Our Cravenly Dishonest Media

Channel 11 – which long since gave up any pretense of not being a DFL PR firm – notes that Remington, America’s oldest gun maker, has filed Chapter 11.

Now, people were talking about the likelihood, and even imminence, of Remington’s demise a solid year ago, as the Trump election caused panic-buying of guns (except in certain “progressive” circles) to slow down.

And before that, when people were panic-buying everything that looked like a gun, down to and including pop tarts chewed into gun shapes, people were pointing out that panic-buying was the only thing keeping Remington in business, so unsound was it even during the salad days of 2015-16.

So what did the Kare Bears have to say about it?

It also follows large student-led rallies across the United States calling for stricter gun laws after the mass shooting at Parkland High School in Florida in February.

For that matter, it also follows most of March Madness, the Oscars, and the Tide Pod controversy.  Each of them had as  much to do with Remington’s troubles as the Potemkin Protests.

21 thoughts on “Our Cravenly Dishonest Media

  1. Why do gun makers always file bankruptcy, asking other people to solve their problems? ~ Why don’t they take a CPR class instead?

  2. When I lived in Southeastern Minnesota, it was common knowledge that somewhere around Des Moines was an underground mine where iowans (the only non-capitalized state in the union because it doesn’t deserve the respect) labored to extract raw stupidity for shipment to Washington, New York and Hollywood. It’s a bigger export than soybeans and corn combined, very important to the state economy, although prolonged exposure to high levels of concentrated stupidity have been known to have deleterious effects.

    Now I know where Emery lives. Just downwind.

  3. Hey, be nice to those underachieving kids, raised from K-12 believing in faeries and unicorns. They have to have SOME sense of accomplishment to feed their self-esteem. Actual thinking is too hard.

  4. Geez, Mitch, you could least of provided a warning that the Channel 11 website is one of those video auto-play hellholes.

    That said, there is a strong contingent of the left that takes their secular religion quite seriously, always looking for validation from events and timelines. The Remington bankruptcy event and the Children’s Crusade occurring at “the same time” is proof that their god, State, indeed works in mysterious ways. It not your job to question why when observing its miracles and blessings.

  5. Jdm: Trump is the only American president ever to suggest we “take the guns first, then do due process” had an (R) after his name.

    Debt doesn’t equate to financial troubles per se, either. I have a mortgage that leaves me with debt, but as long as I’m continuing to earn an income (i.e. operate with a profit) and can continue paying off said debt, there’s nothing in particular to worry about.

    I’m not saying it wasn’t in the works for years, but the level of debt relative to their operating profit isn’t a smoking gun (couldn’t resist). The fact that a private equity firm acquired them in 2007, however, is a pretty good indicator. Here’s hoping they get the full Bain Capital treatment, and are sold for parts.

  6. Emery, you didn’t get your mortgage through a leveraged buyout by a venture capitalist looking to rip and strip. In other words, you weren’t getting a vulture loan like Remington did, where they had the equivalent of Bain already do a number on Remington.

    Remington’s problems aren’t all Remington’s these days, much of it is the result of vulture capitalism.

  7. Given that their creditors are writing off $700 million of their $950 million debt, they seem to have learned that lesson pretty well already.

  8. Oh, I have no sympathy for the Remington creditors, Emery. They lent money to vulture capitalists hoping to make a ton off those loans and now have to write off a good chunk of their gamble — if you’re walking into a tar pit, you should expect to get dirty. Those investors had to know that the folks they were backing were shifty, unethical pigs, and yet they went ahead and took the gamble. It’s the same reason I have little sympathy for those who invested in Trump’s schemes.

  9. Credit ratings agencies attributed the decline in part to “receding fears that guns will become more heavily regulated.”

    It’s sad when an entire industry is built on, and is dependent on, creating a certain level of fear.

  10. One of the shocking things that I learned in econ is that in mature business operations (and the biggies are always mature businesses), keeping in business is a matter of debt management, not innovation.
    Shocking to me, anyhow.
    The econ courses I took in the mid 90s were very plain vanilla, Prentice-Hall textbook economics. I came out of those courses less of a capitalist than when I entered. I understand that for some people, taking economics has the opposite effect.

  11. “It’s sad when an entire industry is built on, and is dependent on, creating a certain level of fear.”
    Like “green” energy?

  12. Speaking of coursework, you should take a class in advertising. Advertisers go to great length to motivate people to purchase a product. The emotions they appeal to are rarely noble. The product itself doesn’t really matter. I’ve seen fear of cancer used to pitch breakfast cereal.

  13. I guess the “Obama is still going to take your guns” marketing campaign wasn’t working.

    That said, it’s a total win for Cerebus. Buy a distressed asset (Remington), hustle a red southern state for tax breaks and credits to move the manufacturing operation from Ilion, NY, hustle the creditors for $700 million, hustle the skilled workforce, or a least some of them, to move south. All the unemployment benefits that workforce accrued in NY did not travel south when they followed Remington.

  14. I’ve been in companies where they tried to move manufacturing, and that’s generally a really, really bad sign. What happens is the company learns the hard way how much of product quality is “tribal knowledge”, the things that everybody who’s been there 20 years knows, and the new guys learn by watching, not in a classroom. Generally the engineers know nothing about it unless they make serious effort to get to know the hourly workers and painstakingly document things.

    And the vulture capitalists (love the term, nerdbert!), those that run the holding companies, never seem to have a clue about this. As MP noted, it’s all about debt management, not products. And that’s a darned shame, because my ADL is a wonderful rifle.

    I’ve got to wonder, really, what could be done to reduce the impact of holding companies and vulture capitalists. Probably #1 would be to end the estate tax, really. I remember an article that notes that a huge part of Warren Buffett’s success is buying companies for a song when the founder dies. I’d guess you see the same kind of thing all over.

  15. I believe Warren Buffet has said that he could make money in 2016 the way he did in the 70s & 80s. Apparently he had an aptitude for sniffing out bargains — knowing that distressed company A was just what money-rich company B was looking to buy. That knowledge is to widespread these day, thanks to internet.
    If the way to beat the market is either economy of scale or insider info, the little investor is screwed. He has neither. So the best the little guy can do is buy index funds and hope for high GDP growth (e.g., overall market growth).

  16. Sorry, MP, that’s just dumb investment advice to the so-called little investor. And especially the LI who actually has a desire to and knack for research. I’ve found plenty of small companies that were bought out by bigger ones for a nice chunk. Moreover, any engineer who joins a start-up is making the very same investment although in time rather than money. If the product and people sound good, it’s worth a try in my book.

    Now, if you have neither the interest nor the knack, then yes, index funds are fine – as are those too-big-to-fail corporations as employers.

  17. If you can regularly beat the market, jdm, you should be running a hedge fund. Back in the late 90s there were a lot of day traders that thought they were geniuses for beating the market. When it turned south, and they could not make their margin calls, they lost big time.
    Beating the market consistently is a red flag for the SEC. It’s how they caught Bernie Madoff.

  18. I look forward to the day a border fence seperates me from Emery and his ilk…if they survive the transition to their own country.

  19. Guessing some folks that are not as afraid of weapons as I am, might resort to the mighty Remington 700 rifle to shoo reluctant leftist reprobates across.

  20. So, you’re saying I’m a day trader who should fear the SEC? Well, that discussion took an interesting turn.

  21. No, JDM, you may have had a lot of luck in investing, but if it is skill, you are selling yourself short. People are buying 2 year treasury notes with a guaranteed return of just over 2 points. If you can guarantee a better return than that, you should start selling JDM bills!
    I suppose that there are thousands of engineers sitting on their stock options because they are worthless, not because they haven’t matured.

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