- 1
- 2
Hocking the Family Jewels
Selling heirloom assets is frequently a last-ditch alternative. In instances in which assets have appreciated massively (such as SunTrust's Coca-Cola stock or Merrill's stake in Bloomberg), the sales can generate hefty tax bills. Such moves are also recognitions that management has screwed things up so royally in the core business that it has no alternative but to sell the remaining assets that the market still likes. But in this climate, many banks may find they don't have a choice. The worst of the housing debacle may be behind us, but there's plenty more trouble to come in loans to builders and corporations, and in the vast consumer finance sector. And with outside investors leery of jumping in again, executives will be scouring the basement for stuff to sell. Corporate headquarters and conference centers, corporate art collections and fast-growing foreign units that can be severed with relative ease—pretty much everything that isn't nailed down. Except the fleets of private planes! If big-shot bankers can't have access to Gulf Streams, there's really no point in being a big-shot banker.
© 2008
- 1
- 2
Loading Menu
Member Comments
Posted By: C. MacLean @ 07/25/2008 1:16:25 PM
Comment: They gambled and they lost, and now they have to pay. Live by the capitalism sword, die by the capitalism sword.
And better they should pay with their hard assets than my tax dollars.
Posted By: tc125231 @ 07/24/2008 11:39:38 PM
Comment: Yeah, why be a criminal if you can't be cool?
Posted By: Kingsway @ 07/24/2008 5:36:02 PM
Comment: I will agree that indeed agree that the bottom is not yet in view in any predictable fashion and ,tritely, won???t know until it is well past, my view is perhaps more ominous. I see us that instead of looking into a dark well; we are viewing a yawning vortex whose dimensions??? we cannot yet plumb.
Your assertion that in balance this has been conservative administration is more willful blindness, than realistic appraisal. The so-labeled ???neo-con???s??? incitement of reckless abandon in foreign policy and aggressive war-making and reputed war-crimes is not conservative.
The accumulation of unfundable debt and asset depreciation is unprecedented, and is in essence antithetical to any Republican-Conservative policy position I know.
The unbelievable degradation of our military readiness both short and long term is certainly a threat to any claim of superpower status.
Will our final epithet also be ???Alas Babylon????