Comments on: Counterparties: Our sweet creamy center cannot hold

By: Moopheus

Moopheus — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:04:40 +0000

Hi Felix–Here’s another useful link for your readers: A petition on Whitehouse.gov to nominate Neil Barofsky for Chairman of the SEC.

http://wh.gov/Xn6n

By: Eericsonjr

Eericsonjr — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 03:14:08 +0000

So what did the unionized bakers at Hostess make per hour? And what was the offer they rejected? And how much do “normal” (non-union) bakers make?

And can anyone live on that?

In all the coverage for the past few days I only saw one data point, from a receiving clerk in Kansas. His annual pay in 2005: $48,000. Pretty good in Kansas. In 2011: $34,000. So a 29 percent reduction in pay over four years. And the offer on the table when the strike started? $25,000.

Now, you could make the argument that paying a clerk–and I don’t know exactly what a receiving clerk does, but whatever–$23 an hour is just folly. Why, that’s a home-owner’s wage! You could almost save up for your kid’s college on that kind of pay.

But at $25,000 annually, your clerk is hurtin’, even in Kansas.

He becomes a “taker.”

It’s almost ironic, isn’t it?

By: sofiamog7

sofiamog7 — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:23:43 +0000

While Hostess Management blames the company’s demise on, what they claim to be, the greedy unions, and the public attributes their disaster to the overly consistent unchanging product line, or just merely to inevitable creative destruction…

The real question and concern causing toothaches across the globe is: when the economy crashes and the workers (who were promised a solid middle class lifestyle) find themselves left behind, where do they find economic salvation ? Or in the end is it just the Big Boss Execs’ who have a golden ticket out of the mess, while the rest are left to race to the empty market shelves?

By: StuartG

StuartG — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 19:57:37 +0000

The First Lady will not let President Obama bail out Hostess lest we have a creme-filled land of fat, diabetic Twinkies. More importantly, who’s behind the pension shortfall? How did the private equity owner’s debt pile-on affect the prior bankruptcy plan’s success? What about the distressed debt hedge funds? Job creators – minus 18,500 – indeed.

By: MSM-Reuters

MSM-Reuters — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 02:23:13 +0000

Another way to do the numbers of calories taken off line by shuttering Hostess:

Google ’750e9 Calories per year in MW’ to find that about 100 MW were taken down, about one tenth of a run-of-the-mill nuclear power reactor. That’s quite the DIng Dong.