The Road To Bailoutistan

Mark Steyn:

The newspapers blame the Internet, just as Detroit blames Japan. But the Japanese have problems of their own. One day they’ll get theirs. That’s the beauty of capitalism. Nothing is forever. The big railroad barons smoking cigars and enjoying pheasant under glass in the dining car on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe thought Henry Ford was a schmuck. Who’d want to ride around in that thing? Next thing you know everyone’s getting their kicks on Route 66:

Read the entire reflection on the state of our economy. California collapsing under the weight of its self-imposed obligations. New York’s governor proposing a huge tax increase on just about everything that moves. Car companies asking for taxpayer money. Its a painful piece to read and think about.

Shocka!

Did Warren Buffett just get out-maneuvered? Electricite de France has just snatched Constellation Energy away from Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy.

The fight over the fate of Constellation Energy Group ended yesterday with a big French utility agreeing to pay $4.5 billion for a half interest in the company’s nuclear power plants and a Midwest utility controlled by Warren Buffett getting $593 million in cash plus a 10 percent stake in Constellation to drop its takeover bid.

The agreement ends a three-month saga during which MidAmerican Energy Holdings rushed in with a $4.7 billion, $26.50-a-share takeover bid for the cash-starved Constellation, only to run into a higher, $35-a-share competing offer led by Electricite de France, the state-owned French utility.

The final accord gives EDF a greater platform to press for new nuclear power plants in the United States. The French firm plans to make Constellation’s proposal for a new unit at the existing Calvert Cliffs nuclear facility a showcase for federal lawmakers.

This is kind of shocking. Frankly, I was a bit shocked when MidAmerican (or, more properly, Buffett) made the play for Constellation. But to see EDF take it away is even more shocking. There will be quite a lot of water cooler talk about this one in the industry.

I was a supporter of nuclear power long before I entered the field (unintentionally). So I welcome the push for more plants, regardless of which corporation is pushing them. EDF has a very good track record at managing their facilities, so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

(Sorry if this post is a little “inside baseball”. But it is my field, after all.)

And *Bam*

The Tribune Company has filed for bankruptcy. The parent company for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune is filing Chapter 11 in Delaware, where the company is incorporated.

Tribune’s debt has become more burdensome over the last six months as advertising revenue at its eight daily newspapers and 23 television stations has fallen sharply. Industry projections are for further declines over the next six months to a year.

The company said it plans to file in Delaware, where it is incorporated.

“The focus of the filing today is 100% on relieving the pressure on the company from its debt,” Zell said in the interview with reporters from Tribune newspapers. “By virtue of the filing today we will suspend making interest payments, which should give us added flexibility in order to continue moving forward.”

Yet, while they are talking about many creditors getting hosed with paybacks of much less than what is owed - and some getting nothing - they are also saying that they may acquire other newspapers while undergoing this bankruptcy.

Anyone else see a problem with this?

The Tribune Company owns the Chicago Cubs - which has been valued at something like one billion dollars. And that team has been excluded from the bankruptcy.

Again, anyone else see a problem here?

Presumably, some of the creditors who are going to get the shaft are those same banks who have been bailed out at taxpayer expense. And the Tribune Company is sheltering an asset that appears to be able to pay off a large portion of what is owed.

I think we have a problem here. What do you think?

No Sympathy

There are a lot of folks who have no sympathy at all for Detroit’s woes right now. They work at - or benefit from - the auto industry. Just not the Detroit version. They are Americans who work for companies like Honda or are quite happy to serve Honda employees at their stores or restaurants.

Many people in the diner know someone working in the car industry. They are certainly in car country — there’s an engine factory down the road, and they live between Ohio’s major plants and the Detroit home of the industry.

You don’t have to go far in any direction to find a threatened auto plant. But the diners and staff do not back a proposed $25 billion bailout.

The car industry in their neighborhood is doing well — the Honda engine plant in Anna, Ohio, sits amid lots crowded with employee vehicles, ringed by carefully trimmed trees and endless farm fields beyond. It recently underwent a $75 million, 135,000-square-foot expansion.

The success of the factory, which Honda says has built 15 million engines from scratch since it opened 23 years ago, has been spread beyond Anna, which lies in western Ohio between Dayton and Toledo.

For myself, I do not want to see any person - or at least any innocent worker - lose their jobs. But we have a situation here where we are allowing a bunch of Washington insiders decide which company lives or dies if the economy goes south. A lot of executives have made ridiculous amounts of money while driving companies into the ground and endangering our entire economy.

Is this a good time to reinforce failure? Is it a good time to let a legislative body with a substantially lower approval rating than George W. Bush’s decide who lives or dies in the corporate world?

I humbly submit that this is a stunningly bad course of action.

Instead, we should be bringing pressure on our elected officials to force the big three into a tightly structured, pre-packaged bankruptcy. Make all of the players give ground and get to a realistic solution to all of this. Painful for everyone involved? Sure. Better than a total collapse? Absolutely. Far better than spending huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to delay - for a very short time - the inevitable collapse? Infinitely.

There are companies who are - so far - able to weather this financial storm. That is the best indication that there are some companies that are so badly run that they need a dose of medicine. Not money. Medicine.

All sides need to give on this. The companies, the shareholders, the unions, the retirees, the suppliers and any other player. If they do not, they are all going to be driven into the ground when the crash comes.

Buddy, Can You Spare A …….. Gulfstream?

Hoo, boy. If this isn’t the most arrogant act of pleading poverty ever, it’s got to be very close. The three CEOs of the big three US automakers all took the same way of getting to Washington to beg for public money.

Private jets.

The each took their own private, company owned jet to come to Washington and plead for taxpayers to save their companies. Apparently, they couldn’t even think this through enough to car Gulfstream pool.

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation’s capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.

The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough.

A first class ticket from Detroit to Washing would set each of these apparently penniless beggars back a staggering $900 each. As opposed to the $20,000 cost of flying the corporate jet there and back.

I’ve been on the fence a bit over the bailout for a number of reasons, but I’m down off it now - so should you be. As a solid union worker told me today - before this news even broke - “Screw ‘em. Let ‘em fail.”

Anyone who is not burning up the phone lines to their Congressional delegation right now demanding this farce of a bailout be killed deserves what they’re going to get.

A wave from the Gulfstream as the executives head back to Detroit with a bucketful of your money.

Glass Mansions

It seems there are some interesting ties between Michelle Obama's employer and the Barack Obama campaign. The Washington Post reports:

Michelle Obama, an executive at the medical center, launched an innovative program to steer the patients to existing neighborhood clinics to deal with their health needs.

That effort, in time, inspired a broader program the hospital now calls its Urban Health Initiative. To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Axelrod's firm recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign — appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party "validators." They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications.

One key recommendation from Axelrod's firm: "Respond quickly to opposition activity."

The medical center's initiative provides a window into the close relationship between the Obamas, their associates at the University of Chicago and Axelrod, the strategist most central to Barack Obama's rise. It also illustrates how that circle, and particularly Michelle, dealt with an intractable social problem that confronts many urban areas: How much care should large, nonprofit hospitals offer the poor in return for tax-exempt status?

This is interesting on a couple of levels. In a way it is just typical Chicago politics, where contracts are routinely steered to political supporters. In another, it gives a lot of insight into how Axelrod thinks politically: Astroturfing beats grassroots. Neither Michelle Obama or Axelrod would comment about this article as it was being written. Also a hallmark of Chicago-style political business ties. Read the whole thing.

Where's the changey-hopeyness? It isn't apparent in this deal. It also isn't apparent that the netroots understand that they are being cynically manipulated as part of a (well) paid political consultant's expressed strategy.

Bad Air

We seem to be closing in on a perfect storm of air travel dissatisfaction in this country: Complaints soar at U.S. airlines

Late flights and lost bags, to say nothing of higher fares, are making air travelers grumpy, an annual survey of airline quality says.

The industry posted declines last year in every area of the Airline Quality Rating, amid rising fuel prices, safety problems and bankruptcy filings that shut down three carriers last week alone.

The biggest change was in the rate of consumer complaints, up 60 percent overall. The rate more than doubled at US Airways and Comair, and rose for 15 of the 16 airlines included in the study. The exception was Mesa Airlines.

On-time arrivals dropped for the fifth straight year, with more than one-quarter of all flights late, according to the survey. The rates of passengers bumped from overbooked flights and bags lost, stolen or damaged also jumped in 2007.

"The trend is bad, and it doesn't look like it gets any better," said Dean Headley, an associate professor at Wichita State University and co-author of the study.

The survey results mesh with the spate of problems that have beset U.S. carriers, starting with surging fuel costs, Headley said.

ATA Airlines, Aloha Airlines and Skybus stopped flying just last week because of financial pressures. Major airlines have slashed jobs and passenger amenities while adding fees for second bags, traveling with pets and booking tickets by phone.

It is not surprising that people responded to higher prices and more frequent delays by complaining more, Headley said.

Well, I don't know about anyone else but my last four or five times flying were such lousy experiences I've been avoiding air travel when at all possible.  As a result I've put a lot more miles on the old auto, but the lack of pointless aggravation is worth the back pain of a ten hour road trip…more than worth it really. 

When you factor in the degree to which the airlines seem to be trying to make their flights unpleasant it is a wonder so many American are still flying at all. I've taken the hint and did something I've never done before:  I've just booked a trip to Washington D.C. from the Twin Cities on Amtrak.  Yes, it is slower and more expensive.  No, it wouldn't be an option for most people travelling on business. Yes, I know the trains in this day and age can often be delayed.  But, actually, I couldn't care less.  The prospect of taking a trip while NOT being treated like a herd animal is positively intoxicating.  Lord knows the actual trip will not live up to the romance I have in my head concerning rail travel (a heady mix of the Orient Express and a little Some Like It Hot), but the sad fact is it doesn't have to be much to outclass the average American airline by a country mile.

I'm pretty sure this makes me an airline customer lost.  The question now is if Amtrak can make me a return customer. 

Getting It Wrong On NAFTA

USA Today, hardly a rightwing news outlet, points out that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have it completely wrong when they attack NAFTA. That treaty is not causing the net loss of jobs, it has nothing to do with the real reasons the manufacturing landscape has changed. Rather it is productivity gains that have managed to cut manufacturing employment yet increase the total amount of US manufacturing output by a stunning 66% since 1993. Yes, this is being done with fewer workers and there are real issues. But NAFTA is not one of them.

NAFTA opponents point to the 2.4 million U.S. manufacturing jobs that have disappeared since NAFTA took effect in 1994, a drop of about 14%. In Ohio, site of Tuesday's hotly contested primary, manufacturing jobs are down by nearly 200,000, or 20%, during the same time.

NAFTA supporters — this page among them — usually respond by pointing out that 39 million jobs outside of manufacturing have been created in that time in the USA. Even Ohio has seen a net gain of 900,000 jobs, including 60,000 in finance, 80,000 in professional services and almost 190,000 in health care.

The reality is that NAFTA has relatively little to do with either the overall job losses or job gains. China is a far larger factor. But the number that best displays the nonsensical nature of the debate is 66% — the increase in the manufacturing output of American industry since 1993.

It's impossible to look at an economy that has increased its manufacturing output so dramatically while simultaneously cutting its manufacturing workforce and not see a much larger force at work than NAFTA.

That force has been the unprecedented and sweeping gains in worker productivity that have allowed U.S. companies to churn out more goods with fewer people. Some of this has come from outsourcing the most labor-intensive parts of manufacturing, particularly to Asia. But much of it is from the use of more automated systems for assembly lines and high-tech inventory management.

Put another way, the main job killer of the past 14 years has not been the "giant sucking sound" of jobs going to Mexico, as enunciated by Ross Perot. Rather it has been that giant humming sound of machines replacing humans.

USA Today points to an educational system that is failing to turn out graduates with technical skills. They are right about this, look at the trouble companies are having finding skilled machinists. They say the right ideas are to educate and retrain displaced, low-skilled workers, not to erect trade barriers.

Where The Jobs Are - Or Will Be Soon

While the Democrats are playing populist demagogue politics, promising protectionist policies and confiscatory corporate taxes, other countries have laid the groundwork to get all the jobs that will disappear in the US if those populist policies become law. Iceland and Taiwan are cutting corporate taxes.

Iceland is known as the Nordic Tiger because of rapid economic growth. Much of the nation’s prosperity is the result of free-market policies, including a 36 percent flat tax on labor income, a 10 percent flat tax on capital income, and a corporate tax rate of just 18 percent (down from 50 percent at the end of the 1980s). But Iceland is not resting on its laurels. The government has just announced a reduction in the corporate tax rate:

The corporate income tax will be cut from 18 per cent to 15 per cent, effective for the 2008 income year and come into force in the 2009 assessment year.

Meanwhile, even though the 25 percent corporate tax rate in Taiwan is already substantially lower than the 39 percent-plus rate in the United States, Taiwanese politicians apparently recognize that globalization and tax competition are powerful arguments for even lower rates. Tax-news.com is reporting that the government therefore plans to slash the corporate rate to 17.5 percent - and also make unspecified reductions to personal income tax rates:  

Global trade will go on even if the United States decides not to play any longer. The jobs will merely migrate to new, friendlier places. Corporations looking to make new investments will have a choice between countries that promise to take little of their returns in taxes or an enormous chunk of them.

If you were making the decision, which would you choose? Prosperity or beggaring yourself? 

The Protection(ism) Racket

The New York Sun publishes an editorial that pounds Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for their increasingly protectionist stances. Both candidates are taking shots at the North American Free Trade Agreement, abandoning the defense of the treaty to John McCain. The sun points out the absurdity of that.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Mr. Obama has distributed fliers in Ohio showing "a locked factory gate with a large 'closed' sign on it" and language blaming Senator Clinton for having backed Nafta. In his speech Tuesday night in Houston after winning the Wisconsin primary, Mr. Obama said, "We're here because there are workers in Youngstown, Ohio, who've watched job after job after job disappear because of bad trade deals like Nafta, who've worked in factories — who've worked in factories for 20 years, and then one day they come in and literally see the equipment unbolted from the floor and sent to China."

Mrs. Clinton, rather than defend the value of free trade to growing our economy by expanding American exports, providing cheaper goods for American consumers, and increasing overall prosperity both at home and abroad, has been scrambling away from one of her husband's greatest accomplishments. The Journal article reports that the Clinton campaign responded to the Obama flier by saying that, contrary to its claim, the candidate never said that Nafta was a "boon" to the American economy. Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton herself, campaigning in Ohio, said, "My opponent has taken to attacking me on Nafta. The fact is, neither of us were in the Senate at the time, and I've long been a critic of the shortcomings of Nafta." Mrs. Clinton may not have been in the Senate at the time, but she was in the White House at the time, and she wants credit for that as part of her 35 years of experience that is supposed to make her qualified to be president. Breathtaking.

So who is left to defend the trade agreement that President Clinton and Vice President Gore worked so hard to achieve? Well, one can just click on YouTube to bring up a video with Mr. McCain explaining, "I know Nafta was a good idea. It's created millions of jobs, and it has helped the economies of all three of these nations. All you have to do is go to Detroit and see the thousands of trucks lined up every day, or go to our Southern border. …Free trade is something I think that is vital to the future of America. As a free trader, I will open up every market in the world."

Obama has already proposed close to a trillion dollars worth of expensive new Federal programs - and is at the same time arguing against the kind of agreement that has helped the American economy thrive. A growing economy generates more tax revenue than a stagnant or contracting one. Yet both Obama and Clinton appear to be willing to walk away from that agreement. Both also preach that they will raise taxes on corporations. So what they are proposing is taking more from a smaller and smaller pie. Consider for a moment what those policies will do to jobs in this country.

Hint: there will not be more jobs. 

Increasing Populist Rhetoric

Both the Clinton and the Obama campaigns have sharply increased their populist rhetoric in recent days. Their attacks on corporations have become increasingly strident as both of them strive to gain John Edwards' former followers - and his potential endorsement.

As the Democratic presidential contest moves to the distressed industrial Midwest, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have ratcheted up their antitrade, anticorporate rhetoric.

The candidates have made broad attacks on corporate wealth and tax cuts they say tilt toward the rich, along with more specific attacks against health insurers and oil companies, among other industries. On Friday, Mrs. Clinton began airing a TV spot in Wisconsin in which she says, "The oil companies, the drug companies, have had seven years of a president who stands up for them…. It's time we had a president who stands up for all of you."

Both candidates increasingly sound like former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as they pursue his endorsement and the voters — particularly union members — who were drawn to the populist candidate before he dropped out last month. Illinois Sen. Obama got a boost toward that goal Friday with the backing of the Service Employees International Union, one of the most politically powerful labor organizations…..

……Besides wooing voters, both candidates are trying to win favor from Democratic leaders in these states who serve as superdelegates. Superdelegates — members of Congress and other prominent party figures — aren't bound by the results of the primaries or caucuses in their states. They could help decide who wins the nomination.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), one undecided superdelegate, won election in 2006 with a populist message and said he is pleased that the presidential candidates are now following suit. "They were both a bit slow to get there, but they both have genuine beliefs about the middle class and working families and they're going exactly in the right direction," he said.

Business groups are dismissive of the Democratic attacks. "They should be talking about ways to grow the economy such as deregulation and lessening burdens on employers, rather than criticizing them with simplistic politically driven rhetoric," said Randel Johnson, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The two candidates differ very little in their anti-corporate (and ultimately anti-job) approaches. This sharp veer to the left will actually drive more jobs out of the country rather than help things. It does help John McCain in the general election, however. He is going to be able to use these rhetorical attacks against the Democratic candidate later. 

GM Offers Buyouts - To Entire Workforce

General Motors is offering lucrative buyout plans to the entire unionized production workforce after posting a record loss. The $38.7 billion loss in 2007 is a record, 

 NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors posted better-than-expected financial results for the latest quarter, but indicated that its efforts to shave costs are not behind it as the automaker offered lucrative buyouts to 74,000 employees - its entire U.S. hourly workforce.

The nation's largest automaker reported improved fourth-quarter results from its overseas auto operations, which helped to balance out continued losses at its North American plants. But problems at finance unit GMAC, of which it still owns 49%, coupled with large charges taken in the third quarter related to tax credits, left GM with a company record $38.7 billion net loss for 2007.

Lucrative buyout packages are not new at GM (GM, Fortune 500) and other U.S. automakers such as Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) and Chrysler LLC. GM offered similar deals to all its U.S. workers in 2006, as it sought to close plants and trim capacity to bring it in line with reduced demand for its products. That package helped it pare U.S. hourly employment by nearly 40,000 in the last two years.

But the latest range of offers to the remaining 74,000 GM workers represented by the United Auto Workers union is designed to allow the company to save money by paying new workers significantly less in pay and benefits than its current workforce, rather than lead to the large reduction in staffing sought in previous buyout packages.

The buyouts range up to $140,000 for a worker with ten years, half that for those with less seniority. GM expects to replace many of the workers with lower paid positions as negotiated with the UAW.

Abandoned Land

On February 21, 1947 Edwin Land demonstrated his Polaroid Land Camera which produced almost instant photos. Now, just shy of the 60 year mark, Polaroid has announced the end of the technology and is closing the last factories that were still producing the products.

When Polaroid users pulled a picture out of their cameras, an image would slowly appear before their eyes. Now, like the process in reverse, the image of the Polaroid instant camera — dimming for years — has finally gone black.

Polaroid, based in Waltham, Mass., is shutting down factories in the United States and abroad as the company abandons the technology that made the instant photo possible, the Boston Globe reported yesterday. The company will cease production of its film by next year.

The artsy, instantly gratifying Polaroid images, reeking of processing chemicals, have finally been done in by endless Flickr Web pages full of digital images, flawlessly produced by cameras that do not require film, emulsion or anything bigger than a shirt pocket to carry them around.

Polaroid introduced its instant camera in 1948, perfect timing to catch the mad tricycle rides of the first baby boomers, zipping around the new American suburbia. With its finely machined stainless steel body and black bellows, the Polaroid Land Camera looked anything but modern. Its instant film came in roll.

Polaroid moved to cartridge film in 1963 with its 100-series camera, which became a staple of professional photographers. They used the rugged Polaroid to take test photos, instantly checking lighting and composition before committing an image to negative. 

Here's the Wikipedia entry on the Polaroid Land camera. Somewhere around here I have an old model 800 camera and another one from the 1980s - I think it is a Time Zero. I havent looked at either of them in years now. Not many people have, hence the end of production.

Personal Data Missing Close To Home As Well

It isn't just the British government that can't seem to hang on to highly personal data. It is happening right here in the US. In Nashville, Tennessee for example:

The theft of a laptop containing Social Security numbers of Nashville, Tennessee, area voters is expected to cost local officials about US$1 million as they roll out identity-theft protection to those affected.

County officials say that thieves broke into Davidson County Election Commission offices on the weekend before Christmas, smashing a window with a rock and then making off with a $3,000 router, a digital camera and a pair of Dell Latitude laptops containing names and Social Security numbers of all 337,000 registered voters in the county.

County election officials began notifying residents of the breach on Jan. 2, and the local government is offering victims one year of free identity theft protection from Debix Identity Protection Network.

Debix says that 25 percent to 35 percent of victims of this type of breach typically request this service. With the city paying Debix just under $10 per account, the price tag for the laptop theft is expected to be in the $1 million range.

Since state data breach disclosure laws went into effect a few years ago, the theft of an unencrypted laptop computer can become a major problem for any organization that stores sensitive data.

"It is a very bad information-handling practice to keep sensitive information about individuals including their Social Security numbers on an unencrypted laptop or any other device that is removable," said Paul Stephens director of policy and advocacy with Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a privacy advocacy group that has tracked the exposure of 217 million records in the U.S. over the past three years.

For heaven's sake. Why aren't these idiots encrypting data? This is not rocket surgery, people. Lest you think only governments pull this sort of boneheaded maneuver, there is another item this morning regarding GE Money. They have managed to lose an unencrypted backup tape containing the Social Security numbers of a lot of people:

A backup tape containing credit-card information from hundreds of U.S. retailers is missing, forcing the company responsible for the data to warn customers that they may become the targets of data fraud.

GE Money, which manages in-store credit-card programs for the majority of U.S. retailers, first realized that the tape was missing from an Iron Mountain secure storage facility in October, said Richard Jones, a company spokesman. "We were informed that one of the tapes could not be located. But at the same time there was no record of it ever having been checked out," he said.

The tape contained in-store credit-card information on 650,000 retail customers, including those of J.C. Penney, he said. GE Money employees are also affected by the breach.

The missing backup tape was unencrypted.

Although J.C. Penney was the only company that Jones would confirm as affected by the missing tape, that retailer accounts for just a small percentage of all accounts that were compromised. In total, 230 retailers are affected by the breach. "Clearly that number includes many of the national retail organizations," he said.

About 150,000 Social Security numbers were on that tape. This is not going to stop until the people in charge are held accountable for their lax security practices. Smart lawyer money-making opportunity alert! (Today just seems to be a technology-oriented day here at the Crabitat.)

Crime (Fighting) Doesn’t Pay

A now-former employee of a Whole Foods supermarket in Ann Arbor, Michigan has discovered that crime fighting does not pay. Hence his employment status. Said former employee stopped a shoplifter in the store by tackling him - and was promptly fired by management.

John Schultz said he lost his job as a fishmonger at a Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor after he knocked a suspected shoplifter to the ground and detained him.

Schultz was fired on Monday. "Our policy is clear and listed in the employee booklet," said Kate Klotz, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.

"The fact that the employee in question touched the suspect is grounds for termination."

Schultz said he was acting as a private citizen and not as a Whole Foods employee. "The fact that I worked at the store at (the time of the robbery) is coincidental," he told The Ann Arbor News.

Well, Whole Foods certainly has sent a strong message, hasn't it? Employees have been told to let thieves alone and the thieves have been told it is open season at the store. Absolutely brilliant. Let's see what Whole Foods' shrinkage figures jump to in the next few months.