Desperate Housewives 2891

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, alexy

Being that you read but did NOT pay attention to the details (but did edit out all the relevant text, and did sellectively focus--out of context--on a favorite theme of yours, and did ignore a reasonable interpretation of the situation) I include, here, the whole text that I wrote (then will EXPLAIN some reality to you).

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I wonder if someone would produce a "reality" show with the breastle:

"Desperate-human-after-layoff-from-industry-that-went-extinct."

I just read a big WSJ article about the neighborhood up in Detroit with layoffs from GM & Delphi. Lots of bad spinoff. High end homes going unsold. One woman had a spa business (for the wives with extra money from rich executives) and her business went to hell. She said she saw the writing on the wall, shut down her business, put her 3,100 SF house on the market for $630,000 and soon after, with the real estate market coming off its high albreastude like a rocket aimed down and still burning fuel, lowered the price to $500,000 and then took an offer to buy at less than that figure but would not say what that was (I'm gonna guess closer to $400,000), then moved into an appartment. The article had lots of other personal interest examples of a declining economy hitting everyone.

Delphi is going to lay off 25% of its employees, close 21 of 29 factories, and has asked a court to throw out all contracts, and the union is planning to go on strike. GM is on its way to either extinction or buyout. Maybe the Chinese will rescue us (or the GM CEOs?)? Ford is laying off a lot of middle management, too. One GM engineer, worked for GM for 27 years making around $100,000 got the axe. He said they gave him 3 months severance, and offered 12 months severance if he would sign a waiver that he would not sue for age discrimination and he didn't sign the waiver. Sounds like he's thinking of helping the lawyers make more money and buy more yachts for themselves.

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I hardly consider a woman with a spa business to be anywhere near the likes of Kenneth Lay, Carley Fiorina, and (fill in the blanks with other big CEO names). Especially since in today's market a $600K house was roughly more like a $300 K house just 2-3 years ago, so we're not talking about an exploiter of economies of scale or a person with a CEO-level mansion. Also, I see the spa business represents a less essential and discretionary part of people's budgets and thus would be among the first extravagences to get the axe in a domestic budget. Vanity markets always become soft in economic hard times. Also, considering that this person evidently took a far lower offer than even her highly reduced asking price and ran in a dash for an appartment suggests that she might not have had any serious net worth to fall back onto for the long haul if she ran into a cash flow problem but opted for preservation of whatever buttets she had.

You must be the fake alexy, being that you could not deduce from the simple business facts as originally presented that the situation was of a more or less ordinary person's reaction to a sea change in a local economy rather than a rich person's plight deserving (very rarely) some sympathy.

Oh, excuse me, maybe you are the real alexy, being that you did sellectively focus on specific details--and ignoring all the context--as those details were consistent with your favoritism towards CEOs as just very nice people who never do anything bad and if they do, its very small bad and very rare, ooops but not to let them off the hook if it is clearly beyond the shaddow of a doubt that they really did a big bad thing. But, according to alexy, all the poo they do in the gray areas is off limits. Eh? Oh, do the guys with big golden parachutes, deferred compensation, Carley-Fiorina-severance-packages, ever really get hurt?

being hurt financially as a business goes down the