This is the third time since 2004, they, as both KB and FAO Schwartz, did a twofer in 2004.
Filing for bankruptcy as a tow store less than 3 weeks before Christmas?
Looks like liquidation this time.
Here is the obligatory scare quote:
Sales were little changed from Feb. 3 until Oct. 4, KB Toys said. Since then, sales have dropped almost 20 percent, the company said.
Sales fell as the Xmas season buying frenzy ramped up….Not good.
Sweden is offering support to carmakers SAAB and Volvo (the aircraft firms and the truck manufacturer being different), in the form of loans, guarantees, and research funding.
Note that Ford owns Volvo auto, and GM owns SAAB auto, but the Swedes still are working out deals to support them.
As compared to the human putrescence that is US Senate Republicans.
Howard Husock, the vice president for policy research at the Manhattan Institute, says that the credit crunch is all the fault of the n*gg*rs.
All you need to know is that CRA loans are performing better than their non-CRA counterparts.
Once again, the Manhattan Institute, shows why they have always been the right wing’s go to think tank for racism and bigotry.
Well, it appears that the Republicans have successfully filibustered the auto bailout, with the aid of Max Baucus (DINO-MT), though to be fair to Baucus, his objection was to a particularly egregious tax loophole, the SILO (Sale-In Lease-Out), which basically allowed municipal transit agencies to sell their rolling stock, and lease it back, so that companies could get undeserved tax breaks for a cash payments to said agencies.
As to the Republicans, it comes down to two things, they have transplants in their states, and they want to break the UAW.
I expect to see the Big e (Big 2½) and the transplants to start having problems with their suppliers withing a week, because if I were supplying parts to an automaker right now, I’d be demanding cash on delivery, not 90 or 120 days net.
This will get ugly, and if Harry Reid had any balls, he would make the Republicans actually stand up and talk, and not just throw up his hands when he loses the vote.
Yes, it’s AIG again, when we discover that their management just lost the firm, and the taxpayers, $10 billion for bad trades, and that managers, you the guys who created these bad trades, will get bonuses (sorry retention payments) as high as $4 Million each.
Un-Dirty-Word-Believable.
So, George W. Bush just gave the Presidential Citizens Medal to Charles W. “Chuck” Colson.
Charles Colson, notwithstanding his “finding God” in the stir, is a nasty piece of work, and arguably the single person most responsible for bringing down Richard Nixon.
When Nixon vented about shooting someone, Colson would buy a gun, and it was largely covering up for Colsons excesses that got the scandals flowing.
Of all the rat-f&^%ers in the Nixon administration (their term) he was the worst, and now as head of the Prison Fellowship, he has repeatedly engaged in efforts to use the prison system to force conversion of inmates.
I don’t mean outreach, I mean the creation of special programs with special privileges to coerce prisoners into being “born again.”
I hope that Gary Sinise, who also got the award, felt embarrassed to share a stage with Colson, but since he’s a wingnut too, I would think any feeling of discomfort or shame unlikely.
Read his article, and you will understand that this is not a failure of regulation or legislation, but one of world view:
The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a flaw.” Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said. The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.
It’s also a very entertaining read.
Because it appears that many of the credit default swaps (CDS) were written so that this might be the case
It’s this appointment of a government administrator to oversee automakers’ large expenditures and asset sales that has raised the possibility of a bankruptcy event for credit-default swaps, said Banc of America Securities analyst Glen Taksler.
He noted that the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, the trade group that acts as a standard-setter for credit-derivatives trading, says one trigger for a bankruptcy credit event is the appointment of an administrator, trustee or similar official to oversee all or most of an entity’s assets.
Once again, we see how financial “innovation” has created phony money at the cost of the real economy.
I think that the most detailed analysis of this is by Dan Gerstein, who is a a political communications consultant, and was, “Communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and as a senior adviser on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns,” so we know that he’s a professional liar (that’s what a political communications consultant is), and that he associates with people with no sense of decency (Lieberman), so it should be read with that caveat, but his explanation of just how Cerberus is taking the taxpayer to the cleaners is the clearest and most concise explanation. (I’ll have alternate links below)
The issues:
On the bright side, what just passed requires Cerberus to put up equity warrants in exchange for the loans, equity warrants are kind of like stocks, but only for private firms, which have no stock.
So, he shows Stephen Hayes from CNN, and says that for the economy, losing the auto industry would just be like losing a foot, but then he continues:
Right…it’s just a foot. If we had let the banking industry fail we would have lost our assholes.
2:50 on this vid
Well, it now appears that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is ‘Senate Candidate No. 5’ in l’affaire Blagojevich, which means that either someone on his staff was freelancing, or he is looking at prosecution too.
Also, the House Ethics Committee is expanding its investigation of Rep Charles Rangel, basically influence peddling, and feeding web design jobs to his son.
On the Republican side, FBI is looking into allegations that a Norm Coleman friend, Nasser Kazeminy, laundered money into Coleman’s pockets.
It appears that the owner may have been planning to shut down the plant and skip town for some time. It appears that, “company managed by the wife of Republic Windows and Doors owner Richard Gillman recently purchased an Iowa plant that manufactures similar products.”
Echo Windows and Doors was created two weeks ago and lists Sharon Gillman as its manager, according copies of records obtained by the Daily News from the Iowa Secretary of the State. According to Cook County property tax records, Sharon Gillman is Richard Gillman’s wife.
The couple purchased a $2.6 million Oak Street condo together in 2007, according to property records.
The Gillimans could not be reached for comment today. But this afternoon, Richard Gillman released a statement confirming the creation of the new company.
Also, Amy Zimmerman, who has served as Republic’s marketing director, is now listed as the contact on the newly registered echowindows.com domain name. She refused comment today.
As much as it pains me to say this, it may very well be that Bank of America is blameless in all this. The Gillimans may have set up a second company to find cheap non-union plant in Iowa, and then screwed up their credit line with BoA on purpose, so they could get out from under things like COBRA, owed vacation time, and other benefits.
In the mean time it appears that Chase, which had a 40% stake in Republic, is actually doing the right thing: it has pledged $400,000 to the employees there.
Still, this is getting weird, and if this is a scam by the Gillimans, and it looks increasingly so, there may very well be a criminal fraud case against them.
Or even a few days paid suspension, but it’s pretty clear that Barry Cooper found some dirty cops in Odessa, TX.
He set up a house with surveillance equipment, and then put a couple of Christmas trees under grow lights, and 24 hours later, the police swore to probably cause to get a search warrant, and entered the house.
They are currently refusing to supply the affidavits, but it’s clear what happened: They illegally used infrared cameras looking for grow lights, and then lied to a judge to get a warrant.
Well, now we have a report from MasterCard saying that gasoline consumption rose year over year for the first time since April, which I guess gives us an indication of just how quickly American consumers go back to their old ways when fuel prices fall.
In the meantime, Calculated Risk’s Credit Crisis Indicators have shown a bit of improvement, though with people taking negative interest to be in US treasuries, I’m not sure how reassuring that it.
In any case, it’s now clear that last week’s surge in mortgage applications was from people scrambling to lock in rates and this week, we have the application rate plunge, because this week’s applicants rushed to apply last week.
Meanwhile, consumer spending looks to post the biggest drop since just after Pearl Harbor, which is really pretty scary when you think of it.
And there won’t be much help on the export markets, with both China and Europe showing more signs of slowing themselves.
Which leads one to wonder when they will stop lending to us, because the U.S. budget deficit was $164.4 billion in November, up from $98.2 billion in November 2007.
Finally, we have oil rising on a Saudi supply cut, retail gasoline dropping for the 84th straight day, and the Dollar was mixed again today.
The $14 billion package still has to make it through the Senate, where a filibuster has been strongly implied, if not directly threatened.
Someone from Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc. should call the Senators in their states and tell them that if the big 3 go down, that their supply chain gets fracked too.
Steven Chu, who got the Nobel in 1997, as Secretary of Energy.
Also, Lisa Jackson as head of the EPA.
The numbers are in, and total CEO compensation was up 7.5% in 2008, which, if you can believe it, is the smallest amount, and the first non double digit rise, since 2001.
$2.05 million/year….for losing money, and the rest of the country is getting benefit cuts, 401(k) match cuts, hour cuts, and losing their jobs.
Delightful.
Looks like Former EPA chair Carole Browner as head of head of environmental, energy, climate and related matters, unclear what that position means, it’s clearly staff, not cabinet.
Yeah, I know, small data set, but still, this is just too good not to share:
According to the source (at link), this is not a joke.
At the end of a post on Blagojevich, Hilzoy presents an idea for our consideration:
Oh, and one more thing: it’s clearer than ever to me that Obama and the Congress should give Patrick Fitzgerald the job of investigating the Bush administration’s war crimes. Give him complete freedom from interference, and let the chips fall where they may.
Genius. Pure Genius.