Instapundit.com
There once was a retailer named Pharmor -- the "Phar" being a Pharmacy and "mor" being anything they could buy by the truck load and sell by the truck load. I would shop there and see really good deals and ask myself, "How can they afford to sell this stuff at this price?" Well, it turned out they couldn't. It was kind of a "losing money on every sale but making up for it on volume" kind of deal -- only in their case they opened more stores and acquired more financing (Their corporate books should have been on the fiction "best seller list" or featured in the cooked books section). They were not necessarily bad people, you understand, just silly people doing stupid (and fraudulent) things and then finding they couldn't stop.
Its corporate headquarters was in my home town. One week they were announcing more financing and plans to open dozens of new stores and the next they were going bankrupt. There were rumors flying before but not much definite. In any case, one day I was having lunch across from the Courthouse when a lawyer came in and announced to a bunch of other lawyers that Pharmor was going down. Well, it was like New Years Eve in August. Or Christmas morning, and the children get up to find their "rosebud" sleds under the tree -- or a bb gun that will put other people's eyes out. And I thought, these lawyers should learn to be more discreet in public.
Inflation adjusted, I think the Pharmor mess -- one of the biggest up until that time -- would be less than one/one thousandth of what we got today. So lawyers: celebrate discreetly.
Meanwhile, Christine Hurt comments on whether the bailout is a good idea: "That's the question I was asked by my fellow conferees at my non-corporate conference. My answer has to be 'compared to what?' . . . Would the market be able to right itself, after breaking more than a few Wall Street eggs, eventually? Not sure."
Plus this: "What's the easiest prediction to make from the financial crisis? More law school applicants."
There once was a retailer named Pharmor -- the "Phar" being a Pharmacy and "mor" being anything they could buy by the truck load and sell by the truck load. I would shop there and see really good deals and ask myself, "How can they afford to sell this stuff at this price?" Well, it turned out they couldn't. It was kind of a "losing money on every sale but making up for it on volume" kind of deal -- only in their case they opened more stores and acquired more financing (Their corporate books should have been on the fiction "best seller list" or featured in the cooked books section). They were not necessarily bad people, you understand, just silly people doing stupid (and fraudulent) things and then finding they couldn't stop.
Its corporate headquarters was in my home town. One week they were announcing more financing and plans to open dozens of new stores and the next they were going bankrupt. There were rumors flying before but not much definite. In any case, one day I was having lunch across from the Courthouse when a lawyer came in and announced to a bunch of other lawyers that Pharmor was going down. Well, it was like New Years Eve in August. Or Christmas morning, and the children get up to find their "rosebud" sleds under the tree -- or a bb gun that will put other people's eyes out. And I thought, these lawyers should learn to be more discreet in public.
Inflation adjusted, I think the Pharmor mess -- one of the biggest up until that time -- would be less than one/one thousandth of what we got today. So lawyers: celebrate discreetly.
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