The Wal-Mart Miracle!

Today's Chicago Tribune editorial takes it to the mayor and the City Council for not letting Wal-Mart build a new store on the south side. From the one store that is operating in Chicago, they list some pretty impressive statistics: 430 new jobs, $3.6 million dollars in sales taxes for the city. It makes you wonder why the council doesn't want a Wal-Mart on every corner.



I mean, to create those new jobs without any other store having to cut back! And to boost the city tax coffers by that much in a two and a half year period, on top of the sales taxes provided by Wal-Mart's competition. It truly is a miracle!



Yeah, I know. The tax dollars and jobs were not created out of thin air. There has been some increase, but that is due to growth, both economic and population. And that could have been easily absorbed by existing stores whose purchasing and labor relation policies are more, well how can I put this humanely, ok, humane.



Is the Trib being disingenuous? In most cases they are. Here I think it's a situation where they just don't know nothin' about money. Finance, economics these are ideas that don't get processed well in the Tribune Tower. I know this from a piece of paper, their bankruptcy filing.

Their problems aren't all Sam Zell's fault, though that greedy little bastard wound up screwing everybody. The banks, the Trib employees. Everybody but himself. Yes, he lost some cash, but he's not eating mayonnaise sandwiches because of it. I think it's ironic that the biggest asset they had to sell, the Cubs (not much of an asset in my book, but whatever), he bungled the deal, forcing a much too long of a process holding out for a specially structured deal to avoid some capital gains taxes. Held out for so long that the market dropped around him. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

And their problems aren't all to blame on the downtrends in the newspaper business. But having a couple of business degrees hanging on my wall, I could have told them, and actually have been saying it for years, you're going to go broke if you give away your product for free. It's true. I've done the math!

The Trib's problems started long ago. They just didn't manage their affairs very well. Because they were not familiar with the due diligence process, they bought a huge tax liability with the LA Times. Well, it's not like they paid any extra for it. It was one of those buy one get a half a billion dollar debt to the IRS deals.

So these are the wise men in the sky who are telling the city about fiscal responsibility. Over the last few weeks they've been giving accounting lessons to the Obama administration, the State of Illinois, Cook County, etc. OK, the last couple really need some lessons, but they should come from a qualified teacher. Not the Trib.

I guess people in ivory towers, OK limestone, shouldn't throw bricks either.