@Susan L. wrote:

I hope these companies are filing for reorganization and not liquidation. I want them to come back as the economy gets better.

@ wrote:

The restaurant industry has permanently lost more than 110,000 eateries and drinking establishments in the over 200 days since the pandemic first brought operations to a halt.

As documented in the survey, the vast majority of restaurants that have permanently closed were well-established businesses and fixtures in their respective communities for an average of 16 years.

Before closing for good, those restaurants employed an average of 32 people, and 17% employed at least 50 people.

@ wrote:

A beloved clothing store with 449 locations in the U.S. has just filed for bankruptcy. On Jan. 14, Christopher&Banks announced in a statement that it had voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and will be shuttering stores in the near future. . .

The brand, which operates women's clothing and accessories stores in 44 states, "expects to close a significant portion, if not all, of its brick-and-mortar stores," representatives for Christopher&Banks said in its statement.

@ wrote:

Cici’s has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced its sale to D&G Investors.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the downfall of all-you-can-eat buffets.

In bankruptcy filings, Cici’s said that it had between $10 million to $50 million in assets and $50 million to $100 million in liabilities.

@myst4au wrote:

If you have a high tolerance for risk, there are some REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) that have plummeted in stock market value. I expect that the well-run ones will recover before going bankrupt, but you have to like roller coaster rides. For instance, Washington Prime Group (WPG) used to pay high dividends, then it lost most of its value (and all of the dividends) last year and recently did a 9:1 reverse split. There was a point where a drink at Starbucks would have bought 10 shares of WPG. As the old Chinese proverb says, "May you live in interesting times."

@ wrote:

If you're just tuning in,
@Paper_Source
declared bankruptcy this week. But before they did that, they put in lots of large orders with over 250 small independent companies knowing that they wouldn't have to pay for the inventory after the fact. THREAD

After a very difficult year, wholesalers like myself thought retail was finally getting its second wind. And we all eagerly accepted PS’s orders ranging from $5,000 to as much as $60,000 and worked overtime to get them out fast by their expedited deadlines.

For my business, Paper Source ordered more in a 60 day period than they did in all of 2020. And this is true for many others in the industry. Again, they did this to cook their books at our expense.

Why order product they can't pay for? Because they're using all of our inventory as liquidation income and assets to look better to venture capital firms they're trying to sell to. They made poor business decisions but small businesses will suffer while they get a buyout.

What
@Paper_Source
is doing is doing to small stationery companies is fraud yet it’s all perfectly legal. They are too big to fail.

Terms of bankruptcy say we might get paid on orders placed 20 days prior. Small business will be the last in line after everyone else they owe money to. It could take years for payouts to be made and in the end we may not see a penny.

For orders older than 20 days, their bankruptcy terms don’t outline any recourse. Meaning that there’s no possibility of seeing any of those payments.

@shoptastic wrote:

Sick and twisted exploitative capitalism at work here:
[twitter.com] (Janie Velencia Twitter thread)

@ wrote:

If you're just tuning in,
@Paper_Source
declared bankruptcy this week. But before they did that, they put in lots of large orders with over 250 small independent companies knowing that they wouldn't have to pay for the inventory after the fact. THREAD

After a very difficult year, wholesalers like myself thought retail was finally getting its second wind. And we all eagerly accepted PS’s orders ranging from $5,000 to as much as $60,000 and worked overtime to get them out fast by their expedited deadlines.

For my business, Paper Source ordered more in a 60 day period than they did in all of 2020. And this is true for many others in the industry. Again, they did this to cook their books at our expense.

Why order product they can't pay for? Because they're using all of our inventory as liquidation income and assets to look better to venture capital firms they're trying to sell to. They made poor business decisions but small businesses will suffer while they get a buyout.

What
@Paper_Source
is doing is doing to small stationery companies is fraud yet it’s all perfectly legal. They are too big to fail.

Terms of bankruptcy say we might get paid on orders placed 20 days prior. Small business will be the last in line after everyone else they owe money to. It could take years for payouts to be made and in the end we may not see a penny.

For orders older than 20 days, their bankruptcy terms don’t outline any recourse. Meaning that there’s no possibility of seeing any of those payments.

private equity doing its dirty business. . .

@2stepps wrote:

That sounds like a Rico statute violation and just might involve your state's attorney general along with the FBI. You might want to send a letter to them, and see if they can do anything.

@Susan L. wrote:

If they did it knowingly, it could be bankruptcy fraud.

@ wrote:

OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, nearly every institution of American life has taken on the unmistakable stench of moral rot. Corporate behemoths like Boeing and Wells Fargo have traded blue-chip credibility for white-collar callousness. Elite universities are selling admission spots to the highest Hollywood bidder. Silicon Valley unicorns have revealed themselves as long cons (Theranos), venture-capital cremation devices (Uber, WeWork) or straightforward comic book supervillains (Facebook). Every week unearths a cabinet-level political scandal that would have defined any other presidency. From the blackouts in California to the bloated bonuses on Wall Street to the entire biography of Jeffrey Epstein, it is impossible to look around the country and not get the feeling that elites are slowly looting it.

And why wouldn’t they? The criminal justice system has given up all pretense that the crimes of the wealthy are worth taking seriously. In January 2019, white-collar prosecutions fell to their lowest level since researchers started tracking them in 1998. Even within the dwindling number of prosecutions, most are cases against low-level con artists and small-fry financial schemes. Since 2015, criminal penalties levied by the Justice Department have fallen from $3.6 billion to roughly $110 million. Illicit profits seized by the Securities and Exchange Commission have reportedly dropped by more than half. In 2018, a year when nearly 19,000 people were sentenced in federal court for drug crimes alone, prosecutors convicted just 37 corporate criminals who worked at firms with more than 50 employees.

With few exceptions, the only rich people America prosecutes anymore are those who victimize their fellow elites.