Say Farewell To An American Icon

[Pat Mustard]

Sears normally functions as anchor store in malls and shopping centers.  The presence Of Sears brings customers to the mall, and in return the mall lease premium space to sears at discount rates.   Sears gets a bargain, in return sears makes the other mall tenants  more viable and able to pay a higher rent.

About 10 years ago, a group of “investors” decided there is value to be extracted here, an egg in the goose that can be obtained by killing it.   So they bought sears, created fictitious holding company to take over the favorable long term lease that sears had in malls across America, and used their position on the board to sublet the very same mall space back to sears at exorbitantly higher rate, allowing tge “investors” to pocket the difference, in effect looting sears.   This is how sears died.

Sears didn’t die because of mismanagement.  It died because it’s management made a conscious decision to destroy it in order to extract maximum value from it in sort run for their predatory investors.  They consciously decided to kill the goose and get the egg and run, because it is too complicated to feed the goose properly.

Sears died in exactly the same way as Toys R Us.

Lots of supposedly economically literate people will tell you this is an unforunate accident, an atypical and wrong abuse of the capitalist system.

They're either idiots or lying. These activities are not a bug but a feature. From the South Sea Bubble, through Tulip Mania, the Long Depression, the Great Depression, the BRICs and Russia crisis of the nineties to the continuing Great "Recession" (2008- ), these scams have been a feature of the capitalist economic model.

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They sell these amazing books of rolling papers as well.

It is said the magic ink used to print the voodoo chants on these books of rolling paper will cause brain death sooner but animate the resulting zombie for longer.

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Your local catholic bookshop is a good source.

It’s too scratchy and leave ink smears.

You're thinking of Golems, not Zombies.

[Brian37]

Growing up I always looked forward to the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, well, lets just say I was not old enough to by Playboy.

The editor of the local paper (town w/pop. <7,000) was bold enough to say "Who needs Playboy when we have the Sears underwear models." The lady who responded to that editorial said "Yeah, better some fit young man in BVDs than your pudgy butt."

One year when I was about 12 or 13, a Montgomery Ward's catalog landed on our doorstep. On one full page add for a bra, the air brush artists failed to cover up the nips. Editor oversight.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And Sears still ate them up.

[Schwa]

As for Sears, I'll just find another source of toilet paper. Someday.

lol

Can't say I miss using pages out of the Sears catalog to bwipe my ass.

Doesn't sound very absorbent. Seems like it would just smear rather than remove.