Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Saturday, August 08, 2009


Not long ago I noticed these words on the StinkyInky's masthead:

Locally owned and independent since 2006

This is a triple untruth. First, locally-owned: Most LBO firms are likely not owned at their source. That's especially true in a metro area with little local banking. One of the StinkyInky Publishing Co.'s lenders is CIT, which is certainly not based here and hasn't felt too well lately itself. (What happens if CIT goes bust? What happens to that debt?) When a StinkyInky goes broke that would seem to put management completely out of local hands. Now independent: An LBO firm is always at its creditors' mercy. If they don't like the cash flow they can take it into bankruptcy court, as happened with StinkyInky. So we're not talking financially independent in any way. Then there's independent's other meaning, and one who's read enough news should know why it's a fib in that sense too.

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