to Berkshire shareholders an update on the company’s vast collection of businesses. With a market capitalization of $250 billion, Berkshire ranks among the largest companies in the United States.

Its holdings vary, with big companies like the railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the electric utility MidAmerican Energy, and smaller ones like the running-shoe outfit Brooks Sports and the chocolatier See’s Candies. All told, Berkshire employs about 288,000 people.

The letter, once again, did not answer a question that has vexed Berkshire shareholders and Buffett-ologists: Who will succeed Mr. Buffett, who is 82, as chief executive?

Last year, he acknowledged that he had chosen a successor, but he did not name the candidate.

He has said that upon his death, Berkshire will split his job in three, naming a chief executive, a nonexecutive chairman and several investment managers of its publicly traded holdings.

In 2010, he said that his son, Howard Buffett, would succeed him as nonexecutive chairman.

Berkshire’s share price recently traded at a record high, surpassing its prefinancial crisis peak reached in 2007 and rising about 22 percent over the last year.

The company reported net income last year of about $14.8 billion, up about 45 percent from 2011. Yet the company’s book value, or net worth — Mr. Buffett’s preferred performance measure — lagged the broader stock market, increasing 14.4 percent, compared with the market’s 16 percent return.

Mr. Buffett lamented that 2012 was only the ninth time in 48 years that Berkshire’s book value increase was less than the gain of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. But he pointed out that in eight of those nine years, the S.& P. had a gain of 15 percent or more, suggesting that Berkshire proved to be a most valuable investment during bad market periods.

“We do better when the wind is in our face,” he wrote.

For Berkshire’s largest collection of assets, its insurance operations, the wind has been at its back. We “shot the lights out last year” in insurance, Mr. Buffett said.

He lavished praise on the auto insurer Geico, giving a special shout-out to the company’s mascot, the Gecko lizard.

Investors also keep a keen eye on changes in Berkshire’s roughly $87 billion stock portfolio. Its holdings include large positions in iconic companies like International Business Machines, Coca-Cola, American Express and Wells Fargo. He said Berkshire’s investment in each of those was likely to increase in the future.

“Mae West had it right: ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,’ ” Mr. Buffett wrote.

He also complimented two relatively new hires, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, who now each manage about $5 billion in stock portfolios for Berkshire. Both men ran unheralded, modest-size money management firms before Mr. Buffett plucked them out of obscurity and moved them to Omaha to work for him.

He called the men “a perfect cultural fit” and indicated that the two would manage Berkshire’s entire stock portfolio once he steps aside. “We hit the jackpot with these two,” Mr. Buffett said, noting that last year, each outperformed the S.& P. by double-digit margins.

Then, sheepishly, employing supertiny type, he wrote: “They left me in the dust as well.”

A former paperboy and member of the Newspaper Association of America’s carrier hall of fame, Mr. Buffett devoted nearly three out of 24 pages of his annual report to newspapers.

While Mr. Buffett has been a longtime owner of The Buffalo News and a stakeholder in The Washington Post Company, he told shareholders four years ago that he wouldn’t buy a newspaper at any price.

But his latest note reflects how much his opinion has turned. His buying spree started in November 2011, when he struck a deal to buy The Omaha World-Herald Company, this hometown paper, for a reported $200 million. By May 2012, he bought out the chain of newspapers owned by Media General, except for The Tampa Tribune. In recent months, he continued to express his interest in buying more papers “at appropriate prices — and that means a very low multiple of current earnings.”

“Papers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to tightly bound communities and having a sensible Internet strategy will remain viable for a long time,” wrote Mr. Buffett.

Mr. Buffett said in a telephone interview last month that he would consider buying The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., a paper that the Tribune Company is considering selling. But Mr. Buffett said he had not contacted Tribune executives.

“It’s solely a question of the specifics of it and the price,” he said about the Allentown paper. “But it’s similar to the kinds of communities that we bought papers in.”

Mr. Buffett has plenty of cash to make more newspaper acquisitions. To cover his portion of the Heinz purchase, Mr. Buffett will deploy about $12 billion of Berkshire’s $42 billion cash hoard. That leaves a lot of money for Mr. Buffett to continue his shopping spree for newspapers — and more major deals like Heinz.

“Charlie and I have again donned our safari outfits,” Mr. Buffett wrote, “and resumed our search for elephants.”

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Euro Watch: Euro Zone Unemployment Rose to New Record in February

PARIS — The unemployment rate in the euro zone edged up in January to a new record, official data showed Friday, as the ailing European economy continued to weigh on the job market.

Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone stood at 11.9 percent in January, up from 11.8 percent in December, and from 10.8 percent in January 2012, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.

For the 27 nations of the European Union, the January jobless rate stood at 10.8 percent, up from 10.7 percent in December. All of the figures were seasonally adjusted.

A separate Eurostat report showed price pressures easing in February. In the euro zone, the annual inflation rate came in at 1.8 percent, down from 2.0 percent in January, and below the European Central Bank’s 2 percent target.

The jobless data “suggest that wage growth is set to weaken from already low rates” and further depress consumer spending, which has already been damped by government austerity measures, Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Economics in London, wrote in a research note.

Ms. McKeown noted that the low inflation numbers and high joblessness “should leave the E.C.B.’s policy options open,” and she said it was possible the central bank “might discuss an interest rate cut or other unconventional policies” when its governing council meets on Thursday.

There was a small bit of bright news Friday. A survey of European purchasing managers by Markit, a data and research firm, showed German manufacturing output growing in February for second straight month, as new business levels improved. The composite German purchasing managers’ index improved to 50.3 in February — just above the level that signals growth — from 49.8 in January.

“German industry is clearly rebounding and taking advantage from better external traction,” Gilles Moëc, an economist at Deutsche Bank in London, wrote.

Employment is sometimes seen as a lagging indicator of economic growth, since companies try to avoid adding to their costs until they are convinced that a rebound is at hand. Despite the green sprouts in German industry, there are few signs that recovery is certain. Markit’s overall euro zone purchasing managers’ index was unchanged in February, at 47.9, a level that signals continued contraction.

European unemployment bottomed in early 2008, just as the financial crisis was getting in motion, and has been on a rising trend ever since. The January numbers were the highest since the creation of the euro.

In absolute terms, Eurostat estimated Friday, 19 million people in the euro zone and more than 26 million people in the overall European Union. were unemployed.

Spain’s unemployment rate in January was 26.2 percent, and Portugal’s was 17.6 percent. Austria, at just 4.9 percent, had the lowest rate, followed by Germany and Luxembourg, both of which stood at 5.3 percent.

Greece’s unemployment rate in November, the latest month for which Eurostat has figures for the country, was 27 percent.

France, the second-largest euro-zone economy after Germany, had a 10.6 percent jobless rate in January. In Britain, not a euro member, the jobless rate stood at 7.7 percent.

Those numbers compare with the United States, where the January unemployment rate stood at 7.9 percent. In Japan, 4.2 percent of the work force was counted as unemployed in December.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article carried a headline that misstated the month of the data. The report was for January, not February.

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Lindsay Lohan driving case returns to LA court

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lindsay Lohan's attorney returns to court Friday for a hearing in the actress's latest criminal case, as discussions continue about a possible plea deal before trial.

The 26-year-old isn't required to attend the hearing.

The hearing is intended to take care of any issues before a March 18 trial on misdemeanor charges that Lohan lied to police about a June car crash and was driving recklessly.

Attorney Mark Heller also plans to meet with prosecutors Friday to try to negotiate a plea deal. He wants to delay the case so Lohan can pursue psychotherapy and perform community service.

Lohan was on probation at the time of the accident and she faces jail time if a judge determines she violated her sentence in a 2011 theft case.

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The New Old Age Blog: Why Can’t I Live With People Like Me?

“Aging in place” is the mantra of long-term care. Whether looking at reams of survey data, talking to friends or wishing on a star, who among us wouldn’t rather spend the final years — golden or less so — at home, surrounded by our cherished possessions, in our own bed, no cranky old coot as a roommate, no institutional smells or sounds, no lukewarm meals on a schedule of someone else’s making?

That works best, experts tell us, in dense cities, where we can hail a cab at curbside, call the superintendent when something breaks and have our food delivered from Fresh Direct or countless takeout restaurants. We’d have neighbors in the apartment above us, below us, just on the other side of the wall. Hearing their toilets flush and their children ride tricycles on uncarpeted floors is a small inconvenience compared to the security of knowing they are so close by in an emergency.

Urban planners, mindful that most Americans live in sprawling, car-reliant suburbs, are designing more elder-friendly, walkable communities, far from “real” cities. Houses and apartments are built around village greens, with pockets of commerce instead of distant strip malls. Some have community centers for congregate meals and activities; others share gardens, where people can get their hands in the warm spring dirt long after they can push a lawn mower.

All of this is a step in the right direction, despite the Potemkin-village look of so many of them. But it doesn’t take into account those who are too infirm to stay at home, even in cities or more manageable suburban environments. Some are alone, others with a loving spouse who by comparison is “well” but may not be for long, given the rigors of care-taking. It doesn’t take into account people who can’t afford a home health aide, who don’t qualify for a visiting nurse, who have no adult children to help them or whose children live far away.

But by now, aging in place, unrealistic for some, scary or unsafe for others and potentially very isolating, has become so entrenched as the right way to live out one’s life that not being able to pull it off seems a failure, yet another defeat at a time when defeats are all too plentiful. Are we making people feel guilty if they can’t stay at home, or don’t want to? Are we discouraging an array of other solutions by investing so much, program-wise and emotionally, in this sine qua non?

Regular readers of The New Old Age know that I am single, childless and terrified of falling off a ladder while replacing a light bulb, breaking a hip and lying on the floor, unattended, until my dog wails so loudly a neighbor comes by to complain. A MedicAlert pendant is not something that appeals to me at 65, but even if I give in to that, say at 75, I’m not sure my life will be richer for digging my heels in and insisting home is where I should be.

So I spend a lot of time thinking about the alternatives. I know enough to distinguish between naturally-occurring-retirement communities, or NORCs (some of which work better than others); age-restricted housing complexes (with no services); assisted living (which works fine when you don’t really need it and not so fine when you do); and continuing care retirement communities (which require big upfront payments and extensive due diligence to be sure the place doesn’t go belly up after you get there).

What I find so unappealing about all these choices is that each means growing old among people with whom I share no history. In these congregate settings, for the most part, people are guaranteed only two things in common: age and infirmity. Which brings us to what is known in the trade as “affinity” or “niche” communities,” long studied by Andrew J. Carle at the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Mr. Carle, who trains future administrators of senior housing complexes, was a media darling a few years back, before the recession, with the first baby boomers approaching 65 and niche communities that included services for the elderly — not merely warm-weather developments adjacent to golf courses — expected to explode. In newspaper interviews as recently as 2011, Mr. Carle said there were “about 100 of them in existence or on the drawing board,” not counting the large number of military old-age communities.

Mr. Carle still believes that better economic times, when they come, will reinvigorate this sector of senior housing, after the failure of some in the planning stages and others in operation. In an e-mail exchange, Mr. Carle said there were now about 70 in operation, with perhaps 50 of those that he has defined as University Based Retirement Communities, adjacent to campuses and popular with alumni, as well as non-alumni, who enjoy proximity to the intellectual and athletic activities. Among the most popular are those near Dartmouth, Oberlin, the University of Alabama, Penn State, Notre Dame, Stanford and Cornell.

At the height of the “affinity” boom, L.G.B.T.-assisted living communities and nursing homes were all the rage, seen as a solution to the shoddy treatment that those of different sexual orientations in the pre-Stonewall generation experienced in generic facilities. A few failed, most never got built and, by all accounts, the only one to survive is the pricy Rainbow Vision community in Sante Fe, N.M.

A handful of nudist elder communities, and ones for old hippies, also fell by the wayside, perhaps too free-spirited for the task. According to Mr. Carle, despite the odds, at least one group of RV enthusiasts has added an assisted-living component to what began as collections of transient elderly, looking only for a parking spot and necessary water and power hook-ups for their trailers. Native Americans have made a go of an assisted-living community in Montana, and Asians have done the same in Northern California.

But professional affinity communities, which I find most appealing, are few and far between.

The storied Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, a sliding-scale institution in the San Fernando Valley since 1940, survived near-closure in 2009 as a result of litigation, activism by the Screen Actors Guild and the local chapter of the Teamsters, and news media pressure. Among film legends who died there — along with cameramen, back-lot security guards and extras — were Mary Astor, Joel McCrea, Yvonne De Carlo and Stepin Fetchit.

New York State’s volunteer firefighters are all welcome to a refurbished facility in the Catskill region that offers far more in the way of care and activities, including a state-of-the-art gym, than when I visited there five years ago. At that time, the residents amused themselves by activating the fire alarm to summon the local hook and ladder company, which didn’t mind a bit.

Then there is Nalcrest, the retirement home for unionized letter carriers. Even as post offices nationwide are preparing to eliminate Saturday service, and snail mail becomes an artifact, the National Association of Letter Carriers holds monthly fees around the $500 mark, is located in central Florida so its members no longer have to brave rain and sleet to complete their appointed rounds, and bans dogs, the bane of their existence.

So why not aged journalists? We surely have war stories to embroider as we rock on the porch. Perhaps a mimeograph machine to produce an old-fashioned, dead-tree newspaper, which some of us will miss once it has given way to Web sites like this one. Pneumatic tubes, one colleague suggested, to whisk our belongings upstairs when we can no longer carry them. Other colleagues wondered about welcoming both editors and reporters. How can these two groups, which some consider natural adversaries, complain about each others’ tin ears or missed deadlines if we’re not segregated?

I disagree. The joy of this profession is its collaboration. We did the impossible day after day when young. We belong together when old.

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Off the Charts: Globalization, as Measured by Investment, Takes a Step Backward

A FEW years ago, capital was flying around the globe faster than it ever had. The world economy became more tightly integrated and technology contributed to making it easier for banks and investors to deploy their money on the other side of the world if prospects looked more attractive there.

Then came the financial crisis, which, the McKinsey Global Institute noted in a report issued this week, “upended many of the world’s assumptions about the inevitability of growth and globalization.”

Last year, the report estimated, world capital flows were 13 percent below the levels of the previous year. And while they were higher than during the depths of the credit crisis, they are still 61 percent below the peak levels of 2007.

“Some of the shifts under way represent a healthy correction of the excesses of the bubble years,” the report stated, but there is a risk the reversal of globalization will be overdone.

“If we move to a system where the global financial system is more balkanized, that will raise the cost of capital for more borrowers and perhaps slow economic growth,” said Susan Lund, a principal of McKinsey Global Institute and the primary author of the report.

The accompanying charts show the institute’s estimates of global capital flows, which totaled $4.6 trillion in 2012, down from $11.8 trillion in 2007. Of the 2007 total, $10.2 trillion went to developed countries, and $1.6 trillion went to developing countries. Last year, capital flows were $3.1 trillion, a decline of 69 percent, for the developed countries, and $1.5 trillion, a decline of 10 percent, for the others.

The charts break out the flows into four types. The most stable is foreign direct investment, in which a company either builds a business or acquires at least 10 percent of an existing business. By far the least stable is loans, which are often short term and can be withdrawn on short notice, creating havoc. The others are bonds and equity, meaning stock market investments.

The Asian currency crisis of the late 1990s taught developing countries the potential hazards of loans that can be here today and gone tomorrow — a lesson that some European countries ignored to their regret. The institute calculated that in 2006 and 2007, the amount of capital flowing into Ireland was more than twice as large as the country’s gross domestic product. Moreover, most of that was in loans and bonds, debt instruments that in many cases could not be repaid.

International loans and bond issuances have particularly declined in Western Europe, where the euro crisis led many to withdraw funds and caused banks to concentrate on local markets. During four years in the middle of the last decade, more than $1 trillion in Western European bonds were purchased by foreigners each year. In each of the last two years, more bonds were sold back to the issuing country than were newly sold internationally.

For a number of years, China was the largest recipient of foreign direct investment, and that continues, with as estimated $260 billion flowing in last year. But it also sent $120 billion in such investment to other countries, about the same as Japan and more than was sent by any other country except the United States, according to the estimates.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

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U.S. Economy Barely Grew in Fourth Quarter, Revision Shows

Breathe a tiny sigh of relief, if not exactly contentment: the American economy grew just barely in the last quarter of 2012.

Output expanded at an annual rate of just 0.1 percent, which is basically indistinguishable from having no growth at all and is far below the growth needed to get unemployment back to normal. But at least the economy did not shrink, as the Commerce Department had originally estimated last month, when the first report suggested that output contracted by an annual rate of 0.1 percent.

The department’s latest estimate for economic output, released Thursday, showed that growth was depressed by declines in military spending (possibly in anticipation of the across-the-board spending cuts set to begin Friday) and the amount that companies restored their stockroom shelves.

“The good news with business inventories is that what they take away in one quarter they tend to add to the next,” said Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist at Capital Economics, referring to the measure of this restocking process. “So there’s a good chance that first-quarter numbers will be better than originally thought.”

The output growth number was revised upward from the original estimate partly thanks to updated, and improved, data on business investment and net trade. Imports were lower than previously reported and exports were higher.

Economists expect that government spending will continue to drag on the economy this year, especially if Congress does not avert the spending cuts, which would shave around 0.6 percentage point off growth. Many are hoping that even if the cuts go through, Congress will reverse them in short order.

“They can always change their minds when they have to renew the continuing budget resolution at the end of this month or in April or May,” said Mr. Ashworth. “My expectation is that at most the cuts stay a month or two, and in most departments, with a wink or a nod, they won’t do anything crazy.”

Even if government does lop off $85 billion in the so-called sequester, as current law states, the private sector will offset most of this drag, thanks to the housing recovery and other sources of strength. Forecasts for the first quarter are for annual growth around 2.4 percent to 3 percent.

Monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve, while under fire from some Republicans, is also helping offset the fiscal contraction.

“With monetary policy working with a lag and still being eased, the boost to the economy is probably still growing,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics.

The combination of monetary expansion and fiscal tightening has helped lead to a painfully slow drawdown in the unemployment rate. The jobless rate stood at 7.9 percent in January. The recent end of the payroll tax holiday is also expected to hold back consumer spending, and so job growth as well.

“I think it’s largely steady as she goes for employment,” said Jay Feldman, an economist at Credit Suisse, of the indications from the latest growth report. “I still think we’re in kind of a 175,000-jobs-a-month clip for a while, but with some downside risks later in the year from the sequester.”

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Donald Trump returns to the 'Apprentice' boardroom

NEW YORK (AP) — There is something Donald Trump says he doesn't know.

Trump has welcomed a reporter to his 26th-floor corner office in Trump Tower to talk about "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice." And here in person, this one-of-a-kind TV star, billionaire businessman, ubiquitous brand mogul and media maestro strikes a softer pose than he has typically practiced in his decades on public display.

Relaxed behind a broad desk whose mirror sheen is mostly hidden by stacks of paper that suggest work is actually done there, Trump is pleasant, even chummy, with a my-time-is-your-time easiness greeting his guest.

He even contradicts his status as a legendary know-it-all with this surprising admission: There's a corner of the universe he doesn't understand.

The ratings woes of NBC, which airs his show, are on Trump's mind at the moment, and as he hastens to voice confidence in the network's powers-that-be ("They will absolutely get it right"), he marvels at the mysteries of the entertainment world.

"If I buy a great piece of real estate and do the right building, I'm really gonna have a success," he says. "It may be MORE successful or LESS successful, but you can sort of predict how it's gonna do. But show business is like trial and error! It's amazing!"

He loves to recall the iffy prospects for "The Apprentice" when it debuted in January 2004. With show biz, he declares, "You NEVER know what's gonna happen."

Except, of course, when you do.

"I do have an instinct," he confides. "Oftentimes, I'll see shows go on and I'll say, 'That show will never make it,' and I'm always right. And I understand talent. Does anybody ask me? No. But if they did, I would be doing them a big service. I know what people want."

So maybe he does know it all. In any case, lots of people wanted "The Apprentice." In its first season, it averaged nearly 21 million viewers each week.

And it gave Trump a signature TV platform that clinched his image as corporate royalty. He presided in a mood-lit stagecraft boardroom where celebrity subjects addressed him as "Mr. Trump" and shrank at that dismissive flick of his wrist and dreaded catchphrase, "You're fired."

The two-hour premiere of "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice" (Sunday at 9 p.m. EST) starts by rallying its 14 veteran contenders in the even more evocative setting of the 2,000-year-old Egyptian Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There, grandly, Trump receives such returning players as Gary Busey, Stephen Baldwin, LaToya Jackson and reality mean queen Omarosa.

Soon, teammates are chosen by team leaders Bret Michaels and Trace Adkins. Their first assignment: concoct a winning recipe for meatballs, then sell more of them than the rival team.

This is the 13th edition of the "Apprentice" franchise, which has now slipped to less than one-third its original viewership, according to Nielsen Co. figures. But even an audience matching last season's 6.26 million viewers would be pleasant news for NBC, which has recently fallen to fifth place in prime time, behind even Spanish-language Univision.

"I could probably do another show when I don't enjoy 'The Apprentice' anymore," says the 66-year-old Trump, mulling his TV future. "I have been asked by virtually every network on television to do a show for them. But there's something to sticking with what you have: This is a good formula. It works."

Years before "The Apprentice," Trump had hit on a winning formula for himself: Supercharge his business success with relentless self-promotion, putting a human face — his! — on the capitalist system, and embedding his persona in a feedback loop of performance and fame.

Since then, he has ruled as America's larger-than-life tycoon and its patron saint of material success. Which raises the question: Does he play a souped-up version of himself for his audience as Donald Trump, a character bigger and broader than its real-life inspiration?

He laughs, flashing something like a you-got-me smile.

"Perhaps," he replies. "Not consciously. But perhaps I do. Perhaps I do."

It began as early as 1987, when his first book, "Trump: The Art of the Deal," became a huge best-seller.

And even without a regular showcase, he was no stranger to TV. For instance, in the span of just 10 days in May 1997, Trump not only was seen on his "Miss Universe Pageant" telecast on CBS, but also made sitcom cameo appearances as himself on NBC's "Suddenly Susan" and ABC's "Drew Carey Show."

Meanwhile, as a frequent talk-show guest then (as now), he publicized his projects and pushed his brand.

"I'll be on that show for 20 or 30 or 60 minutes, and it costs me nothing," he notes. "When you have an opportunity for promotion, take it! It's free."

No one has ever accused Trump of hiding his light under a bushel. But his promotional drive (or naked craving for attention) has taken him to extremes that conventional wisdom warns against: saying and doing things that might hurt your bottom line.

Item: Trump's noisy, even race-baiting challenge to President Barack Obama to prove his American citizenship. This crusade has earned Trump the title from one editorialist as "birther blowhard."

For an industrialist and entertainer, where's the profit in voicing political views that could tick off a segment of your market or your audience?

"It's a great question, and a hard question to answer, because you happen to be right," Trump begins. "The fact is, some people love me, and some people the-opposite-of-love me, because of what I do and because of what I say. But I'm a very truthful person. By speaking out, it's probably not a good thing for me personally, but I feel I have an obligation to do it."

But isn't he being divisive with some of his pronouncements?

"I think 'divisive' would be a fair word in some cases, not in all cases," he replies. "But I think 'truthful' is another word."

The publicity he got from his political activism reached a fever pitch during his months-long, media-blitzed flirtation with running for president that seemed conveniently to dovetail with the Spring 2011 season of his TV show.

That May, he announced he would not run. For some, it was the final scene of nothing more than political theatrics.

"They weren't," Trump says quietly. "I was very seriously considering running. It was a race that the Republicans should have won. I made a mistake in not running, because I think I would have won."

He says he has no designs on this year's race for mayor of New York. But his politicizing continues apace. In his Twitter feed, with 2 million followers, he continues to bash China and rant about Washington. He phones in to Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" each Monday morning to vent his spleen.

"I believe in speaking my mind," he says, "and I don't mind controversy, as you probably noticed. I think sometimes controversy is a good thing, not a bad thing."

Last summer saw the opening in Aberdeen, Scotland, of Trump International Golf Links after a bitter, yearslong fight waged by environmentalists and local residents against government leaders and, of course, Trump.

A man for whom it seems no publicity is bad publicity, Trump insists the controversy helped the project.

"If there wasn't controversy surrounding it, I don't think anybody would even know it exists," he says, laying out the alternative: "I could take an ad: 'Golf course opening.'"

Trump even seems to profit from the harsh attention focused on his hair.

"I get killed on my hair!" he says, with no trace of remorse. But he wants everyone to know, "It's not a wig!" Nor is it an elaborately engineered coif to hide a hairline in retreat, as many Trump-watchers imagine.

To prove it, Trump does a remarkable thing: He lifts the flaxen locks that flop above his forehead to reveal, plain as day, a normal hairline.

"I wash my hair, I comb it, I set it and I spray it," he says. "That's it. I could comb it back and I'd look OK. But I've combed it this way for my whole life. It's become almost a trademark. And I think NBC would be very unhappy if I combed it back, 'cause — you know what? — maybe I wouldn't get as high a rating."

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Online:

www.nbc.com

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Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier

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