Should We Take the Plight of Incels Seriously? New at Reason

George Mason University’s Robin Hanson got into a world of trouble with feminists and liberals for asking, in the wake of the Toronto attack by anSexless Couple incel—a sexually frustrated involuntary celibate man—why those who worry about income inequality don’t also worry about sexual inequality. He also mused if there was any way to redistribute sex.

The liberal world went ballistic. Social conservatives, on the other hand, took the opportunity to call for the rolling back of the sexual revolution and returning to the days of strictly enforced monogamy — the theory being that if attractive men don’t hog too many women there will be more fewer down the food chain. But Reason Foundation Senior Analyst notes although social conservatives are right in taking the plight of the losers of the sexual revolution seriously, the answer is not to consign couples to emotionally and erotically dead marriage. It is to liberate them more by completing the sexual revolution.

View this article.

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Can We Blame The Bankers? (Spoiler Alert: Yes!)

Authored by Ann Pettifor via RethinkingEconomics.com,

At a Rethinking Economics conference in Oslo last month I pointed out that western politicians and economists are repeating policy errors of the 1930s. The pattern of a global financial crash, followed by austerity in Europe and the UK, led in those years to the rise of populism, authoritarianism and ultimately fascism. The scale of economic and political failures and missteps led in turn to a catastrophic world war.

Today that pattern – of a global financial crash, austerity and a rise in political populism and authoritarianism – is evident in both Europe and the US. And talk of war has risen to the top of the US political agenda. Why have we not learnt lessons from the past?

The “fount and matrix” (to quote Karl Polanyi) of the international financial system prior to its collapse in 1929, was the self-regulating market. The gold standard was the policy by which the private finance sector, backed by economists, central bankers and policy-makers, sought to extend the domesticmarket system to the international sphere – beyond the reach of regulatory democracy. In the event, the 1929 stock market crash put an end to the delusional aspirations of Haute Finance: namely that financiers could detach their activities from democratic, accountable political oversight. (Polanyi, The Great Transformation 1944).

Between 1929 and 1931 the losses from the US stock market crash were estimated at $50bn. It was the worst economic failure in the history of the international economy. Within three years of the crash millions of Americans were unemployed, and farmers were caught between rising debts and deflating commodity prices. In Germany between 1930 and 1932, Heinrich Brüning, the Chancellor, with the tacit support of Social Democrats, imposed a savage austerity programme that led to high levels of unemployment and cuts in welfare programmes. This in turn led to the demise of social democracy, the rise of fascism and ultimately a global war.

The question that arose during the Rethinking Economics debate was this: could bankers be blamed for the current period of financial crisis, austerity, political polarisation and the rise of fascism? Surely responsibility rests with politicians?

I boldly asserted that bankers (meaning the private finance sector) can be blamed for the Great Financial Crisis and for the economic policies implemented after the crisis. After all, it was bankers (backed by mainstream economists) that lobbied most successfully (both in the UK, the US and the EU) for laissez faire in the 1960s and ‘70s:  the deregulation of credit creation, and for the lifting of controls over interest rates and for cross-border capital mobility. (Duncan Needham, 2014).  By bribing and intimidating the political class, most notably in the US, financiers achieved, and still enjoy, self-regulating, global markets in finance.

After the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-9, it was the finance sector that lobbied politicians into bailing out the private financial system. The system was on the brink of collapse, with the very real threat that hundreds of millions of deposit-holders would not be able to withdraw funds from their banks in the event of systemic failure. Bailouts of individual banks (and other institutions including insurance companies) were both inevitable and, given the circumstances, right. After the Fed bailout, Wall St. bullied and blackmailed the US Congress and demanded a further $700 billion in bailout funds “to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed” to quote Matt Taibi.  Taibi reports that at

“one meeting to discuss the original bailout bill – at 11 a.m. on September 18th, 2008 – (Henry) Paulson (ex CEO of Goldman Sachs, and 74th US Secretary of the Treasury) actually told members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would disappear by 2 p.m. that day unless the government took immediate action, and that the world economy would collapse “within 24 hours.” “

While Paulson spoke, and politicians deliberated, money markets froze, and stock markets fell like a stone. As Jeremy Warner explained in the London Independent newspaper on 26 September, 2008: the sector had “warned of economic catastrophe if the Administration failed  to get its way.” Soon after, politicians agreed to the $700 billion bailout, and markets recovered.

But bankers went further. Not only did they want to be bailed out; they also wanted the systemic nature of the global, self-regulating financial system of laissez faire to be sustained and maintained. After the devastation of the crisis, there was public and political resistance to “business as usual”. The US Congress’s Volcker ‘rule’ – that banks could not use depositors’ funds for speculative bets on their own account, was in the banks’ firing line. With time and large sums of money, Volcker’s and the Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms were to be unwound. (According to Reuters, the financial sector spent $2 billion on political activity from the beginning of 2015 to the end of 2016, including $1.2 billion in campaign contributions – more than twice the amount given by any other business sector, according to the study from Americans for Financial Reform. That works out to $3.7 million per member of Congress and is the most ever tracked by the group, which analysed spending data going back to 1990.)

The most notable successes for the banks came as a new law was enacted: S.2155 – the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. As the not-for-profit NGO Americans for Financial Reform point out:

“S. 2155 is a bank lobbyist’s dream: it contains over two dozen deregulatory gifts to the financial industry. These include provisions that roll back the rules on some of the biggest banks in the country, increasing the risk of financial disaster and a public bailout. Other provisions would expose home buyers to financial exploitation and predatory lending, as well as enable racial discrimination in mortgage lending…. This bill is a victory for banks and their lobbyists over the interests of virtually everyone else.”

I stand by the point made: the private finance sector can largely be blamed for both the de-regulation (‘liberalisation’), reckless greed and speculation that led to the Great Financial Crisis. They lobbied to ensure self-regulation of the system, and to thwart efforts to restructure the system (as opposed to tinkering at the margins) after the GFC. The austerity policies that were recommended by economists (for more see here) followed as governments tried (unsuccessfully) to reduce the volumes of public debt that had risen both because of falls in economic activity, and because of the bailout of the private sector. Those in turn have led to a rise in populism, and to the renewed popularity of fascist parties in Europe.

As I write, bankers continue to foment anger and resistance. FinReg Alert reports that the US’s  “biggest US banks made $2.5 billion from Trump’s Tax Law – in one quarter!”. After the law was passed, Gary D. Cohn, CEO of Goldman Sachs, resigned as adviser to President Trump.

So I repeat my point: global bankers and financiers (including those overseeing trillion-dollar Asset Management Funds) can be blamed for the rise of populist and fascist political parties after the Great Financial Crisis. And given their determination to evade democratic, regulatory oversight and management of the global financial system, we can expect bankers and financiers to be responsible for the next catastrophic, economic failure.

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Supreme Court Strikes Down Federal Law That Prohibited States From Legalizing Sports Gambling

In a major victory for federalism advocates, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down a provision of federal law that prohibited state governments from legalizing sports gambling. “That provision unequivocally dictates what a state legislature may and may not do,” the Supreme Court observed in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. “It is as if federal officers were installed in state legislative chambers and were armed with the authority to stop legislators from voting on any offending proposals. A more direct affront to state sovereignty is not easy to imagine.”

At issue in Murphy v. N.C.A.A. was a provision of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), which made it illegal for “a governmental entity to sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize by law or compact” sports betting.

The state of New Jersey ran afoul of PASPA after voters amended the state constitution in order to legalize sports betting at racetracks and casinos. State lawmakers followed up by enacting a partial repeal of the existing state ban.

That partial repeal drew the ire of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, all of which went to court in an effort thwart the Garden State’s legalization effort. The sports leagues argued that the state had explicitly contravened the federal rule barring state legalization as spelled out in PASPA. The U.S. Justice Department agreed with the leagues and filed a supporting brief urging SCTOUS to rule against New Jersey.

In its opinion today, the Supreme Court acknowledged that New Jersey had indeed violated PASPA, but then concluded that the provision at issue was itself unconstitutional under the federalism principles contained in the 10th Amendment. “The legislative powers granted to Congress are sizable, but they are not unlimited,” the Court observed. “The Constitution confers on Congress not plenary legislative power but only certain enumerated powers. Therefore, all other legislative power is reserved for the States, as the Tenth Amendment confirms. And conspicuously absent from the list of powers given to Congress is the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States.”

The majority opinion in the case was written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch. Justice Stephen Breyer concurred in part and dissented in part. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in full, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Murphy v. N.C.A.A. is available here.

Click below to watch a Federalist Society video on the case featuring yours truly.

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Supreme Court Strikes Down Federal Sportsbetting Ban

In a decision that could rob the American Mafia of one of its few remaining sources of income – and potentially save the ailing Atlantic City – the Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal ban on sportsbetting, saying states should be free to decide whether to legalize the business. The decision, according to the Washington Post “is sure to set off a scramble among the states to find a way into a billion-dollar business.” It could also negatively impact revenues in Las Vegas because, until Monday, betting on live sporting events was only legal in Nevada – though a few other states have sports lotteries.

Mafia

For example, the state of New Jersey, famously the setting of the landmark television series “the Sopranos,” could use the ruling to help revitalize its ailing Atlantic City casinos by legalizing sportsbetting at the facilities.  Indeed, the bankrupt city that was once the only alternative to Las Vegas on the east coast could reap a badly needed windfall from the decision (which is great news for anybody who threw caution to the wind and bought the city’s debt).

WaPo estimates that the underground sportsbetting economy – an underworld that is dominated by various criminal groups – could be worth as much as $150 billion a year (give or take a few kneecaps). Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spearheaded efforts to legalize sportsbetting.

Back in 2011, New Jersey voters – already crushed by some of the highest taxes in the nation – approved a proposal to allow sports betting. Christie signed a law authorizing it and dared the federal government to “try and stop us.”

Tony Soprano couldn’t have said it better himself.

Of course, Christie’s tough talk was ultimately ineffective. A court struck down the law because it violated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (the same law that was rendered effectively toothless by Monday’s decision) and, later, a lower court closed a loophole that would’ve allowed Jersey to drop criminal penalties for the practice.

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Breaking down America’s worst long-term challenges: #1- Debt.

On October 22, 1981, the national debt in the United States crossed the $1 trillion threshold for the first time in history.

It took nearly two centuries to reach that unfortunate milestone.

And over that time the country had been through a revolution, civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, the nuclear arms race… plus dozens of other wars, financial panics, and economic crises.

Today, the national debt stands at more than $21 trillion– a milestone hit roughly two months ago.

This means that the government added $20 trillion to the national debt in the 37 years between October 22, 1981 and March 15, 2018.

That’s an average of nearly $1.5 BILLION added to the national debt every single day… $62 million per hour… $1 million per minute… and more than $17,000 per SECOND.

But the problem for the US government is that this trend has grown worse over the years.

It took only 214 days for the government to go from $20 trillion in debt to $21 trillion in debt– less than eight months to add a trillion dollars to the national debt.

That’s an average of almost $52,000 per second.

Think about that: on average, the US national debt increases by more in a split second than the typical American worker earns in an entire year.

And there is no end in sight.

At 105% of GDP, America’s national debt is already larger than the size of the entire US economy. (By comparison the national debt was just 31% of GDP in 1981.)

Plus, the government’s own projections show a steep increase to the debt in the coming years and decades.

The Treasury Department has already estimated that it will borrow $1 trillion this fiscal year, $1 trillion next year, and another trillion dollars the year after that.

They’re also forecasting the national debt to exceed $30 trillion by 2025.

To be fair, debt isn’t always bad. In fact, sometimes debt can be useful.

Businesses and individuals use debt all the time to shrewdly finance productive investments.

Real estate investors, for instance, often borrow most of the money they need to purchase a property once they determine that the rental income should more than cover the debt service.

In this way, when applied prudently, debt can actually help build wealth.

And the US federal government did the same thing in its early history.

It was an incredibly astute move on the government’s part, for example, to go into debt to finance the Louisiana Purchase back in the early 1800s, which dramatically expanded the size of the budding nation.

These days, however, the government flushes money down the toilet in the most wasteful ways imaginable, both big and small.

We’ve covered some of the more ridiculous examples in our normal conversations, from that $2 billion Obamacare website to the $856,000 that the National Science Foundation spent teaching mountain lions to run on treadmills.

Even the government’s more legitimate expenses are absolutely colossal now.

Last year the government spent HALF of its budget just to pay for Social Security and Medicare.

The situation is so dire that the government spends more than its entire tax revenue just on these mandatory entitlement programs, plus Defense and interest on the debt.

Even if you could eliminate entire departments of government, they would still be running a budget deficit and going deeper into debt.

The larger the national debt becomes, the more interest the government has to pay each year.

And interest payments increase even more rapidly as rates continue to rise… which is exactly what’s happening now.

A few years ago, the government paid less than 1.5% on its 10-year Treasury note. Today the rate has doubled.

This has a profound impact on Uncle Sam’s cash flow: they have to borrow MORE money just to pay interest on the money they’ve already borrowed… and spend a larger and larger share of the budget on debt service.

It’s a financial death spiral.

Think about it: if the government is having this much trouble making ends meet when they’re paying 2% interest on $21 trillion in debt, what’s going to happen when they’re paying 5% on $30 trillion?

It’s foolish to think that this trend has a consequence-free outcome. No nation in history has ever become prosperous by borrowing record amounts of debt to finance reckless spending.

Source

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Tesla Bonds Extend Slide As Musk Announces “Thorough Reorganization”

While Tesla’s stock price is modestly higher this morning, seemingly glued to the $300-ish level, the car-maker’s bonds are leaking lower in price as Elon Musk told employees in a memo that he has been undertaking “a thorough reorganization of our company.“

Following a two-hour pitchfest by long-time TSLA uber-bull Ron Baron on this morning’s CNBC, telling investors “we’re going to make 20-times our money on Tesla,” The Wall Street Journal reports that Tesla will undergo a restructuring to flatten its management structure.

Following a number of senior-level resignations, Musk said in the memo…

“To ensure that Tesla is well prepared for the future, we have been undertaking a thorough reorganization of our company.“

“As part of the reorg, we are flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission.“

He added that the company will continue to hire workers.

So does this mean that even more of the company will report direct to Musk, while he sleeps on the shop-floor?

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Spotify Partners with the Southern Poverty Law Center to Purge ‘Hate Content’ from Its Music

Following in the steps of Facebook and YouTube, Spotify is trying to scrub its platform of controversial content. The streaming music service has released a new “hate content and hateful conduct” policy, outlining how it intends to identify and deal with music that violates the company’s core principles of “openness, diversity, tolerance and respect.”

According to the policy, any tracks or artists identified as “hate content”—defined as music that “principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability”—will be either removed from Spotify altogether or suppressed in promotions and stripped out of any platform-generated playlists.

The “hateful conduct” part of the policy will take aim at musicians’ off-the-clock behavior. “When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful,” the company explains, that will affect the company’s dealings with them. R. Kelly, who has been accused of sexually abusing underage girls, appears to be the first casualty of this policy: The singer’s music will still stream at Spotify but will no longer be promoted there.

Several advocacy groups will help Spotify identify “hate content.” Among them: the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and GLAAD.

Fighting bigotry is a fine goal, and I am sure Spotify’s intentions are pure. It also goes without saying that a private company can moderate content however it wants.

That said, the this “hate content” policy is an ambiguous mess doomed to failure. Music, including a lot of incredibly popular music, is full of hateful, racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise appalling messages. Attempting to sort the truly objectionable from the merely edgy or dated will only lend itself to arbitrary enforcement.

Take “Gangsta Gangsta,” from NWA’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton. The rap has racked up an impressive 31 million streams on Spotify, dazzling listeners with lyrics like “dumb-ass hooker ain’t nothing but a dyke” and “life ain’t nothing but bitches and money”:

Or take Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing,” which reached the top spot on the Billboard charts back in 1985 and now has been streamed some 88 million times on Spotify. This popular rock song contains such gems as “See the little faggot with the earring and the make-up/Yeah buddy, that’s his own hair/ That little faggot got his own jet airplane/That little faggot he’s a millionaire”:

Savvy listeners can certainly muster defenses of these tracks. “Money for Nothing,” for example, was based on a conversation that Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler overheard in a store; it would be a mistake to declare the singer homophobic just because a character in his song is. But the language could still offend people. How exactly Spotify should adjudicate that is anyone’s guess.

At any rate, both songs peddle in homophobic and misogynistic slurs. Do they rise to level of “hate content,” though? One might argue that these songs aren’t “principally” promoting or inciting hate, as required by Spotify’s policy. But that again is a fuzzy line. Is misogyny the principle message of “Gangsta, Gangsta” or just an ancillary theme?

Then there are questions about songs that do explicitly promote hate and violence are going to be treated. We live in a time, after all, when some states are adding the police to the protected classes in their hate crimes laws. So consider another popular NWA track, “Fuck tha Police.” It’s undeniably hateful. And it includes explicit calls for violence against law enforcement, with lines like “Beat a police out of shape/And when I’m finished, bring the yellow tape”:

At a time when some states are adding the police to the protected classes in their hate crimes laws, you can see where this is going. Were Spotify to employ its “hate content” criteria neutrally across its entire platform, it would almost certainly have to suppress this song. Remember, the new policy bars incitement against groups marked by a potentially limitless set of characteristics, not just the ones explicitly listed.

Yet NWA’s invocation of violence was itself a reaction to police racism and violence. Hatred, anger, and violent fantasies are real, predictable, even common reactions to injustice. Part of what makes songs like “Fuck tha Police” so powerful and enduring is that they capture that hate and turn it into popular art that speaks to an audience. Will they have to go nevertheless?

Spotify’s new policy acknowledges this dilemma by saying that “cultural standards and sensitivities vary widely” and that “there will always be content that is acceptable in some circumstances, but is offensive in others, and we will always look at the entire context.”

OK, good. But that raises more questions than it answers.

What context might make violent or hateful lyrics safe for Spotify? Would they have to be a response to injustice, as with “Fuck tha Police”? A lot of people like being titillated by dark, violent, and grotesque images. This is particularly true of music, where whole genres of music exist to horrify their audiences with obscenely violent lyrics and themes. Try to apply Spotify’s standards to large swaths of rap, punk, and metal without barring them entirely will become an exercise in absurdity.

Take death metal superstars Cannibal Corpse’s song “Hammer Smashed Face” (5 million listens on Spotify):

The lyrics here include “I smash your fucking head in, until brains seep in through the cracks.” That might survive the cut, since they refer to a neutral “you” rather than a “you” whose race, gender, sexual orientation, or veteran’s status has been specifically stated. The band might run into more problems for its song “Entrails Ripped from a Virgin’s Cunt” (212,000 listens), since—as the name suggests—it includes some graphic descriptions of violence against women. But is smashing someone’s head in with a hammer less hateful than pulling her innards through her vagina? I guess Spotify will have to decide.

The company’s policy becomes even more troublesome when one considers that the Southern Poverty Law Center will help to guide and enforce it. Given that group’s history of using exceptionally broad definitions of “hate” and “hate groups,” one can be forgiven for being pessimistic about their ability to vet musical content with a light and sensitive touch. (I reached out both Spotify and the Southern Poverty Law Center to ask how this identification of hate content will work in practice but did not receive a reply.)

Inevitably, some songs will cross lines of acceptable expression. Part of musical exploration is finding where that line is for yourself. But now Spotify plans to put itself in the role of defining where that line has to be, undercutting its own value as a library for listeners to explore.

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Goldman Trading Co-Heads Quit

Now that the vol – and trading boom – of the fist quarter is ancient history, many are wondering how revenues look like for the second quarter, which tomorrow will be half-way over. According to this update from Bloomberg, it’s hardly glowing.

Goldman’s Pablo Salame and Isabelle Ealet, two of the three co-heads of the securities trading division, will leave the bank next month, Bloomberg reported citing a letter from CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who is also reportedly on his way out.

Pablo J. Salame, global co-head of the Securities Division at Goldman Sachs

 

Isabelle Ealet, global co-head of the Securities Division at Goldman Sachs

The departures mean that Ashok Varadhan will run the trading division singlehandedly, according to an internal memo Monday from Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein.

Salame, 52, led the trading business since 2008 and was named a vice chairman of the firm in 2016, meanwhile Ealet, 55, rose up through the commodities business and was named partner in 2000. Perhaps they were not enthused to watch as their once proud, FDIC-backed hedge fund has been forced to sell loans to subprime consumers using “Instragram personality” JoJo Fletcher as spokesperson for its home-improvement loans to “build excitement.”

Bloomberg adds that Salame and Ealet will become senior directors after they leave, according to the memo, although it wasn’t clear where since, after all, they are leaving the company.

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Watch: Fed’s Bullard Bashes Cryptocurrencies, Holds Q&A

In an odd convergence, a sworn protector of the fiat currency regime, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard is presenting on the topic of cryptocurrencies, or rather “Non-Uniform Currencies and Exchange Rate Chaos” at the blockchain tech conference in New York.

Bullard notes that while he is “a fan of technological innovation as a driver of economic growth, and blockchain and related technologies are promising”, he is far less enthused by the concept of cryptocurrencies, for an obvious reason: cryptocurrencies, unlike fiat, are not created by any central bank; cryptocurrencies, like fiat, are only worth whatever someone believes they are worth.

In other words, in a time when central bankers are losing credibility by the day, there is no a legitimate platform to express this loss of faith, i.e. by purchasing bitcoin and other cryptos. Which is also why central banks are doing everything in their power to suppress the rise of cryptos, just as they did the same to gold several years ago.

Predictably, Bullard’s conclusion is hardly crypto-friendly: ‘Cryptocurrencies may unwittingly be pushing in the wrong direction in trying to solve an important social problem, which is how best to facilitate market-based exchange.”

Actually, cryptocurrencies are very wittingly pushing in the direction of the biggest social problem of the past hundred years: the existence of central banks, and how to finally eliminate them.

Courtesy of the St. Louis Fed, here are some of the key slides:

The Bullard Q&A can be seen live in the feed below:

And the whole presentation can be read here (pdf link)

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Sears Shorts Crushed After Company Starts Process To Sell Assets (To Eddie Lampert)

Like clockwork, the moments a certain number of Sears shorts accumulate, a press release or a statement from Eddie Lampert unleashes a violent short squeeze, and today was just such a day.

With the short interest SHLD rising to the highest level since last October…

… Sears said a special committee started the formal process to explore the sale of various assets, including its Kenmore brand, the Sears Home Improvement Products unit as well as the Parts Direct business of the Sears Home Services division, and reported that Sears had received a proposal for these assets from ESL Investments in April.

Translated: Eddie Lampert, who is the biggest shareholder of Sears, is looking to buy the bulk of what Sears has to sell to keep the melting ice cube alive for a few more quarters. Which somehow is perfectly legal in this bizarro investing universe.

For those confused, Eddie Lampert has constructed another check-kiting scheme, whose only purpose is to bump Sears stock higher by slamming the shorts once again. And sure enough, that’s precisely what happened as Sears shares surged as much as 15% before fading some of their gains.

From the press release:

Sears Holdings Announces Initiation Of Formal Process To Explore Potential Sale Of Assets

Sears Holdings Corporation (the “Company”) (SHLD) today announced that a special committee of the board of directors (the “Board”) of the Company (the “Special Committee”) is initiating a formal process to explore the sale of its Kenmore brand and related assets, the Sears Home Improvement Products business of the Sears Home Services division and the Parts Direct business of the Sears Home Services division (collectively, the “Sale Assets”). As previously reported, the Board received a letter from ESL Investments, Inc. (“ESL”) expressing interest in participating as a purchaser of all or a portion of the Sale Assets. The Board established the Special Committee, which consists solely of independent directors, to evaluate ESL’s proposal, to actively solicit third-party interest in the Sale Assets, and to explore any other alternatives with respect to the Sale Assets that may maximize value for the Company. The Special Committee has retained Centerview Partners LLC to serve as its investment banker and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP to serve as its legal counsel.

All inquiries from potential third party purchasers concerning the Sale Assets should be directed to Centerview Partners LLC.

No assurances can be given that any formal detailed proposal will be made by ESL or any third party purchaser, or, if made, as to the terms and conditions of such proposal and the Sale Assets to which it relates, that any proposal made by ESL or third party purchaser regarding a proposed transaction will be recommended to the Board by the Special Committee, that definitive documentation relating to any such transaction will be executed, or that a transaction will be consummated in accordance with that documentation, if at all.

The Company does not intend to comment further with respect to the Sale Assets unless and until it determines that additional disclosure is appropriate.

As previously disclosed in our annual report, the Company is exploring ways to unlock value across a range of assets, including the Sale Assets.

But the biggest way the Company unlocks value is by launching wave after wave of short squeezes to prevent the stock of the effectively defunct company from hitting its “fair value.”

 

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