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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: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:11AM (3 children)
Not just a recession
Historically low interest rates led many companies to take on enormous debt. As the Fed raises interest rates many of these companies are or will be defaulting
The fed will raise rates as average income goes up but that rising average is dominated by workers who are already well paid. Low income workers are not benefited in any way by the presently booming economy
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @03:20AM (2 children)
Yeah. Figure in student debt too once shit hits the fan. It's looking really fucking bad. The talking heads over on MarketWatch seem to be predicting late 2019 or 2020 for when this house of cards collapses.
On the bright side, something like that might be the event that sparks the kind of political consciousness in the working class necessary for an international socialist revolution.
But probably not. My long-term estimate is that everything falls down over the next 100 to 200 years or so (including at least one global nuclear exchange), and then there's about 1,000 years of dark ages. There might be a chance that the next attempt will finally make it, though when I'm feeling pessimistic, I give it a few more cycles of empire and dark ages.
Evolution simply doesn't work even on the time scale of an empire's lifetime, and it will likely take more evolution before the cycle is broken. The catch, of course, is that evolution has no end goal. For all we know, humans may eventually lose the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and it could be tens or hundreds of millions of years before it's found again. It took the ancestors of humans a million years from the taming of fire until the invention of cooking, then on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years for clothing and finally language. That's how slowly evolution works.
But this is normal for an minshara class planet.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 17 2018, @05:52AM (1 child)
"Minshara Class Planet"
Earthlike.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:54PM
I like the language of the space elves! Granted, it's not as exciting as Klingon.