Tag Archives: bankruptcy

Mighty Sears is No More

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | OCT 16, 2018

“Let’s celebrate! Put on your Sunday best. We’re going to Sears!”
Mike Brady (actor Robert Reed), dad on the sitcom The Brady Bunch

I still remember our Mom taking us to the Sears store on East 10th Street in Sioux Falls, SD. It was back in the days of Ozzie and Harriett and Wally and the Beaver. We went shopping there for clothes, sheets and towels, and other of life’s essentials, but we got to look at the toys, too.

Our Mother, Marge, had only two hands (a lot of times as a single Mom, it seemed like she had more), so given there were three of us pests, one got to roam free like a loose puppy in a store full of bones. It was usually our sister, Carol, because Mom liked her best.

The Sioux Falls Sears store was a giant place, far from home in the North end of town. The ceilings went up to the sky and the aisles were wide and endless. People smiled and there was always a friendly Ajax-clean motherly clerk in a dress or a fatherly type in a razor-thin tie around every corner to show you the goods, and ring up your cash or check. Continue reading →

Redistributionist Speaks in Illinois

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

That the President gave an economic speech in Galesburg, Illinois is significant, although not in the way that he might intend.

Illinois is an economic basket case. Because of the political leadership in the state, which has been dominated by the Democrats for the last decade, the land of Lincoln is the most likely big state to go belly up. Chicago, my home town, was voted most likely to follow Detroit into bankruptcy by the chattering classes.

My home state largely followed the economic philosophy of President Obama and that philosophy has largely sealed its doom. Continue reading →

On the President’s Remarks Last Week

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In the same week that Detroit declared bankruptcy, the President opined on George Zimmerman and the state of race relations in this country.

The President should have spoken up on the Zimmerman verdict, which has become a festering national wound, although I thought his remarks were incomplete at best, needlessly adversarial at worst.

The fact that Barack Obama can stride up to the podium in the Brady Room, tell Jay Carney to take a seat, and start opining on race relations in front of the whole world tells you all you really need to know about the state of race relations in this country. Continue reading →

The Fall of the Motor City

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Eminem is the best thing to come out of Detroit in the last twenty years. That, and the Clint Eastwood Chrysler commercial.

Detroit filed for bankruptcy yesterday.

No surprise there. Kind of like Whitney Houston dying. You can only dance on death’s door for so long before the door opens and lets you in.

It was a bunch of French Canadians who first saw Detroit’s immense promise. Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac joined with 51 others and founded a place they called Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit, which provided a wonderful gateway to the Great Lakes and the Great White North, better known as Canada. Continue reading →

Detroit. Bankrupt.

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy yesterday afternoon. It owes as much as $20 billion and there is no conceivable way that debt will ever be paid. The city offered its debtors 10 cents on the dollar but the debtors refused.

A good deal of the blame – rightly or wrongly – will be placed at the feet of municipal workers – sanitation, water, sewer, cops, firefighters and so on.

The pressure of ever-rising wages for no additional work, leading to ever-rising pension costs, plus ever increasing benefits and ever more closely defined work rules will likely be found to be at the bottom of all this.

But its not the unions’ fault. It is the fault of the elected officials – Democratic elected officials in Detroit – who didn’t have the, um, guts to ever say “No” to their largest voting bloc. Continue reading →

Empty Votes, Dangerous Promises

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It was a good thing that the Senate finally passed a budget last week. I guess.

The Senate budget resolution was unique in that the Upper Body passed a budget resolution before the President actually proposed his own budget, probably for the first time in history.

And the fact that the Senate passed a budget seemed like a novelty because the world’s most deliberative body has been so deliberative that it hadn’t bothered to take this action required by law for almost a half a decade. Continue reading →

Bank Regulations Killing Banks

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

A Wall Street Journal story by Robin Sidel looks at a troubling trend in the banking industry. No, not the JPMorgans of the industry losing $2 billion on bad bets, but on small community banks who don’t have the word “billion” anywhere on their balance sheets.

According to her piece: “A growing number of tiny community banks are deciding it’s time to put out the ‘for sale’ sign … many executives of these small lenders are frustrated by costly, new regulations.”

Let’s head into the Way Back Machine: In October, 1975 New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy. Sort of like California in the summer of 2012.

New York’s Democratic Mayor and Governor (Abe Beame and Hugh Carey) came to Washington, DC begging for Federal help. President Gerald Ford said he would veto any bill which would have the effect of taxpayers in, say, Michigan, bailing out New Yorkers whose profligate ways had led them in that fiscal blind alley.

The New York Daily News published a famous front page with a photo of Ford and the blaring headline: Ford to City: Drop Dead. Continue reading →

Half of Country Shocked and Appalled

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from Washington Times

This country is divided into three parts concerning national politics. About a third think President Obama is moving in the right direction, with many of them impatient for the president to be bolder with his leftist agenda. Somewhere in the vicinity of 40 percent to 50 percent of Americans are shocked and appalled at the nation’s rush toward bankruptcy, socialism, fundamental transformation of our way of life and the permanent weakening and impoverishing of America. And some 15 percent to 30 percent are quite concerned about the current state of the country but see no imminent crisis and think that with some substantial adjustments, Mr. Obama’s efforts may end up being useful. (The foregoing numbers are merely my subjective judgment, not based on any particular poll.)

Continue reading →