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posted by chromas on Tuesday October 16 2018, @07:59PM   Printer-friendly
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


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 16 2018, @08:15PM (23 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @08:15PM (#749651)

    ESL Investments, a hedge fund run by Sears' former chief executive, Eddie Lampert. ESL Investments is also Sears' largest stockholder and creditor.

    There's the problem right there. As soon as one of these vultures gains control over a company it's days are numbered.
     

    • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday October 16 2018, @08:37PM (5 children)

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 16 2018, @08:37PM (#749656)
      Eddie was supposed to be the next Warren Buffett and was going to turn Sears into the next Berkshire Hathaway. Yea, that worked out.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday October 16 2018, @08:49PM (4 children)

        by Snotnose (1623) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @08:49PM (#749661)

        It's worked out pretty well for ol' Eddie. He sold all the Sears assets he could, now that there's nothing but a husk left he's shutting it down.

        Who did he sell the assets to? As much as he could, other companies he either owned or controlled. This guy basically found a sick company, harvested the organs, and is now declaring "there's no hope for survival, too bad, so sad".

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
        • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:29PM (3 children)

          by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:29PM (#749668)

          Probably adding a healthy dose of "Plz give bailout money, kthxbye."

          --
          "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:44PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:44PM (#749706)

            Maybe, but they are probably going to take Sears value on paper at the beginning of the year and deduct all of that as a Capital Loss. Wham bam, thank you ma'am, what little taxes they would have paid have now magically disappeared.

            • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday October 17 2018, @04:05PM

              by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @04:05PM (#750008)

              I figured that was the plan from the start of combining KMart and Sears. Take a failing business add add it to a struggling one, combined you have enough debt to not pay taxes. Pump up stock prices, cash out, profit.

              There is no ??? step.

              Just looked at Sears' stock price post-merger in 2004. Yep, prices spiked up to over 130 in a couple years, and now is at .50 cents. I bet the guys behind the merger got out over a decade ago.

              --
              "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
          • (Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:54AM

            by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:54AM (#749793) Journal

            Pretty sure it's more a case of: You know that money we owe you... yeah... about that.... *smoke bomb*...

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:01PM (13 children)

      by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:01PM (#749663) Journal

      It Was Vulture Capitalism that Killed Sears [prospect.org]:

      ... Sears is a prime example of how hedge funds and private-equity companies take over retailers, encumber them with debt in order to pay themselves massive windfall profits, and then leave the retailer without adequate operating capital to compete.

      ***

      In the case of Sears, the culprit is a hedge-fund operator named Edward Lampert, once a senior merger guy at Goldman Sachs. In 2005, Lampert merged Sears with Kmart, loaded both up with debt, and used some of the debt on stock buybacks to pump up the share price and enrich shareholders, notably himself and his hedge fund.

      ***

      The tactic of loading up a company with debt and then paying yourself exorbitant fees and dividends and manipulating the share price at the expense of the company ought to be illegal. It’s a plain conflict of interest. Likewise being both creditor and shareholder.

      Ditto the use of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to profit yet again by picking over the remains. A hedge-fund operator who drives a company into the ground by stripping assets for his own profit should not be permitted by bankruptcy court to keep control of the company. But that practice is the norm. Lampert will step down as CEO but remain chairman with a controlling ownership stake of what’s left of Sears.

      ***

      It was insider conflicts of interest at the expense of consumers, workers and investors, that inspired the New Deal to enact the Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment banking from commercial banking. If we ever resume the task of draining the true financial swamp, we need a Glass-Steagall for hedge funds, private-equity operators and bona-fide businesses.

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:58PM (2 children)

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:58PM (#749673)

        Closer to home for me, this also happened to a company called Dick Smith Electronics.

        Sold to an awful "investment company" who ran it into the ground, then screwed over the creditors.

        The fashion in which wealthy interests get legislation enacted for their own benefit is amazing. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, and the bankers then caused another crisis, which taxpayers paid for.

        There ought to be people up against walls, but as the golden rules states that "He who has the gold makes the rules" there won't be.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:18PM (#749679)

          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

            by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:50AM (#749730)

            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.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:09PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:09PM (#749675)

        Is it legal for someone with fiduciary obligation to Company A to mortgage A's assets to Company B, which he also controls, and then bleed A to bankruptcy?

        It sounds like theft from the shareholding public.

        • (Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:24PM (3 children)

          by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:24PM (#749681)

          Is it legal for someone with fiduciary obligation to Company A to mortgage A's assets to Company B, which he also controls, and then bleed A to bankruptcy?

          In a word, yes.

          It sounds like theft from the shareholding public.

          It is. It is also a theft from the employees (usually via their magically disappearing pension funds) and the other creditors of Company A.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:06PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:06PM (#749693)

            It's definitely not an ethical obligation to do that, it's permissible though. There is no law that requires that companies maximize shareholder value at any length necessary.

            I'm not really sure where people get that idea, but it's not a legal requirement. And such a legal requirement would be crazy as it would result in large numbers of people losing their entire investment if they buy in just as they're doing something particularly reckless to maximize value.

            The problem here, like most others in America, is that we've got legalized bribery. Individuals that buy companies just to saddle them with debt that then has to be written off in bankruptcy court should go to prison. The only reason it doesn't happen is because they've bribed the legislature and executive branches to look the other way.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:34AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:34AM (#749758)

              The only reason it doesn't happen is because they've bribed the legislature and executive branches to look the other way.

              Why shouldn't they look the other way? The voters will reelect them anyway. That's all that matters. It's quite simple, this will continue as long as we let it. Your elected officials are not the ones to blame here. It's not their fault that their bad behavior is so rewarding. That issue lies directly with the voters who don't seem to understand the irony of their complaints... They bitch about the stone in their shoe, but won't atop for a second to take it out.

            • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday October 17 2018, @09:24AM

              by shortscreen (2252) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @09:24AM (#749871) Journal

              Your post appears to be addressing something different than GP, but in any case...

              There is no law that requires that companies maximize shareholder value at any length necessary.

              The gov doesn't require it. But it's normal for "maximize shareholder value" to be stated in a corp's corporate charter. On occasion, investors have threatened to sue over actions that were perceived as failing to meet this goal. So naturally, execs can also fall back on this excuse "we must do X or we could be sued for not maximizing shareholder value!"

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:18PM (#749678)

        Really, let's just stop "going private" entirely. It's always a forced tender offer for the shareholders. You can't plan for it. It makes your taxes a mess because you have to declare gains or losses when you weren't planning for it. I'd even settle for a looser version where you can't take the company private unless shares are priced at or above their all-time high. At least then they'd have an incentive to *really* turn the company around before taking it private, instead of turning it around after holders of common have been forced to sell at the bottom. This is one of the reasons why I hold few individual stocks these days. Asking yourself the question, "What are the odds of being forced into a tender offer during a downturn?" has too high a probability for a lot of individual stocks. Big blue chips are generally immune, but can take temporary hits when they do the acquiring. It's not quite so bad.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @10:03PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @10:03PM (#750163)

          There are alternative reasons for going private, that actually hold up to scrutiny. Most recent large-scale example: EMC/Dell. Dell bought EMC, taking it private. Why? Once you dig through the crap, Dell wants to play the enterprise game on a higher level, and EMC's product portfolio and market placement looked good. On EMC's side, they suddenly got the activist-investor disease, and wanted to get rid of the idiots. Easiest way? Go private.

          Vulture capitalists and activist investors are two sides of the public/private coin.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:35AM

        by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:35AM (#749721)

        ... Sears is a prime example of how hedge funds and private-equity companies take over retailers, encumber them with debt in order to pay themselves massive windfall profits, and then leave the retailer without adequate operating capital to compete.

        See also: Toys R Us. Good old Bain capitol, run by the R's favorite Mitt Romney, sucked all the value of that company into their own pocketbooks, then left the husk for stupid suckers to buy.

        How companies like Bain and Eddie's manage to not only survive, but thrive, is a giant mirror into why so many Americans are hurting while the 1%'ers are thriving.

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @03:09AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @03:09AM (#749796)

        It was not, vultures do not kill, they wait for a walking corpse to swoop in.

        Sears was just not with the times. Having started as a catalog company, I don't know why they didn't embrace e-commerce... but there you have it.

        Department store model is a fucking dinosaur. The economy of scale is not there in the times of just-in-time wearhousing and huge distribution centers, you actually end up with way too much overhead with your giant stores, and you cannot get rid of underperforming departments, so the store's bottom line is dragged down.

        I went to Sears here and there. It was always huge and empty. I generally went for things that were quality (not the generic made in China shit, but shirts that do not disolve in laundry etc). But what can you do in era of mis-information, where the only objective piece of information a consumer has about a product is fucking price. You can pay more, double or triple, but that doesn't aways mean more quality. Picking out quality items so you get value for your buck is a total hassle. I rather go with Costco shit, where I can get a good idea of quality based on the price of the item because they have trained purchasers that stock the store, and they don't mark shit up beyond that since their overhead comes from membership fees.

        So no, vulture capitalism had nothing to do with this mummified corpse going up in flames. If it hastened the demise, then it is actually a good thing, because it leads to more efficient marketplace when outdated companies go under, and new businesses move in to fill in the demand.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:24PM

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:24PM (#750069) Journal

        "Sears has been dying for many years," Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Monday to inspect hurricane damage in Florida. "It's been obviously improperly run for many years and it's a shame."

        Of course, he promoted one of those incompetent managers to be US Treasury Secretary! [chicagotribune.com]

    • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:02AM

      by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:02AM (#749770)

      I don't think it matters who or what was running the company. My family and / went thee often as a kid, but I haven't been there in maybe thirty years.

    • (Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:48AM

      by Beryllium Sphere (r) (5062) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:48AM (#749789)

      The decline began in the 80s. My attempts to buy things at Sears got more and more frustrating and I'd given up on them already by the time Lampert came on the scene.

    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:03PM

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:03PM (#750055) Journal

      In part, probably. But it's a Titan that has been Clashing with the Perseus that is Amazon for what seems like an eternity now. Those two together are more likely what did it in - like Radio Shack (or any other number of department stores) they never reinvented themselves in the face of online retailing.

      --
      This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by black6host on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:12PM (7 children)

    by black6host (3827) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @09:12PM (#749664) Journal

    There's an interesting article at the Harvard Business review discussing brick and mortar versus online shopping and how some companies might successfully combine both: https://hbr.org/2016/05/the-best-retailers-combine-bricks-and-clicks [hbr.org]

    From that article: (Which I do realize is 2 years old...)

    But it’s not happening as pundits predicted. In the heyday of the dot.com bubble, brick-and-mortar retail was one of those industries the Internet was going to kill – and quickly. The dot.com bust discredited most predictions of that sort. And in the years that followed, conventional retailers’ confidence in the future increased as Census continued to report puny online sales. And then the gale hit.

    It is becoming increasingly clear that retail reinvention isn’t a simple battle to the death between bricks and clicks. It is about devising retail models that work for people who are making increasing use of a growing array of Internet-connected tools to change how they search, shop, and buy. Creative retailers are using the new technologies to innovate just about everything stores do from managing inventory, to marketing, to getting paid.

    I was trying to think of brick and mortar stores that made the transition and I'm having a hard time of that... Funny though how Apple seems to do quite well with its retail stores.

    I really think the internet sneaked up on a lot of businesses, or rather their leadership were clueless to the fact that the frog was slowly being boiled, so to speak. Apple doesn't have that problem. I ask my fellow Soylentils: what businesses made the transition and did well?

    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:25PM (1 child)

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:25PM (#749682)

      Major retailers such as Walmart and Target are transitioning to being both brick and mortar and online presences, trying to grab back a share of what Amazon took from them. A lot of companies won't survive, as you mentioned the leadership is just too clueless to get online in a functionally significant form. I think that any retailers for whom catalog sales were a big part of their business (ironically Sears was once one of the biggest of them) should be able to (should have already) easily add a significant online presence. Small businesses such as used book stores probably do as much or more business online now as they do in store. I live in a tourist town with significant big events, many of the most longstanding businesses are doing a lot of their retail sales online now, rather than just booming during the events and starving the rest of the year.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday October 17 2018, @11:32AM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 17 2018, @11:32AM (#749911)

        most longstanding businesses are doing a lot of their retail sales online now

        Would agree with and extend your remarks WRT hobby stores seem to be the worlds warehouse for plastic model kits and various supplies. When I visit the friendly local hobby store they seem to have a permanent stack of outgoing UPS boxes for Amazon... why pay a warehouse operator for space if there's brick and mortar stores willing to stock, and if their point of sale systems is smart enough why not allow locals to pay more to buy immediately at the store rather than thru amazon? Its an interesting business model; the store-warehouse. Decades ago warehouse stores were just cheap and ugly decorated stores, but the idea of a retail browsable warehouse is interesting, and apparently sustainable.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:31PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:31PM (#749684)

      Walmart and Target are doing just fine. So is, as mentioned in TFA, hardware chains like Lowe's and the Home Depot.

      What brick-and-mortar stores offer that online doesn't:
      1. Faster response time than online delivery has currently been able manage. If you need it faster than tomorrow, you need to get to someplace that has it to retrieve it. Amazon's efforts towards drone-based delivery is an attempt to fix that, but it's no guarantee.

      2. The skills and expertise of the sales clerks. For instance, when I went to buy paint recently, the person working that desk was able to work with me to identify the variety of paint I really should use for what I was doing, which I wouldn't have thought of on my own or easily figured out from online tools.

      A lot of the folks I just mentioned do online sales as well, and the difference between buying from them and online-only retailers is that the goods in question start from the nearest store, not from the nearest warehouse. This makes a difference, because the nearest store is often closer than the nearest warehouse.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:09PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:09PM (#749695)

      This happened because Sears gave up on customer service, eliminated bonuses for the sales force and merged with Kmart. It's ridiculous that Sears, a company with so much history involved with mail order couldn't figure out how to put out a halfway decent website and continue focusing on that. They already had most of the logistics figured out from all those decades of mail order sales. Running an online site should have been easier

      Last time I went to sears was a few years ago and it was a search to find somebody to take my money after I decided what I wanted to buy.

      • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:08AM

        by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:08AM (#749772)

        Last time I was in sears, it was to buy a car battery charger and when I finally found someone to ask where they were, he said it was 5:55 and he was going home.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 17 2018, @11:35AM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 17 2018, @11:35AM (#749913)

        Also the products became generic Chinese import stuff. Why pay more at Sears if Harbor Freight sells literally the same stuff cheaper? Why bother driving all the way to Sears if the Target is closer and sell the same Chinese merchandise?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:10AM (#749774)

      Our local Sears is closing in mid-December, this was announced a couple of weeks ago. We generally had good luck there, finding knowledgeable sales people and competitive prices with Home Depot, Lowes and other "big box" stores nearby. Earlier this year I even had a dehumidifier repaired by Sears under warranty, came back with a tag that said the leak had been fixed and refilled with refrigerant. It's a little sad since I've been shopping there since it opened c.1970. Have even earlier memories of their big catalog and Christmas catalog which were so much fun for a kid to browse.

      The writing had been on the wall for years as staff and stock was slowly gutted, so it was not a surprise.

      About a week ago we realized we had about $200 left on a Sears gift card (from an extended warranty payout) and decided the bankruptcy rumors were getting strong enough that we ought to spend it now, rather than risk losing it. Found something that we can probably use, tried to have it shipped to store (normally free and fast). Our store was no longer an option, only store offered was the Sears on the other side of town, so we went for the economy free shipping to our house--item arrived today, a couple of days early.

      To me, this experience says that Sears had competent staff and probably a perfectly good business going--except for the bad behavior of the owner.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:39PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @10:39PM (#749688)

    Eddie Lampert put his heart and soul into turning Sears around. He was almost back to profitability when the SJWs and the cost of their demands for numerous gender-specific bathrooms threw the company into bankruptcy.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:31PM (#749704)

      If he didn't spend so much time in the bathrooms he could have saved the company.

    • (Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:49PM (2 children)

      by LaminatorX (14) <laminatorxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:49PM (#749707)

      It's good to see that the art of classic trolling has not completely vanished. This sort of post is much more fun than all the virtual poo-flinging that we see so much today.

      • (Score: 2) by schad on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:30AM (1 child)

        by schad (2398) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:30AM (#749751)

        Yeah, we need a +1 Troll mod.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:50AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:50AM (#749790)

          Hmm, +1 troll would help decide on which side of Poe's law a post falls. Might be amusing watching a truly ambiguous post go up and down and up and down with just troll mods.

          Though of course currently only the initial troll mod is necessary. Then a series of underrated mods can provide the elusive +5 troll. (Think we've had 2 of those so far?) Maybe make troll worth 0 points like disagree but allow underrated/overrated to apply? (Never tried it, can a disagree post be underrated/overrated without another mod?)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:03AM (#749710)

      Even as the future is always in motion, 3rd Impact yet approaches.

      Just a little more until the Queen of Heaven's project is complete.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:04AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:04AM (#749711)

      Is it coincidence that Sears was at its most profitable when there were just male men and female women? In fact, isn't that when America was at its greatest?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:17AM (#749717)

        Don't worry. There are still just male men and female women....

        *watches the goal posts of what constitutes female begin to zoom off into the horizon!*

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:45AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:45AM (#749726) Journal

    Apparently, people have forgotten how Sears started out. Sears Roebuck mail order. They didn't have a lot of brick and mortar to maintain, back in the old days. Sears wasn't found in every town in America when I was a kid. They had some warehouses, and a few stores in large cities, and they had the mail order catalogs.

    If Sears were to remember their roots, they have the corporate background to compete with an Amazon. Unfortunately, they've forgotten. Diversification had as much as anything to do with Sear's demise. People my age have watched Sears diversify into insurance, financing, and various services. At any time in the past thirty years, they could have returned to their original business model, established a larger online presence, and gone head to head with the new mail/internet order companies.

    As other posters have suggested, the people in charge had other interests than making Sears competitive. Some people are going to make a killing off of Sear's carcass. Not so much customers and investors though.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 17 2018, @11:38AM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 17 2018, @11:38AM (#749915)

      People my age have watched Sears diversify into insurance, financing, and various services.

      We used to go there for Dental (seriously...) and the photographer.

      The problem with that is too many middlemen eventually pushed them out. The photographer rents from Sears who rents from the Mall who rents money from some NYC bank thats a lot of middlemen extracting needless profit.

    • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday October 17 2018, @04:18PM

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @04:18PM (#750013)

      Every time I see Sears with an apostrophe I think of the "Tower of the Se'er" from the Captain Power videos. Loved those things.

      Though the animators fucked up and animated the John Hancock Center instead of the Sears Tower.

      I also liked that the center of the evil robot empire was in Detroit.

      --
      "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:21PM

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday October 17 2018, @06:21PM (#750067) Journal

      I agree that they were poised to have killed Amazon before it was more than a bookseller but they didn't. And I remember the mail order catalogs - there was nothing cooler than getting the Christmas edition and looking through the toys section - used to wear that out, and sometimes circle specific things that I wanted for Christmas or birthday. Even got a few things from Mom and Dad thanks to those catalogs.

      But the other reality is that before they got out of the catalog business it was in the red by tens of millions of dollars. They had every reason to be skittish of this new form of mail ordering called the Internet. And getting into Internet may not have seemed like a diversification but it really would have been because by that point Sears was "just" a brick-and-mortar retailer. They had a lot more in common with opening auto repair than Internet merchandising.

      It's sad, because our local Sears is scheduled to close in November. That leaves just one anchor store left at our old-school mall - Kohl's. Mrs. Lawn likes Kohl's a lot and hopes they can hold on. Though I have to admit that since Radio Shack closed the only other store I possibly would want to visit in there is the alterations place right off an entrance. That's not just opinion - I walked it fairly recently just to see what stores were in there. The food court was down to just two providers (down from at least a dozen five years ago). But the open-walking mall (don't know what to call it, but Target is down there) seems to be doing fine.

      --
      This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:11AM (3 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 17 2018, @02:11AM (#749776) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @03:20AM (#749800)

      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.

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