Gas Is Cheaper, but They Still Charge Extra

by Stacey L. Bradford (Author Archive)

When oil prices started skyrocketing, consumers didn't just feel it at the gas pump. They felt it at the airport, the florist and even when they got their kitchen sink fixed, as businesses across a number of industries tacked on fuel surcharges. Now, since the price of crude oil has fallen more than 50% from its high last July, it’s only natural to assume those surcharges are on the way out, right?

Wrong. Yes, some businesses, such as New York-based grocery delivery service FreshDirect, have axed the extra fees. But plenty of others aren't cutting consumers much slack. Their argument: Oil prices are still cutting into their profits. For consumers, it's a tough argument to swallow. After all, they've seen prices at the pump fall from as much as $4.06 a gallon in July to a current $2.65 per gallon.

"As we feared, now that the price of gas and oil has gone down, we are not seeing the removal of the a la carte surcharges, which is an indicator of the fact that companies were using them as a way to raise prices," says Jack Gillis, director of public affairs for the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer advocacy group.

Here are eight industries that aren't passing on the cheaper cost of fuel to you:

1. Airlines

American Airlines (AMR: 9.20, +0.94, +11.38%). United Airlines (UAUA: 13.18, +2.18, +19.81%). Northwest Airlines (NWS: 10.18, +1.08, +11.86%). In fact, pretty much all the major legacy carriers continue to tack on a surcharge of $20 to $170 on many domestic flights, says Tom Parsons, CEO of travel web site BestFares.com. (Flights in markets that compete directly with Southwest Airlines (LUV: 11.24, +0.40, +3.69%) typically don't carry a fuel surcharge since the low-cost carrier doesn't charge the fee.) And so far, none of them have announced plans to lift these fees. Overseas, Lufthansa and British Airways are discounting the fee on some routes, forcing a few U.S. airlines -- including United and Northwest -- to decrease surcharges on certain international flights.

2. Cruise Lines

Cruising the high seas will cost you. Most of the major cruise lines, including Disney, Norwegian Cruise Line and Regent Seven Seas, still charge passengers a hefty fuel surcharge of between $7 and $11 a day, per person. (Third and fourth passengers in a room are sometimes charged less.) Two of the largest U.S.-based cruise operators, Carnival (CCL: 28.71, +0.31, +1.09%) and Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL: 15.50, -0.64, -3.96%), will soon drop fuel surcharges for newly-booked 2010 cruises. (Carnival passengers, however, may not see much of a savings since the company is also boosting prices for 2010.)

3. Shipping Companies

The shipping companies won't be handing out any presents to customers this year. In November, Federal Express (FDX: 61.01, +2.93, +5.04%) and United Parcel Service (UPS: 51.13, +3.43, +7.19%) will tack on an 8.25% fuel surcharge for ground delivery and a whopping 28.5% for express service. The fuel surcharge is adjusted monthly based on the price of either diesel (for ground service) or jet fuel (for express service). (In October the ground shipping rate was 1% higher, and express service was actually 1.5% lower.) DHL hasn't announced November fuel fees yet, but it currently charges 9.3% on ground shipping and 29% on express packages.

4. Trash Management

Considering that diesel garbage trucks get just three or four miles per gallon, it's probably no surprise that waste management companies resorted to surcharges when fuel prices rocketed. They aren't planning to trash those fuel fees anytime soon. Larger companies, such as Waste Management (WMI: 31.44, +1.84, +6.21%) and Allied Waste Industries (AW: 10.19, +1.48, +16.99%). however, tie their fuel fees to the price of diesel -- so subscription customers should see some relief as prices fall.

5. Taxis

Taxi drivers in cities across the country, including Dallas, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., charge an extra fuel fee of about a $1 to cart you around. (New York City is one of the few major American cities that prohibit taxi drivers from tacking on a fuel surcharge -- but the drivers are fighting for it.) Riders in Chicago may see the fee there disappear -- as long as gas prices remain below $2.70. Other cities may follow suit if prices continue to fall.

6. Water Delivery

Don't expect water delivery companies, including Nestle Waters North America (which owns Poland Springs, Deer Park and Arrowhead) and DS Waters of America (which owns Sparkletts and Kentwood Springs), to eliminate their fuel surcharges anytime soon. Nestle Waters, for example, is adjusting the fee downward as fuel costs drop, but won't abandon the charge altogether until the National U.S. Average On-Highway Diesel Fuel Price drops to $2 a gallon (from the current $3.28 a gallon). The last time prices were that low was back in January 2005.

7. Independent Contractors

Independent service contractors have also jumped on the fuel surcharge bandwagon. While some list the charge separately on invoices, others just incorporate it into their overall prices.

8. Flowers

Online florist ProFlowers charges $1 to $2 for fuel, depending on the delivery location, the amount of time allocated for delivery and the weight of the package itself. Should fuel prices continue to drop, the company says it will eliminate the fee. Calyx Flowers charges a $1 fuel service fee.

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The Next Bailout: Helping Homeowners in Distress

By Massimo Calabresi

Taro Hagans, left, and Lakisha Doyle carry furniture outside the Fannie Mae building in Washington on Oct. 29 in a symbolic protest of eviction from home-loan foreclosures

A week into difficult talks, agencies within the Bush Administration are struggling to agree on a far-reaching new plan that would rescue homeowners with mortgage woes and ease the vicious foreclosure cycle that plagues the housing market.

Participants in the talks, including officials from the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other agencies, are focusing on two possible plans, say sources familiar with the discussions.

The first plan, backed by FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair, would create an incentive for banks to change the terms of troubled mortgages by guaranteeing mortgages for millions of Americans who are struggling with their house payments but are otherwise creditworthy. The plan would use up to $50 billion of the $700 billion in bailout funding approved recently by Congress and would draw on new loan-guarantee authority passed under the bill. The Federal Government would guarantee loans readjusted for homeowners who can show annual income worth 38% of the debt on their house. Under the plan, lenders would be encouraged to lengthen loan terms and make other adjustments in order to lower monthly payments to help borrowers keep their homes.

Those principles are similar to the ones the FDIC worked out for the 60,000-odd bad home loans it took on when it closed IndyMac, a failed California bank, last summer. Bair outlined her proposal in testimony on Oct. 23 before the Senate Banking Committee. "The government could establish standards for loan modifications and provide guarantees for loans meeting those standards," she said. "By doing so, unaffordable loans could be converted into loans that are sustainable over the long term." At the same hearing, Neel Kashkari, the acting assistant Treasury Secretary in charge of the $700 billion bailout package, said his department is "passionate about doing something about foreclosures and encouraging loan modifications."

A second plan being discussed calls for the expansion of existing housing-assistance programs run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to an Administration official. The official said there were advantages to using existing HUD programs rather than starting a new one from scratch, adding that it was unclear who would administer the FDIC's plan. "There's a lot of work to do to flesh out [Bair's] idea," the official said. Congress and both candidates for President have also discussed potential homeowner-bailout programs of their own.

By rescuing struggling homeowners, the Bush Administration hopes to avoid further damage to neighborhoods and the economy caused by cascading foreclosures. By creating a safety net for the housing market, officials also are aiming to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the soundness of the country's mortgage debt. A rapid and nearly unprecedented rise in bad home loans that began in 2007 triggered the credit crisis and has caused the failure of hundreds of banks and other lenders.

Not all struggling homeowners would be covered in a bailout, another Administration official stressed. The plan is to assist only people with sustainable home loans, not borrowers who made bad decisions and are stuck with mortgages they clearly can't pay off. "We're not doing anything for people who are under water," said the official. The FDIC plan would attempt to filter out "the people we can't help. There are foreclosures that will go forward." The process of sorting good from bad loans would also provide clarity for mortgage markets by helping financial institutions assess where the risks are in their loan portfolios and by making it easier to determine the value of mortgage-backed securities.

It was originally hoped that a deal could be reached by Oct. 31, but now that appears in doubt, sources said. While they have publicly shown a united front, Bair has locked horns repeatedly with officials at Treasury and the Federal Reserve during the scramble to deal with the financial crisis over the past year. In previous talks to expand the responsibilities of the FDIC, critics accused Bair of being more concerned with protecting her agency than halting panic in the system. Bair responded by saying FDIC insurance for everyday Americans was too important to put at risk without sufficient guarantees of its stability.

In these talks, however, it appears that the breadth of her proposal is causing friction. HUD's existing programs would seem to be the natural foundation for a mortgage rescue plan. But part of the problem in addressing the housing crisis is figuring out which loans can still be serviced, since some banks required little or no documentation of a homeowner's ability to carry the loans. The FDIC's role as a bank overseer is viewed as giving it more insight into the quality of loans on banks' books.

A final hitch may be the perennial problem of who gets credit for the plan once it is agreed on. Several sources stressed that the deal's rollout, whenever it occurs, would come from the White House, not the agencies who were negotiating the details.

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Fed Opens Swaps With South Korea, Brazil, Mexico (Update3)

By Steve Matthews and William Sim

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve agreed to provide $30 billion each to the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore, expanding its effort to unfreeze money markets to emerging nations for the first time.

The Fed set up ``liquidity swap facilities with the central banks of these four large systemically important economies'' effective until April 30, the central bank said yesterday in a statement. The arrangements aim ``to mitigate the spread of difficulties in obtaining U.S. dollar funding.''

South Korea's benchmark stock index rose by a record, the won surged and the cost of protecting Asia-Pacific bonds from default tumbled on optimism the measures will prevent the global credit crisis from upending financial markets. The Fed and China cut interest rates yesterday, followed by Hong Kong and Taiwan today.

``The swap lines will help unclog the liquidity pipeline and that action is boosting markets even more than'' the Fed's rate cut, said Venkatraman Anantha-Nageswaran, head of research at Bank Julius Baer & Co. in Singapore. ``It's a step in the right direction and prevents things from getting worse.''

South Korea's Kospi Index surged 12 percent to 1084.72, and the won jumped 14 percent to 1,250 per dollar. Singapore's Straits Times Index climbed 9.7 percent.

The cost of protecting Asia-Pacific bonds from default tumbled, with the Markit iTraxx Asia credit-default swap index of 50 borrowers falling the most since its was created in September 2007.

IMF Credit Lines

The Fed announcement coincided with a decision by the International Monetary Fund to almost double borrowing limits for emerging market countries while waiving demands for economic austerity measures.

The Fed and IMF actions ``show international resolve to support strong performing emerging-market economies adversely impacted by the current financial market turbulence,'' U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in a statement.

Emerging-market investors have created ``massive demand for dollars and a reduction of liquidity in other currencies'' by going back to investing in the U.S. currency, said David Spegel, head of emerging-market strategy at ING Financial Bank NV in New York.

The Fed swap lines ``are designed to help restore liquidity so that a vicious negative spiral doesn't occur,'' he said.

The yield premium on emerging-market dollar bonds over U.S. Treasuries narrowed yesterday by 61 basis points, or 0.61 percentage point, to 7.21 percentage points, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s EMBI+ index. The spread has jumped 5.72 percentage points from a record low of 1.49 percentage points in June 2007, and reached its widest since 2002 earlier this month.

Emerging Markets

``The Fed is there to support large emerging markets that have done their homework over the past several years like South Korea, Brazil, Singapore and Mexico,'' said Alonso Cervera, a Latin America economist with Credit Suisse Group in New York. ``These are large, relevant emerging countries that have followed responsible fiscal and monetary policies for the past several years and now are going through tough times.''

The Fed also created this week a $15 billion swap line with its New Zealand counterpart and removed limits this month on four existing swap lines, including one with the European Central Bank. The Fed set up a $10 billion arrangement with Australia's central bank last month and then tripled it to $30 billion.

`Hoped-For Result'

``The hoped-for result is that we don't see the global financial crisis worsen still more,'' said Lyle Gramley, a former Federal Reserve governor who is now senior economic adviser at Stanford Group Co. ``The Fed is making dollars available to the central banks of these countries who are trying to meet the needs of their banking systems.''

The Bank of Korea cut interest rates by a record amount on Oct. 27 and the government pledged to guarantee local banks' debts to help lenders struggling to access foreign funds. Stocks and the won tumbled last week, prompting concern the country may face a currency crisis a decade after the IMF organized a $57 billion bailout to help repay overseas debt.

The swap line with the Fed ``will expand our foreign- exchange reserves and help stabilize the currency market,'' Bank of Korea Governor Lee Seong Tae told reporters in Seoul today. ``We'll also try to cooperate with other central banks to stabilize global and local financial markets.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.net; William Sim in Seoul at wsim2@bloomberg.net

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A Rate of Zero Percent From the Fed? Some Analysts Say It Could Be Coming

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — Zero percent interest rates! It sounds like free money, or maybe a promotional deal from General Motors to get people to buy Hummers. Are zero rates coming to the Federal Reserve?

As it happens, the Fed is surprisingly close to that point already. On Wednesday, the central bank lowered its target for the federal funds rate — the rate that banks charge each other on overnight loans — to 1 percent from 1.5 percent.

But in practice, the actual federal funds rate fluctuates slightly around its target as the Fed carries out its open-market operations in the money markets. And because banks and financial institutions have been so frightened about lending in the last month, the actual Fed funds rate has been below 1 percent for the last two weeks. On Tuesday, it averaged only 0.67 percent.

A growing number of analysts now predict that the economy is so weak that the Fed will have to reduce its official target to zero if it wants to jumpstart the stalled economy.

Japan’s central bank reduced its benchmark interest rate to zero for five years, from 2001 to 2006. It did so mainly to combat a particularly persistent case of deflation, a broad-based decline in consumer prices, and to revive economic growth.

Some analysts see signs that the United States faces a similar threat. Like Japan’s, American banks have become so decimated by losses in real estate that they are either unable or unwilling to resume normal lending. And as prices for oil and many other commodities have crashed during the past two weeks, some analysts now warn that deflation might be a threat here as well.

With the Fed funds rate already down to 1 percent, and below one percent on many days, the central bank is fast approaching what economists call the “zero bound.”

If the Fed funds rate did drop to zero, it would not mean free money for consumers or businesses. The zero rate would only apply to the reserves that banks are required to maintain and that they lend to one another. Customers would still have to pay some interest, but the rates could be extremely low for some business borrowers.

The real question for policy makers is what to do if they reach a zero rate and still want to rev up the economy. Fed officials have studied the question closely, and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, gave a famous speech on the issue when he was a Fed governor in 2002.

In that speech, Mr. Bernanke described a series of options. The simplest option would be for the Fed to start buying Treasury securities with longer maturities. Buying up those longer-term securities would push up their prices and drive down longer-term interest rates. If that didn’t work, the Fed could start buying up privately-issued debt, like corporate bonds.

In effect, the Federal Reserve would be printing more money and injecting it into the economy — a strategy of “quantitative easing,” in Fed jargon.

Too much money would provoke a new round of inflation and perhaps yet another asset bubble. But Japanese inflation never took off. After five years, the Bank of Japan cautiously raised its benchmark rate to .5 percent. This week, published reports have suggested that it might cut the rate in half once again.

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Exxon Mobil: Biggest profit in history

By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- 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.

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.

Last of the big quarters

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.

Exxon's stock price slipped by about 2% in afternoon trading. Bernie McGinn, Chief Executive of McGinn Investment Management and owner of 30,000 Exxon shares, said he wasn't surprised, given the recent downturn in oil prices.

"That's probably the last of the big profit quarters, at least for now," said McGinn. "You can't make the case that it's going to continue."

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. The company said it began a new program to tap natural gas offshore from Nigeria.

More investments

Exxon also has an aggressive program for buying back stock, with 109 million of its shares repurchased during the third quarter, at a cost of $8.7 billion.

In a conference call with analysts, David Rosenthal, vice president of investor relations for Exxon, said the company's "first priority" is using profits to continue investing in exploration programs for oil and other resources.

Rosenthal said the company would also consider using new-found funds to bolster its dividend, buy back more shares and to purchase other companies, but he declined to offer specific details.

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.

Analysts also said that demand for gasoline is falling, which could impact Exxon and other oil companies.

"While oil companies benefit from high oil prices in the short run, they might lose in the long run," Anas Alhajji, chief economist for NGP Energy Capital Management, wrote in an email to CNNMoney.com. "Higher oil prices lead to lower demand, as we have seen in recent months."

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, compared to the S&P 500, which has fallen about 36%.

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Fed cuts rates and gives grim view

By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve cut a key short-term interest rate by a half-percentage point Wednesday and issued a gloomy outlook for the economy due to continued worries about the ongoing crisis in the financial and credit markets.

The rate cut put the central bank's federal funds rate at 1%. That matched the lowest level for this overnight bank lending rate ever -- the last time it was at 1% was from June 2003 to June 2004.

Investors had been expecting a half-point cut and some were betting that the Fed would even cut rates by three-quarters of a point to 0.75%.

Major U.S. stock indexes, which had been higher ahead of the Fed's decision, fell after the announcement and finished mostly lower following a wild afternoon of trading.

The fed funds rate is used to set rates for a wide variety of consumer loans, including home equity lines and credit cards, as well as for many business loans. The lower the rate, the more the Fed hopes to spur economic activity.

The Fed said in a statement that it was concerned about the drop-off in consumer and business spending due disruptions in the credit markets and warned that the economic slowdown is likely to get worse.

"The intensification of financial market turmoil is likely to exert additional restraint on spending, partly by further reducing the ability of households and businesses to obtain credit," the central bank said in its statement.

Economists generally agreed this is the Fed's most grim assessment of the economy since the Fed started issuing statements with interest rate decisions in 1995.

"They go through a litany of all these problems," said Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics, Moody's Economy.com. He added that he thinks this statement is the Fed's way of indicating that the U.S. is already in a recession and that the economy will remain weak well into 2009.

This is the ninth time that the central bank has lowered rates since September 2007 in an effort to deal with the problems in the U.S. economy and credit markets. The decision to lower rates was unanimous.

The Fed also lowered its discount rate by a half-percentage point to 1.25%. That is the rate at which it lends directly to banks and Wall Street firms.

In its statement, the Fed also appeared to concede that the rate cuts and a number of other actions it has taken to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the credit markets would not lead to an immediate return of economic growth.

The Fed projected improved credit markets and a return of moderate growth "over time." And it warned that "downside risks to growth remain."

Will Fed go below 1%?

The Fed's grim view of the economy is expected to be reinforced Thursday morning when the Commerce Department issues its first reading on gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic activity, for the third quarter.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com forecast that GDP declined by 0.5% annually after jumping 2.8% in the second quarter. If the GDP number is negative, it would be only the fifth quarter in more than 17 years that has happened.

Faucher said he believes that the risk of further weakening in the economy, coupled by the unanimous vote, is a signal that the Fed is not done lowering rates yet. He's predicting another half-point cut, to 0.5%, at its next scheduled meeting on December 16.

Kurt Karl, chief economist at Swiss Re, is also looking for another half-point cut by the end of the year.

"In aggressively cutting rates, the Fed is signaling its willingness to do what it takes to stabilize financial markets," he said.

But other economists expressed fears that the Fed has already left itself with limited ability to respond to future problems by taking rates this low.

"Now they're running low on ammunition," said Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research. "They look like Barney Fife with one bullet left. That's not too encouraging."

Other economists agreed, saying they believe Fed policymakers would prefer to not cut rates below 1%.

"I don't think there's anything to prohibit them from going under 1%, but there also is probably not a great deal of urgency on their part to bring rates lower," said Keith Hembre, chief economist First American Funds.

One economist questioned whether rate cuts really can make much difference since the current credit crunch is limiting the availability of funding. The problem isn't that loans are expensive. Banks are simply unwilling to lend.

"The latest Fed move is not going to hasten the economic recovery by a single day or accelerate the cleansing of bank balance sheets," said Bernard Baumohl, executive director of The Economic Outlook Group. "What is needed more than anything else at this stage is simply patience."

The Fed's previous cut was an emergency half-point reduction on Oct. 8. Six other central banks around the globe also lowered rates that day in a coordinated move.

The European Central Bank and the Bank of England are scheduled to meet next on Nov. 6. Those central banks have significantly higher benchmark rates, with the ECB now at 3.75% and the Bank of England at 4.5%.

While rate cuts are traditionally the key tool the Fed uses to stimulate the U.S. economy, it has had to take other steps to address the current credit crisis.

The Fed has loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to banks through a new lending facility and is starting to loan money directly to major businesses by purchasing commercial paper, which is what some banks and businesses use as their primary method to fund day to day operations.

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US teenager jailed for 'grandmother gangster rap video'

By Tom Leonard

Marie Huertas, 85, was shown wearing a black balaclava and uttering gangster rap style phrases

Michael Alfinez, 18, from Lake Worth, Florida, was jailed for 18 months after he admitted to abusing the elderly and various firearms charges.

He was arrested in April after police examined footage from his video camera during a routine traffic stop.

The footage showed Marie Huertas, 85, wearing a full black balaclava and, after repeated instructions, uttering a number of gangsta rap phrases that included expletives.

A sheriff's report said Alfinez had admitted dressing up his grandmother and persuading her to flash a gun and money at the camera.

Alfinez, who will serve his sentence in juvenile detention, also pleaded guilty to charges of firing out of a moving vehicle and into a building.

Alfinez is said to have told deputies he knew that there was something wrong with his grandmother's memory.

According to the report, when a detective showed Miss Huertas the video, she said: "They are making a criminal out of me." She said she was ashamed and didn't normally use that type of language.

Alfinez said he got the idea from a Gangstas & Thugs DVD - which show real footage rather younger hoodlums in action - and "knew (his) grandmother could be like that, too, or better".

His family has claimed that the incident was a misunderstanding.

Alfinez's mother told the Palm Beach Post: "This is my mother. This is his grandmother. Just today when he called me he said, 'Tell grandma I love her very much.' And she told me, 'Tell Mikey I love him, too.'"

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