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Monthly Archives: January 2019

Sears, once America’s most famous retailer, continues to fail


Bottom line is all Sears Holdings “owned” properties are worth triple as real estate, therefore ESL investments would get a bargain if the properties are sold as such.MA

Nathan Bomey, USA TODAY Published 1:20 p.m. ET Nov. 6, 2018 | Updated 3:50 p.m. ET Nov. 6, 2018

Sears Holdings chairman and investor Eddie Lampert may have profited from the company’s plunge into bankruptcy, a group of creditors alleged Tuesday.
A committee organized to represent the retailer’s unsecured creditors in court accused Lampert and his hedge fund ESL Investments of potentially structuring deals to gain an unfair edge as the company declined.
They “may have exercised undue influence to siphon value away from the Company on favorable terms,” the creditors group said in a court filing.
The group also said Lampert may have leveraged his “insider status to obtain an ever-increasing percentage” of Sears debt, allowing him to “obtain beneficial positions” in the retailer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
USA TODAY reported in June that Sears was giving Lampert and his funds about $200 million to $225 million per year in debt payments.
Sears representatives declined to comment.
Lampert’s ESL said in a statement that the hedge fund “has consistently supported Sears Holdings in its efforts to transform and return to profitability during a period of rapid change and disruption in the retail industry.”

“We have every confidence that all transactions involving ESL and Eddie Lampert are valid and enforceable, based on fair and reasonable terms, which were approved by independent directors who were advised by independent financial and legal advisors and featured other appropriate corporate governance procedures,” the hedge fund said. “Any legal claims that attempt to challenge these transactions will have no merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously against any asserted claims.”
Lampert, who served as CEO from 2013 through the company’s bankruptcy filing last month, extended billions in financing to Sears. He also holds ownership stakes in various assets formerly owned by Sears, including valuable real estate spun off in 2015 into a real estate investment trust called Seritage Growth Properties.

“No one should be shocked that he is profiting off transactions to lend Sears money —the issue is, were those deals done at arm’s length and at commercially reasonable terms?” said Philip Emma, senior analyst at Debtwire, which provides news and analysis of corporate and municipal debt.
The Seritage deal was particularly suspicious, the unsecured creditors group alleged.
The committee said its examination of the deal shows it “appears to be at discounted prices” and that subsequent leaseback deals to Sears carried “unfavorable and burdensome terms” for the struggling retailer.
Sears was paying Seritage $90.8 million in annual rent for 151 leases, amounting to $4.73 per square foot, according to a Seritage public filing.
Seritage representatives were not immediately available for comment Tuesday.
The creditors group is asking a judge to force Sears to give up documents related to the deals in question, including $2.4 billion in debt held by Lampert through his investment funds, including ESL.
Debtwire’s Emma said creditors typically pull all available levers in bankruptcies in an attempt to get paid. So it’s “not unexpected” that they would make these accusations given Lampert’s history of lending to Sears.
What’s “pretty unusual,” he said, is that Lampert is acting simultaneously as debtor, investor, lender, landlord and vendor.
Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October, hoping to shed debts and close more than 180 unprofitable stores in a bid to stay open as a smaller company. It had 687 stores when it filed, including its Kmart discount stores.
Lampert’s ESL owns nearly 50 percent of Sears. He engineered the company’s tie-up with Kmart in 2005 and has served on its board since. He gave up the CEO post when the company filed for bankruptcy.
In the final months leading up to the Chapter 11 filing, Lampert proposed that his hedge fund buy Sears appliance brand Kenmore, but a deal Never happened.

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Trump Never Had to Build a Wall


More on the wall. MA
Jamil Smith, U.S. Rolling Stone 3 hours ago

The border wall is Trump University. It’s Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka, too. It’s the futile promise of a fruitful career in the Trump Organization if you’ve earned his favor on a game show, or the assurance of fortunes once you buy that book that he didn’t write and likely never read himself. The wall is a con. And like practically everything else at the foundation of his empire, Trump always lied about who was going to pay for it.
Those of us intimately familiar with the structures already built inside our borders to oppress brown and black people knew that it didn’t matter whether or not the wall was a “metaphor,” as Lindsey Graham put it last Sunday.
Jerry Falwell, Jr., the Liberty University president, told the Washington Post this week that there is nothing Trump could do to endanger his support from the evangelical community and that “I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.” I presume “anything” includes a partial government shutdown over a border wall that Trump said Mexico was going to pay for but alas, there was no follow-up.
The sycophancy of supporters like Falwell, Jr., is why Trump never needed to try this hard to get the wall built. He may not have needed to even attempt to follow through on it. Were he wiser, he would have continued to use the wall as a political McGuffin: the unobtainable, unknowable object that he continued to dangle in front of his supporters until he won his second term. Now, as Democrats take over the House of Representatives today, Trump is behaving as though he lacks bladder control. Inadvertently, he has handed Democrats a unique opportunity. Not to put too fine a point on it, but preventing the construction of Trump’s border wall is a chance to defeat an actual, literal example of structural racism.
Democrats need to both defeat the wall and use this as a teachable moment for the country. Other forms of institutional bigotry are much less obvious, and therefore more easily ignored or equivocated. Betsy DeVos reversed the Obama guidance aimed at reducing racial disparities in school discipline, for one. Right before Christmas, we learned that Ben Carson has been pulling back Housing and Urban Development investigations into systemic patterns of segregation, choosing instead a more regressive path: focusing on individual cases brought to the department’s attention. On Thursday, the Post reported that a more sweeping rollback of “disparate impact” regulations is under consideration. A border wall, even a mythical one, is easier than housing discrimination for some Americans to envision.
Despite his astonishing 89 percent approval rating among Republicans, it is to Trump’s disadvantage for him to make the wall a wedge issue. For one, the partial shutdown is currently showcasing, and not in a good way, how essential government is to our lives. Native tribes surely care more about their roads being paved by government workers so that they can eat and get health care. Those 800,000 or so federal workers must understand that their rent and bills are jeopardized solely because Trump wants to signify to bigots yet again that “No, really, I’m with you.” (Perhaps he needed to reboot his credibility with the racists after signing the FIRST STEP Act and getting too much credit for “overhauling” the criminal justice system.) The folks coming to Washington on their class trips have found museums closed and uncollected garbage overflowing from the cans in the National Mall. Yosemite’s roadsides reek of the urine from reckless visitors. Images from the shutdown have offered a gross analogy for a nation under Trump: this is America without adult supervision.
Democrats depend on an America that considers government to be important, and their voters strongly prefer it not to be racist. The wall is structural racism manifest, not “border security.” Consider that argument, not some heady stuff about whether it can actually exist along the nearly 2,000 miles of border line. Democrats have the power to keep Trump and the Republicans from having the wall, and that should be the end of it. Politically, this is hunting in the zoo: tell Trump, “Hey, how about $0.00 for your wall,” and wait him out. I don’t think that it will take all that long to get the government working again.
Even conservative commentator Ann Coulter, a consistent advocate of the wall, believes that Trump will fold on this issue. What happens next is the question. “If he doesn’t build the wall, the next president will be a Democrat,” she said during a Wednesday radio interview. I’m not so fatalistic. If Trump caves, I doubt too many Democratic challengers bring up the wall as a failed promise in 2020. And if dropping his ransom demand ends the shutdown, the effect may be like the changing of a channel once the credits begin to roll. Given the attention span that folks seem to have, it all might depend upon whom he fires the next day. Or which country he fires upon.

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The Great Wall


We will build a great beautiful wall and Mexico, oops the United States Voters will pay for it! The “wall” has become a battle cry for TOTUS but now he wants American citizens to pay for it. Add this reversal (aka lie) to the over 6000 uttered by TOTUS from day One of his Residency (not to mention the stream prior to his election). With all of the “misstatements” , reversals and just outright lies how can anyone support him? His base apparently likes being lied to, promised healthcare which he attempted to gut and has managed to make it harder to get by shortening the sign up period. Notwithstanding the fact that black lung disease is still on the rise due to coal mining the thin coal seams which in the digging process produces quartz dust leading to black lung disease for some who have less healthcare available to them. Now the EPA is attempting to rollback restrictions on Mercury emissions in the air from power plants. This airborne poison is not only inhaled but we also eat it due to its deposition in the water ways where our fish come from along with the die off of those fish and the  coral reefs where the fish live. Back to the “wall”, where is the Senate majority leader “Bitch” McConnell in all of this? nowhere to be seen or heard from! Is he afraid of TOTUS or trying to keep the job he has sought for all of his 30 years in office and now  can’t seem to take care of the “American People” who he so fond of quoting. Action required- vote with intelligence in 2020.

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Rubber-Glue


Over the past 2 years of his Residency TOTUS has name called and blasted his “perceived” enemies with epithets and schoolboy type names. Unfortunately or fortunately  in my opinion the old school yard  retort applies here. The retorts goes as follows: “I’m rubber, you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you”. TOTUS has called folks “showboat’ s”, Crazy Joe,Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown,Crooked Hillary,Lying James Comey,Liddle’ Bob Corker,Little Marco, Low-IQ Maxine Waters and finally but not the end of the list, Crazy Bernie. There are parts or all of these sobriquets that apply to TOTUS but unfortunately shortsighted people can offer only immediate reactions without understanding  the long range effects of their actions. TOTUS is accustomed to his words creating immediate action no matter the consequences. Recent mess ‘The wall”. After several bipartisan proposals for border security TOTUS is still carping about a wall without understanding the entire project which includes active surveillance (which has been effective) current natural barriers, more border personnel and adding to existing effective existing barriers (fencing up to 30 feet high). TOTUS is in campaign mode and will probably continue by tweeting no matter what. Solution- vote for better Government.

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New Year!@#$%&!


Beginning now, the race for the Presidency begins. TOTUS will spend precious time campaigning and haranguing rather than doing his job (which apparently is campaigning & haranguing). TOTUS spent New Years eve tweeting and portraying himself as the grownup(?). Going back through the past year we will find that this administration with the tacit approval of a single party majority in the legislature has failed to live up to the positive accomplishments of the worst administration in our history. Mr Trump was accompanied in the bottom five by Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, William Harrison, and Mr Buchanan (according to the Independent Newspaper, UK.) There are numerous examples of poor leadership across the spectrum of Presidents but this one will rank among the lowest as shown. The combination of childish demeanor, inability (apparently) to understand world affairs and the implications of arbitrary unilateral actions have placed TOTUS at the center of a world wide uncertainty which serves the usurpers across the globe. The hope we have is that a new set of legislators will begin to tip the balance back to some kind of normalcy. If we as voters demand some sort of term limits on Congress and remove the incentives to remain in office until retirement then we may begin to improve the quality of legislation that serves us all. One issue that had the greatest impact on our elections is the “Citizens United” decision which has allowed unlimited money to pour into politics, resulting in bought and paid for legislators. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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