bankruptcy

Numerous Sears stores have closed nationwide, more are in the process, and still more (all?) are soon to come. The one in Norman’s mall shuttered earlier this year. A friend posted earlier today about the one closing in his city soon. They are but the latest corporate dominoes to fall in the digital era, where online sales increasingly dominate, and where physical chains that can’t or won’t adapt their anachronistic business models are toppling, one after another.

So it goes. In capitalism, as it should work, clinging inertially to bad practices, lack of executive foresight, pissing off a lot of your customer base, and/or other forms of mismanagement, can doom the company. That is, unless you’re Bank of America, Citigroup, GM, AIG, etc., some Bush/Obama-era Beltway suits and ties deem you “too big to fail”, and the government unconstitutionally bails you out with taxpayer billions.

[Internal to government, clinging to bad models, lack of executive foresight, and/or mismanagement often are rewarded by pay-band increases or promotions, but that’s another story.]

Sears rightfully isn’t getting the Goldman Sachs bailout treatment, so…it shall perish. [Cue Ivan Drago: “If he dies, he dies.”]

Still, I’ll have some good memories of Sears. I grew up near a stand-alone, two-story store in Dallas, which was located at Ross and Henderson, on a site now occupied by a strip mall and Fiesta supermarket. We couldn’t afford much there, but it was a great place for my mom and I to get into some air conditioning (as we had none at home) and to see how the “other half” lived. It even had escalators. Escalators!

Occasionally they’d put on a deep clearance sale on clothing, and if the garments fit and we had a few bucks with us, we’d get some. That represented the rare occasion when I had new clothes; mostly we got what we wore from yard sales, thrift stores, church handouts, and throw-away piles. That Sears also had a candy shop next to the car-care center (clever!) and garden store. We couldn’t afford a car to take there for service, but on just a few occasions she treated me to a measured bag of candy or a chocolate malt. Good memories…

Below is a photo from sometime in the 1960s, of the East Dallas Sears that was built in 1947. I don’t know who shot it. But from 1970s/early-’80s familiarity alone, I know the view is from a sidewalk on the NE side of Henderson St. (Henderson and Ross each are oriented 45 degrees off true north), looking north. The main part of the store is at left, the garden center at right, and the auto center was on the other side of the same wing as the garden center. Ross Ave. is unseen at left. Greenville Ave (oriented true N-S) is behind these buildings. The entire lot was a big triangle formed by Greenville, Ross and Henderson. The candy store was inside that notch where the auto/garden wing attached to the main store.

As for the one in Norman, it’s where I signed up collegiately for my first credit card: a Discover, which is still my primary card today. Discover was started by Sears’ Dean Witter financial division that year, and was the first no-fee, “cash-back” card. I’m probably one of the original 10,000 or so cardholders.

Sears’ Craftsman tools were well-built, too; chances are you’ll find Sears versions in garages 100 years from now, still used and useful. I’ve got a few that my dad obtained secondhand…probably made in the ’60s and early ’70s. I’ve been cutting steep slopes on acreage for 12 years with the same Craftsman push mower, just replacing blades.

Walk around any sizeable early/middle 20th-century neighborhood, and chances are you’ll encounter a Sears house: a home built to specs with floor plans and materials supplied via Sears catalog, delivered onsite and constructed by the owner or local contractors. There were some in East Dallas; there are some on old areas of Norman.

The legacy of Sears won’t go away for a very long time, even as we witness the final, feeble gasps of the company today. R.I.P. Sears.

A few months ago I touched on what then was the coming socialistic government takeover of banks in a BLOG entry dealing with a major source of the “mortgage meltdown.” Look around. It’s happening.

As a fiscal conservative, this whole TARP and “stimulus bill” ordeal is hugely disappointing. The effective government takeover of various institutions troubles me, of course; but at least as bothersome is the notion that a simple financial concept, to which my family and millions of others subscribe in balancing our checkbooks, could have prevented this mess — from the government itself to the largest banks to every individual applicant who dug a hole over his/her head.

That notion is this: Don’t buy more than you can afford.

Duh.

Yet in response, I read and hear a common whiny intonation uttered by certain demagogues (conservative or liberal), economists (who clearly must not have a tight budget to keep at home) and politicians (Republican or Democrat), and even one or two friends of mine, who seem to see no problem with spending our way deeper into debts, public or private. “It’s not that simple!”

Bull crap. It absolutely, positively is that simple, and a matter of self-discipline. Don’t buy more than you can afford! Stick with that concept, whether government, corporate or individual, and this problem never starts. Ask any and every family who sticks to a budget and spends within their means, and importantly, saves for the hard times. Ask any state or local government who does. They all prove, in deed instead of in word, that it can be done.

Stick with that ethic, and the problem only occurs to those highly uncommon individual or corporate cases where circumstances totally out of their control compel insolvency (e.g., a catastrophic illness or accident on the individual scale). Bankruptcy or bailouts become so rare that we, collectively, could afford them for individuals and companies who truly suffer misfortunes through no fault of their own. And because of their rarity, the cost is far cheaper to the economy than what’s happening now.

That “complexity” cop-out is garbage for another reason. It also acts as a smokescreen to cover all manner of fiscal excess and nefariousness. Those who express it are mere enablers — excusing the addictive engorging of fiscal drunkards on the booze of debt spending — while in bizarre and delusional denial of the root solution to the problem as expressed in the seven simple, boldface words above.

Some people like to find victims. Not me. But if you really want one, I’ve got one: Capitalism. Capitalism itself isn’t the problem, it’s the victim. The problem is corporate, governmental and especially personal irresponsibility (on a massively accumulated scale). And yet, and yet…

We’re about to fork over hundreds of billions of dollars in a “stimulus package” that is mostly pure government spending on pet projects, with far less honest-to-goodness job stimulus than advertised. Whither the national debt? Democrats and Republicans alike have proven feckless at dealing with it, once put in any position of influence. Bush…Obama…Republican Congress, Democrat Congress…in this regard, what’s the difference? None. [Clearly there are other huge differences, but that’s off topic!]

I don’t believe in the validity of complaints without solutions. As is often the case, the solution is simple, even as deep as we are into this hole. Read those seven boldface words again.