Warbird Information Exchange

Run to the store and supply up while they last.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49852161/

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hostess-c ... 53115.html

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It is a shame. I was actually a consumer of their whole wheat bread.

That's like claiming to read Playboy for the articles

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

http://www.hostessbrands.com/Brands/NaturesPride.aspx

I know you are joking, but 18,500 people are going to be out of work over the greed of big labor who are entrusted to help the employees, not hurt them. Who do you think will have the honor of supporting these folks now?

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Yeah, maybe by that. Or maybe by the greed of the private equity shops and hedge funds that took over the business a few years ago, have absolutely no interest in whether it survives as long as they can cash out, installed managers with no experience or clue in running a bakery, and caused the company to go further into the debt to pay off its owners rather than to make needed capital investments.

Pick your villain. Personally, I see these corporate chop shops bleed these companies dry and leave them for dead one after the other. The only difference when there's a union involved is that there's a handy scapegoat.

August

According to this article, the investors (or chop shops to use your words) lost big:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/whos-blam ... 00630.html

iPad double post again... Sorry!

Seems like a good article and probably correct -- plenty of blame to go around. I'll admit that blaming vulture capital is simplistic if you'll admit that the same is true of blaming big labor.

Value is being destroyed as the company and its goodwill go down, of course. Multiple parties will lose. Some investors will find a way to make money -- in the sense this society uses the term "making" money, which can mean taking it from someone else's pocket while destroying overall value -- but no doubt others will lose. A question is whether the mysterious debt incurred when emerging from bankruptcy involved a payoff that made a lot of the investors whole no matter what became of the company down the road. See Hawker Beechcraft.

As for who has lost bigger -- investors who lost a few hundred million of the several billions of money they wager in the Wall Street casino, or workers who lost much less in dollars, but it happened to be their sole source of income -- another matter of perspective.

August

No question.

Hostess is a great and respected brand I think. In fact, that is probably most of its true remaining value. Perhaps investors were sucked in by the brand, and perhaps employees felt the brand had more value than it ultimately did.

A lot of folks failed. We'll never know if any one of them could have prevented this bankruptcy alone. If we see that this brand resurfaces and succeeds with a buyer that uses foreign labor, obviously the cost of labor was a huge fraction of the equation.

Hostess is probably most famous for its junk food, but as I mentioned, they did make more healthy products as well.

And Playboy has had some great articles too...

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

The 18,000 lost jobs sucks big time. I remember as a kid my mom putting a Twinkie in our lunch bag everyday. Eating them at lunch was the hi-lite of the school day for me. Later in life when my mom found out just what was in a Twinkie, she abhored them. It makes me laugh to this day.

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!