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from the and-isn't-it-ironic?-don't-you-think? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Sears, the one-time titan of American retail, filed for bankruptcy ahead of a $134 million debt payment due Monday and announced that it will close 142 stores.
For years, Sears has contended with the threat that it would become the latest big-name retailer to fall to online competition and crushing debt. The icon once known for its pristine catalogs, and more recently known for decrepit showrooms and a controversial chief executive, saw its stock price plunge last week after reports that it had hired an advisory firm to prepare a bankruptcy filing ahead of the Oct. 15 payment.
Early Monday morning, Sears announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy -- which would allow it to reorganize and possibly reemerge from bankruptcy with some part of the business intact -- and received commitments for $300 million in debtor-in-possession financing to carry through the bankruptcy period while it restructures its debt and reorganizes its business.
[...] Sears will close 142 unprofitable stores near the end of this year, with liquidation sales at those stores expected to begin soon. It was not immediately clear where those stores are located or how many jobs would be affected. Those store closings are in addition to 46 others that were expected by next month.
[...] It has also already sold off many of its brands, including Craftsman tools, and hasn't turned a profit since 2010. Many of its most valuable properties have been sold off, with the other half leased and offering little cost savings from rent restructurings since Sears already pays below market rents.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)
There won't be anybody up against the walls until the international working class organizes and reappropriates all the wealth stuck at the top for the social good and places it under democratic control. Nobody will do it for us.
Maybe we don't even need to kill anybody. The entire city of Detroit for example likely needs to be completely re-piped [wsws.org]. The water crisis in Flint is looking like just the tip of iceberg. There's also the natural gas system "operated" by National Grid [wsws.org] in Massachusetts. Plenty of other infrastructure needs to be fixed. I'm sure we can retrain vulture capitalists and put them to some kind of use, closely supervised I'm sure, perhaps with complimentary orange jumpsuits, fixing the problems their socialized production (and externalities) and privatized gain caused.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:50AM
I suspect the international working class have largely been sucked in by the ruling class to believe that they're better off with things the way they are.
It's a shame, but the ruling class own the most efficient propaganda machine the world has ever known, and they're happy to use it.