Circuit City Stores Inc, the No. 2 U.S. consumer electronics retailer, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday just a few weeks before the start of the key holiday shopping season, becoming the largest retailer to file under Chapter 11 this year.
Circuit City fell victim to tighter credit terms from vendors and a loss of market share to Best Buy Co, Wal-Mart Stores Inc and other rivals.
I can’t say that I have much sympathy for Circuit City. Remember this?
During the last nearly three decades, the number of people over the age of 65 who are hospitalized with heart failure more than doubled, representing a mounting burden on the health care system.
National Health Care system is what we are going to get. But it is going to bankrupt the whole nation.
To battle sliding demand in the United States, Deutsche Post now planned to shut down its domestic U.S. express business and focus on international shipping there. It would spend $3.9 billion on restructuring, $1.9 billion more than previously planned.
The U.S. DHL unit’s full-year EBIT loss would reach $1.5 billion this year, more than the $1.3 billion previously expected.
Europe’s biggest mail and express delivery company already last month cut its full-year profit outlook for this and next year, citing slowing global economic growth, which hit especially its U.S. business.
This only has meaning for some of us. Most of us only use Fed Ex or UPS. But for those of us who were forced into using DHL for one reason or another, this is good news. They did not treat their customers well.
Despite widespread predictions of record turnout in this year’s presidential election, roughly the same portion of eligible voters cast ballots in 2008 as in 2004.
The main difference was that more likely republicans voters stayed home then usual. This was balanced by more likely democratic voters going to the polls then usual.
Once you start bailing out business how do you stop? Once they are used to cheap money how do you teach them to hustle? AIG is all over the news again. It is getting another bail out. From Bloomberg….
The U.S. Treasury will buy $40 billion in American International Group Inc. preferred shares, and the Federal Reserve will open two new emergency loan units to finance the company’s securities, the government said today.
The new terms of the government’s assistance are less costly than the Fed’s first loan to AIG on Sept. 16, a statement released in Washington said. The New York Fed gave the original loan to prevent widespread default against AIG creditors in the same week that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.
Strangely, there appears to be quite a difference in opinion of how significant the package actually is. A number of the measures had been previously announced; still others represent the allocation funds that would have been spent anyways. Moreover, only a minority of the funds are coming from the central government, so the source of the remainder of the money is a trifle opaque.
They don’t really know what to do over there yet. You will know when they are seriously scared when they start selling treasuries.
Will it ever get to that point? Brad Setser makes the point that the bigger the boom the bigger the bust. And China had a big boom.
The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.
This article is getting a lot of press. You should read it if you have not already.
What disgusts me is that it was necessary to kept raids secret from the American public that Al Qaeda clearly knew about.
Put it another way, everyone acknowledges that Al Qaeda wishes to destroy American. Few people deny that Al Qaeda would inflect serious harm on the US if it was left to its own devices. Yet the fact that US was willing to send soldiers to attack Al Qaeda bases where ever they could be found had to be kept secret because of the fuss it would cause.
This kind of hypocritical action plagued the Vietnam war as well. Nixon’s secret B-52 raids were only secret from the American people, not the dudes getting bombed. When you have to hide what is military necessary from your own people you have problems.
If you like those funny cat videos, you’ll enjoy this collection.
This week’s poem of the week is Israfel by Edgar Allan Poe.
This week’s rant of the week is this pod cast from Joel Dueck.