But I don’t mind people talking to me so how do others differentiate us?

Noted. If we ever see you we’ll ignore you.

Just post your name and photo so we know what you look like. Thanks.

Man if ChatGPT did this they would be showing me guns and the home address of Nigel Farage 😂

Sadly we live in crazy town.

Wait until you hear about using shorts to drive a company out of business or stock buy backs.

Welcome to the house of cards that is globalisation and capitalism.

Sadly the only way is a lot more Luigi’s. If more CEO’s start getting wigged off maybe they’ll lobby for change.

Just sad that most people have it just good enough to not want to risk prison forever to murder someone, although if I could get away with it I’d have no issue in pulling the trigger on these ghouls.

I don’t know that I would call it a Ponzi scheme, although I could argue for it based on current trends.

Basically, the everybody pays in to the state pension with the understanding that it pays for retired people. So yes people paying in now are covering those that have retired.

The thing is now though is that birth rates are not keeping up with retirements, understandably as why would you have a child in this shit hole, so that means each year it’s harder and harder to pay for the pensioners.

The above is incredibly funny when you look at this silly anti immigration rhetoric, we need more immigration to sustain old people not less. These fools will be shocked when they ban immigration and retire and the state is like yeah we got nothing.

What’s worse is it isn’t means tested which I would support but many older people don’t as they see it as they paid in expecting it back where I see it as paying in to support those that need it.

So I have two bosses one is amazing and very progressive and has never done wrong by their 6 employees. The other is not so much progressive and is soon to retire. He is selling his house for £500k, has lots in savings already and is taking his state pension because, and I quote “ I paid in so it’s mine”, now I can’t fathom this behaviour as I don’t want more than I need and would happily not take money if I can support myself.

Alas, these are the people that vote so we are fucked.

Not sure this applies here as it was a private buyout meaning that there would be no stock to short.

They could have shorted it before the buyout to get a better deal, but the banks didn’t buy it the just lent the money.

So the Equity Holders (The Private Equity firms) were largely shielded from risk as they had taken out billions in dividends and they had a small equity state relative to the debt meaning their downside was limited.

The creditors (large banks) were left holding the bag, but they’d had years of interest payments so they wrote off the rest and likely still made some profit.

Employees, suppliers, and landlords. Employees lose their jobs, suppliers get pennies on the dollar for what they’re owed and landlords might have got some money but still not all.

So in short it was the banks, but don’t forget they had years of interest payments and after all they took the risk.

Yes, that was one of them.

From OP

Basically, the company had to pay for its own buyout when private equity firms KKL, Vornado, and Bain bought the company for $6.6 billion, mostly with loans.

I have no idea and it seems insane to me.

I was looking for the same thing in my country, UK, thinking we can’t be as bad as America, but nope many of the companies that have died during my life have been due to LBOs. The world is insane and I don’t see how we can change it.

In the UK I learnt that Asda one of our largest supermarkets is in a similar place due to two brothers doing an LBO to buy it. Now it’s saddled with debt meaning it won’t be able to innovate like Tesco or Sainsbury’s and thus will likely just bleed customers. Makes me wonder why these two brothers with more money than God would want to carry on, like I literally can’t comprehend wanting more than you need. Perhaps I have different motivations as I see time as my most precious asset and will earn less money than I could just for the easier life of being able to chill more and do the things I like.

I’m not sure what you mean. We have a state pension tied to the stock market.

I also have a private pension too. I don’t see how not planning for retirement can be beneficial?

We should note that Toys R Us was also struggling at the time, although they would have had a better chance of success by not having 300-400M a year in debt payments to make; they could have used that to improve customer service and stuff.

I’m not defending the LBO here, just adding a little context.

below is a reply to a comment I made below, pasting here as I find it crazy how this went down and is allowed.

For those curious I did a little digging. I’m on mobile so won’t be going in and out to add company names etc.

Basically, the private equity firms got together and said let’s buy Toy R Us for $6.6B but we only want to use say 300M of our own money and get a loan for the rest.

Then they bought Toys R Us but made them sell all assets to equity firms which then leased them back to Toys R Us so they could pay back the loans. This means Toys R Us are paying hundreds of million a year to cover loans and can’t put that money into making a better business.

The private equity firms also made Toys R Us issue dividends in the hundreds of millions so private equity can make money.

In the end private equity walked away with over $1B in profit whilst Toys R Us declared bankruptcy with $5B still left to pay.

What a fucking insane system. Like how many people lost their jobs so these ghouls could make some extra cash off its downfall.

And people think I’m crazy for making my life harder by not shopping at places like Amazon or being a pirate and not giving money to Netflix etc.

I feel I am living in crazy land. Like the Uk has all our pensions and shit tied to the damn stock market, ensuring we can never really leave this system.

Not at all.

Just go look it up it was a leveraged buy out (LBO) and was the main factor in its collapse.

Edit: For those curious I did a little digging. I’m on mobile so won’t be going in and out to add company names etc.

Basically, the private equity firms got together and said let’s buy Toy R Us for $6.6B but we only want to use say 300M of our own money and get a loan for the rest.

Then they bought Toys R Us but made them sell all assets to equity firms which then leased them back to Toys R Us so they could pay back the loans. This means Toys R Us are paying hundreds of million a year to cover loans and can’t put that money into making a better business.

The private equity firms also made Toys R Us issue dividends in the hundreds of millions so private equity can make money.

In the end private equity walked away with over $1B in profit whilst Toys R Us declared bankruptcy with $5B still left to pay.

What a fucking insane system. Like how many people lost their jobs so these ghouls could make some extra cash off its downfall.

And people think I’m crazy for making my life harder by not shopping at places like Amazon or being a pirate and not giving money to Netflix etc.

I feel I am living in crazy land. Like the Uk has all our pensions and shit tied to the damn stock market, ensuring we can never really leave this system.

I would never lack at someone for not knowing something.

Where are you based? Happy to help you when I have some free time.

There are plenty of resources online, but to get started I would go the easy route that I went and use docker.

Look to set up an “arr” stack. Make sure you have it set up gluetun and link to a VPN.

Essentially, you’ll buy a VPN connectio. Ensure this has P2P and Port Forwarding support.

You then set up docker in a way that first connects the vpn. If the vpn doesn’t work then it won’t start the download client like qbittorrent.

If you wait until after work I can share my docker compose file to give you an idea, but honestly if you’re somewhat capable with a keyboard then you can google you’re way to getting set up.