" wrote in news:985cb838-
:

But regardless of what management did or
did not do at Hostess, are you OK with 18,000 people
going on unemployment instead of working at $15.65/hr?

Pls, where does the $15.65/hr come from?

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

Kurt Ullman wrote in
m:

In article ,
Han wrote:

Somewhat depicted here. You may not like the source, but that is not
my problem:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/b3vykcv
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...orker-ceo-pay-
comparison.png

If you look at the performance based pay issues, you will note that
these tax things were put in place in the mid-80s (by strong
bipartisan majorities, BTW) because Congress at the time actually
wanted to reign in what they THEN viewed as widely outrageous
executive pay.



In order to fight this Evil, they effectively capped executive salary
(what they are paid to actually run the company) by making nothing
more than $1 million deductible. (If you look at the proxy filings for
most publicly held companies, a large %age of them still top actual
salaries at that point).



Then, in an attempt to "align the interests of the shareholders and
the executives", tax-favored performance based things such as stock
options, etc. So, instead of paying someone for actually running the
company, they paid them to run the books. I don't think it was
coincidence that first book-cooking scandal took place within the next
two years after passage.
Over the long haul, all sorts of things occurred. In no apparent order
of importance:



1). Executive pay rose substantially (although interestingly enough if
you look at many of the indicators they rise and fall with the stock)
and execs were paid orders of magnitude more than even the most
captive board would have had the balls to pay them before.
2) The concentration of wealth starts the spike around the same time.
3). The marker people like to point to, ratio between exec pay and the
average on the shop floor, ballooned. After bouncing around 30X or so
during the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, it took off cresting north of 300x
before falling back with the stock market.
So to those clamoring for Congressional action I point to the above
and suggest they be damn careful what they wish for.

I agree that this is better done at the level of shareholders and board
of directors. Whatever the "reason" for the increase in wealth
disparity, and however the "laws" were put in place, the disparity is
what is starting to cause labor unrest. It is quite possible that
Hostess was doomed anyway, never mind the worker-exec fights. But
whoever was in charge at Hostess (6 CEOs in 8 years, or was it 8 CEOs in
6 years?) surely didn't help keeping the workers happy.

I have no idea whether the CEOs at Hostess were richer or poorer from
their stint at the helm of the company, and neither do I know whether the
investors who bought and sold the company got richer.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

On Sun, 18 Nov 2012 05:56:41 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:


And look where it got them. They decided that being
able to collect unemployment for a couple years, food
stamps, free healthcare coming, was a better deal than
working. Apparently even the Teamsters thought they
were nuts, but then this is the new leftist order in the USA.


Hey! Mitt is Back!.
You're a ****ing piece of ****, just like Mitt.

On 18 Nov 2012 12:24:42 GMT, Han wrote:


What is probably the best part is that consumers have been more and more
rejecting the merchandise the company sold, for many reasons, including
self service gas stations' acceptance of credit cards at the pump.


I don't buy that. Cheetos is still in business.

On 11/18/12 4:05 PM, Vic Smith wrote:
On 18 Nov 2012 12:24:42 GMT, Han wrote:


What is probably the best part is that consumers have been more and more
rejecting the merchandise the company sold, for many reasons, including
self service gas stations' acceptance of credit cards at the pump.


I don't buy that. Cheetos is still in business.

So are most marijuana suppliers. Our local paper has frequent
stories of the Nebraska State Patrol providing transportation to the
local iron bar motels.

On 11/17/12 7:51 PM, gregz wrote:
"David Kaye" wrote:
wrote

That is exactly what will happen. The rights to the
names, trademarks, etc will be sold off, will be
highly desirable and picked up by a competitor.
I'll bet within months Twinkies will
be back on the shelves, one way or another.

It'll be one of the two big non-union bakeries, Bimbo or McKee (Little
Debbie). I'm thinking it'll be Little Debbie, maker of some of the worst
snack cakes imaginable.

I remember trying little Debbie once, and never went back. Might have to.
Can't do the ho's.

Greg

You might be doing the Bimbos. The Mexican company is supposedly
interested in acquiring Hostess. http://tinyurl.com/bcb3pvg
The company is called Grupo Bimbo.

Steve Barker wrote in
:

On 11/17/2012 6:10 PM, Doug wrote:
On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:32:03 -0600, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

When I heard about the possibility of Twinkies going away, something
told me this would happen. ^_^

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/16/news...twinkies-ebay/
index.html

http://tinyurl.com/chmub3e

TDD


I'm just waiting for a report blaming this on the President or global
warming


I'm sure it'll somehow end up being Bush's fault.

It is reported that the bankruptcy judge asked Hostess and the Bakers etc
union to agree to a mediation effort. So in this "war" of posturing,
there may be a solution after all.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

In article ,
Han wrote:


It is reported that the bankruptcy judge asked Hostess and the Bakers etc
union to agree to a mediation effort. So in this "war" of posturing,
there may be a solution after all.

I think it is the judge that is posturing since it isn't Hostess and
Bakers any more as much as it where would they get any more money to
leave bankruptcy.
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

Workers and the company have agreed to mediation Hostess will live
again

On 11/19/12 5:22 PM, bob haller wrote:
Workers and the company have agreed to mediation Hostess will live
again

Doesn't that just mean they'll yap at each other through an
intermediary? Binding arbitration might be better.

wrote in message
...
On Nov 18, 10:45 am, Han wrote:
" wrote in news:7dd1546f-
:

I say until you have proof that those executives were over
compensated compared to other similar executives in other
companies, you're just blowing smoke.

The rumor I read is that their salaries went up 3-fold as they were taking
the company into bankruptcy again. Or something like that. If that is
right, then why should the workers relinquish their contractual pay and
benefits?


Isn't to keep their job instead of winding up unemployed
in this economy good enough? It used to be, but now
we're in a new liberal world order, headed towards
Greece and Spain.

{{{

At some point the cost of getting to work plus other work related cost
negates the benefit of being 'employed'.

On 11-19-2012 10:41, The Daring Dufas wrote:
I always expect The Democrats to lie, cheat and steal. They share the

I always expect The Politicians to lie, cheat and steal.


--
Wes Groleau

It seems a pity that psychology should have
destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.
€” G. K. Chesterton

My understanding of the problem is that Hostess is heavily in debt, and with the growing trend towards eating "healthy", that situation's only gonna get worse as people opt to snack on fresh vegetables instead of Twinkies.

An arbitrator can set a reasonable wage for the workers, but as long as the science keeps pointing toward junk food and lack of exercise as the cause of the obesity trend in kids, there's gonna be less and less demand for Twinkies, and it'll be progressively harder to make a buck selling products like that. So, the creditors that own Hostess' debt want to liquidate the company now so that they can recoup more of their investment.

And, I for one, can understand the creditor's point of view. If I owned a tabacco company, I'd think it'd be better to sell it now rather than continue to operate under progressively more hostile conditions as the science finds more and more health problems associated with second hand smoke, and the government putts more and more restrictions on where, when and how I can advertise my product.

Han wrote:

This, though, is just funny:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/c4ouez7

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zombieianbro...rackhouse-1ldk

"Han" wrote in message

Trader, the evidence is plain. The ratio of the wages of CEOs to that of
workers has gone from roughly 25 in 1965 to 275 in 2007. No wonder
workers are getting annoyed ...

Somewhat depicted here. You may not like the source, but that is not my
problem:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/b3vykcv
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...orker-ceo-pay-
comparison.png

Trader believes you although have to pay top dollar to get the best CEO's,
the people who do the actual work don't much matter, pay-wise. No need to
pay them a reasonable wage. That's hard for at some people to swallow when
the bosses fatten their paychecks at the same time they ask their workers to
take a paycut. Obviously Hostess workers didn't buy it and America isn't
buying it. The truth is that a small group of people making up executive
compensation committees decides what executives are worth, not the market.
I think most people want that changed.

More importantly these huge compensation packages are often at the expense
of the business, the workers and the customers of that business because that
money could be used better elsewhere.

The CEO of a family run business often puts every dime he makes back into
the business. Not true of today's overpaid and interchangeable ruling
class CEOs. What gets me is how unspecialized these guys are - the utter
reverse of something like the medical profession. They go from heading a
computer company one month to an entertainment company the next and finally
a soap company. You would expect that a CEO would be a subject matter expert
of his industry to command such lofty compensation.

Vulture capitalists are not the princely rescuers of failing businesses as
Trader would have us believe. Look below for a detailed review of how
vulture capitalists decimated a solid American business by saddling it with
debt. Everyone needs to understand that companies like Bain always win
just for setting what often amounts to enormous bankruptcy bustouts in
motion:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/bu...pagewanted=all

.. . . the seventh time it has been sold in a little more than two decades -
all after being owned for short periods by a parade of different investment
groups, known as private equity firms, which try to buy undervalued
companies, mostly with borrowed money . . .

When Trader says these venture capitalists risk their own money, he's not
being quite honest. They buy these companies with money raised from
investors and not their own cash. Then they squeeze every last ounce of
equity and credit from these businesses, convert that into fees and other
compensation, extracting it all up front and as quickly as possible so that
they end up with no skin in the game at all. A small profit or morely
likely a large loss awaits the real investors.

Like any pseudo-Ponzi scheme, it's the last group of investors that gets
screwed to the wall. "Zeroed out" as I once heard Hank Paulson say. That
$1/4B of Mitt's didn't come from any kind of honest labor, as most working
people understand the term. It came from devouring American businesses like
cancer, just the way Simmons was looted.

For many of the company's investors, the sale will be a disaster. Its
bondholders alone stand to lose more than $575 million.

The last investors in the chain of arbitrage get screwed! But not the
dealmakers. Whether Simmons lives or dies, they've already sucked most of
the equity out so they don't care.

But Thomas H. Lee Partners of Boston has not only escaped unscathed, it has
made a profit. The investment firm, which bought Simmons in 2003, has
pocketed around $77 million in profit, even as the company's fortunes have
declined. THL collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the company in
the form of special dividends. It also paid itself millions more in fees,
first for buying the company, then for helping run it. Last year, the firm
even gave itself a small raise.

If that doesn't sicken people who believe in the American dream of building
a successful business, I don't know what will. The tale of Simmons is a
tale of corporate rape. The was a time when investing in the American stock
market was investing in American business and the future. Now it's just a
huge legalized gambling house with the odds tilted strongly against the
small investor.

Wall Street investment banks also cashed in. They collected millions for
helping to arrange the takeovers and for selling the bonds that made those
deals possible. All told, the various private equity owners have made around
$750 million in profits from Simmons over the years.

Profits? The reality is that money was the financial health of Simmons,
sucked out of a successful company, year after year, deal after deal, until
only a debt-laden shell was left. Eventually the vulture capitalists will
dump its carcass on the heap of scores of other small, successful companies
that have been arbitraged out of business.

Vendors that did business with them will likely get stiffed, too when the
company finally succumbs to the effects of vulture capitalism. People like
Mitt made enormous profits gutting American businesses, saddling them with
crushing debt, stripping workers of benefits, shifting pension obligations
to the taxpayers and somehow converting what we would call a salary into a
capital gains. Where do people think $225M worth of wealth comes from?
Saddling America with debt and selling it for for scrap when business after
business died from carrying the burden of borrowed money. Is it any wonder
he lost?

the buyers put Simmons deeper into debt. The financiers borrowed more and
more money to pay ever higher prices for the company, enabling each previous
owner to cash out profitably. But the load weighed down an otherwise healthy
company. Today, Simmons owes $1.3 billion, compared with just $164 million
in 1991, when it began to become a Wall Street version of "Flip This House."


"Flip this country" is more like it.

--
Bobby G.

In article ,
nestork wrote:

And, I for one, can understand the creditor's point of view. If I owned
a tabacco company, I'd think it'd be better to sell it now rather than
continue to operate under progressively more hostile conditions as the
science finds more and more health problems associated with second hand
smoke, and the government putts more and more restrictions on where,
when and how I can advertise my product.

Yet look at the profits this year alone for Altria (the old
Philip-Morris), and Lorillard.
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

Kurt Ullman wrote in
m:

In article ,
nestork wrote:

And, I for one, can understand the creditor's point of view. If I
owned a tabacco company, I'd think it'd be better to sell it now
rather than continue to operate under progressively more hostile
conditions as the science finds more and more health problems
associated with second hand smoke, and the government putts more and
more restrictions on where, when and how I can advertise my product.

Yet look at the profits this year alone for Altria (the old
Philip-Morris), and Lorillard.

So how do CEO, uppermanagement and average worker salaries compare
between Altria's tobacco wing, Lorillard and Hostess? Total sales would
be useful as well.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

In article ,
Han wrote:

Kurt Ullman wrote in
m:

In article ,
nestork wrote:

And, I for one, can understand the creditor's point of view. If I
owned a tabacco company, I'd think it'd be better to sell it now
rather than continue to operate under progressively more hostile
conditions as the science finds more and more health problems
associated with second hand smoke, and the government putts more and
more restrictions on where, when and how I can advertise my product.

Yet look at the profits this year alone for Altria (the old
Philip-Morris), and Lorillard.

So how do CEO, uppermanagement and average worker salaries compare
between Altria's tobacco wing, Lorillard and Hostess? Total sales would
be useful as well.

How would they be useful?
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

On Nov 18, 4:34*pm, Han wrote:
" wrote :





On Nov 18, 10:45*am, Han wrote:
" wrote in
news:7dd1546f-
:

I say until you have proof that those executives were over
compensated compared to other similar executives in other
companies, you're just blowing smoke.

The rumor I read is that their salaries went up 3-fold as they were
takin
g
the company into bankruptcy again. *Or something like that. *If that
is
right, then why should the workers relinquish their contractual pay
and benefits?

Isn't to keep their job instead of winding up unemployed
in this economy good enough? * It used to be, but now
we're in a new liberal world order, headed towards
Greece and Spain.

Sorry for getting this all mangled up. *Just remember that I am not in
favor of well-paid union bosses or ever-fatter union workers. *However,
the Hostess story is one of real vulture capitalism, not one of venture
capitalists trying to reorganize and save a company. *You don't have to
believe every wird here, but go check the real data for yourselfhttp://preview.tinyurl.com/ajvs6ye
http://www.politicususa.com/romney-v...le-management-
killed-hostess-unions.html

Why would anyone bother reading crap like that which
starts off with a blatant lie? Romney was NOT a "vulture capitalist".
Anyone that says that he is doesn't have a problem with just
Romney, they have a problem with all capitalists and
entrepeneurs. In other words, they are either totally ignorant
or lying commies. I say it's the latter.

Romney helped build Staples, Sports Authority, Steel Dynamics,
Dominos Pizza.... and a long list of other companies and all the
jobs that go with it. They never
made a hostile takeover. Their investments were with the
agreement of the companies who were looking for Bain's
money and expertise. What Bain did is classic American
capitalism. Did some of those investments not work
out and the companies wind up failing? Sure. But it's
dispicable to try to slander Romney with it. We need
MORE of what Bain is doing if this country is to succeed.
Instead, we just spent a year distorting and condemning it.




This is another story with some salary numbers. *Pls ignore the typos ....http://preview.tinyurl.com/cbh97ot
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/1...e-the-Hostess-
Bankery

That story is meaningnless without knowing how the salaries
at Hostess today compare with those at their COMPETITORS.
All the articles I have read say that Hostess has labor costs
that are about 33% higher than those of it's competitors.
And remember, unions effects are never limited to just
wages. They typically have rules that prevent automation,
prevent asking a guy who runs the fork lift from temporarily
taking another job on the production line, etc. That is
EXACTLY what they did at GM, that were a major factor
in that bankruptcy as well.

I used to visit AT&T decades ago. When I went
in the building with a little roll cart
the size of carry-on luggage, I was not allowed to
roll it to the room I was having a meeting in. I had to
wait for a "porter" to come do it for me.
I worked on defense systems at Hughes Aircraft.
I'd be working nights, running tests on a microwave
circuit board, for example. Maybe once or twice in
an 8 hour shift, I'd have to remove one capacitor
and replace it. I could do it with a soldering iron
myself in 2 mins. Yet per the union rules, I had
a union worker sitting there, reading a book all
night, just so she could do the 4 mins of soldering.
Those are the kind of stupid things that drive up labor
costs and that unions thrive on. It's not just actual
hourly wages. In the case of AT&T which was a
monopoly, or Hughes where the govt paid for it,
that kind of wasteful nonsense can exist and the
company can survive. In the competitive world of
cars or twinkies, not so much.

And the whining union worker in your article,
completely omitted the fact that Hostess offered
the unions a 25% equity stake in the company. Funny
thing that. The guy remembers the salary cuts, but
forgets the fact that Hostess was willing to give
the workers 25% of the company and two seats
on it's nine member board. If the investors were
getting rich, as you and the union claim, why then
the union should have been piling on that deal.


Answer this simple question. Do you believe the
"vulture capitalists" made money on this deal or
lost money? If you believe they made money, I'd
like to see a reference as to how. So far all I've
heard is bitching about how the CEO and executives
were paid. And the most outrageous of reports
bitch about the CEO getting $1 or $2 mil a year.
Let's compare that to the compensation of similar
CEOs running a $2bil company. And explain to
us how one makes money by investing hundreds
of millions in a business, and then paying the CEO
$2mil a year.

And finally keep in mind that Hostess could not just
do what they wanted. The wage contract they were
trying to negotiate had to be approved by a Federal
bankruptcy judge. So, why not blame him for trying
to get wage and workplace concessions?

Here is a good summary of what happened:

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/20...nd-of-hostess/
Late in the summer, the Teamsters and Hostess reached a restructuring
deal that included an immediate 8% wage cut, adoption of work rules
more favorable to the company, decreased employer contributions for
health insurance, and drastic reductions in Hostess contributions to
multiemployer pension plans. The plan was endorsed by Hostess's key
secured lenders, which are led by two major hedge funds in the New
York City area, Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital.
One estimate put costs savings for Hostess in the neighborhood of $200
million. For their part, the unions would receive two seats on a
restructured nine-member board of directors and 25% of equity. That
made the unions part of Hostess capital structure for the first time.
The federal bankruptcy court approved the deal.

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:



Trader believes you although have to pay top dollar to get the best CEO's,
the people who do the actual work don't much matter, pay-wise. No need to
pay them a reasonable wage. That's hard for at some people to swallow when
the bosses fatten their paychecks at the same time they ask their workers to
take a paycut. Obviously Hostess workers didn't buy it and America isn't
buying it. The truth is that a small group of people making up executive
compensation committees decides what executives are worth, not the market.
I think most people want that changed.

Nonsense. For the most part the market (as in stock market) is making
those decisions, at least in public companies. In public companies a
very small (and if you look at the K-1s fairly consistent) amount of
money is paid in actual salaries. The overwhelming majority is paid by
what happens with their stock options. Total compensation maxed out in
2000, fell to 2004 (dropping a little less than half), started back up
in 2004, and dropped again in 2008. As you can see, well over half of
the biggest compensation packages were where the stock part grew, the
stock contribution during the downturns was much less.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/30/ceo...bosses08-cx_sd
_0430flash.html

More importantly these huge compensation packages are often at the expense
of the business, the workers and the customers of that business because that
money could be used better elsewhere.

Most of compensation packages are stock and come at the expense of
the stockholders through dilution.


The CEO of a family run business often puts every dime he makes back into
the business. Not true of today's overpaid and interchangeable ruling
class CEOs. What gets me is how unspecialized these guys are - the utter
reverse of something like the medical profession. They go from heading a
computer company one month to an entertainment company the next and finally
a soap company. You would expect that a CEO would be a subject matter expert
of his industry to command such lofty compensation.
Why? They are being paid to run a company, not make soap. Different
skills sets. Although the Peter Principle obviously applies.


Vulture capitalists are not the princely rescuers of failing businesses as
Trader would have us believe. Look below for a detailed review of how
vulture capitalists decimated a solid American business by saddling it with
debt. Everyone needs to understand that companies like Bain always win
just for setting what often amounts to enormous bankruptcy bustouts in
motion:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/bu...l?pagewanted=a
ll
And there are others like a steel company in Indiana that is alive
because of Bain and recently added staff. You can cherrypick on both
sides.


When Trader says these venture capitalists risk their own money, he's not
being quite honest. They buy these companies with money raised from
investors and not their own cash. Then they squeeze every last ounce of
equity and credit from these businesses, convert that into fees and other
compensation, extracting it all up front and as quickly as possible so that
they end up with no skin in the game at all. A small profit or morely
likely a large loss awaits the real investors.
These, by the way, are not venture capitalists. By definition,
venture capitalists only invest in new companies.


Like any pseudo-Ponzi scheme, it's the last group of investors that gets
screwed to the wall. "Zeroed out" as I once heard Hank Paulson say. That
$1/4B of Mitt's didn't come from any kind of honest labor, as most working
people understand the term. It came from devouring American businesses like
cancer, just the way Simmons was looted.

Bain was actually successful about half the time. The others, at worst,
kept people employed a few years longer. From Wiki:

Much of the firm's profits was earned from a relatively small number of
deals, with Bain Capital's overall success and failure rate being about
even. One study of 68 deals that Bain Capital made up through the 1990s
found that the firm lost money or broke even on 33 of them. Another
study that looked at the eight-year period following 77 deals during the
same time found that in 17 cases the company went bankrupt or out of
business, and in 6 cases Bain Capital lost all its investment. But
10 deals were very successful and represented 70 percent of the total
profits.


If that doesn't sicken people who believe in the American dream of building
a successful business, I don't know what will. The tale of Simmons is a
tale of corporate rape. The was a time when investing in the American stock
market was investing in American business and the future. Now it's just a
huge legalized gambling house with the odds tilted strongly against the
small investor.
Nonsense, just those who don't pay attention to the world around them or
chase the newest and shiniest object. I have stayed fully invested since
the late 70s and have made total returns north of 7% annual on average,
some more and some left.



Vendors that did business with them will likely get stiffed, too when the
company finally succumbs to the effects of vulture capitalism. People like
Mitt made enormous profits gutting American businesses, saddling them with
crushing debt, stripping workers of benefits, shifting pension obligations
to the taxpayers and somehow converting what we would call a salary into a
capital gains. Where do people think $225M worth of wealth comes from?
Saddling America with debt and selling it for for scrap when business after
business died from carrying the burden of borrowed money. Is it any wonder
he lost?
You overlook the winners such as ToyRUs, Domnios Pizza, AMPad flourished
for awhile, but interesting went bankrupt more 4 years after Bain got
out, Staples. When Bain Capital scooped up a substantial share in
Burger King in 2003, the nation's No. 2 fast food restaurant was
languishing. But within three years the fast food chain boosted record
revenue of $2.05 billion, according to its 2006 annual report.
They won some and they lost some and had nothing to do with Simmons.
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

nestork wrote:
My understanding of the problem is that Hostess is heavily in debt,
and with the growing trend towards eating "healthy", that situation's
only gonna get worse as people opt to snack on fresh vegetables
instead of Twinkies.


Not all their products are junk food. Wonder Bread, for example, has been
thrilling mothers for decades as they watch their snowflakes develop strong
bones.

Hostess has an immense infrastructure - umpty-ump bakeries, trucks, etc.
They could simply reformulate some of their products:

* New Twinkie (with apologies to New Coke) - A delicious sponge-cake outer
layer surrounding a stalk of celery! Delicious, and good for you too.

And more ...

On 11/20/12 11:04 AM, HeyBub wrote:

Hostess has an immense infrastructure - umpty-ump bakeries, trucks, etc.
They could simply reformulate some of their products:

* New Twinkie (with apologies to New Coke) - A delicious sponge-cake outer
layer surrounding a stalk of celery! Delicious, and good for you too.

And more ...



Peanut butter on a celery stick surrounded by a whole bunch of
chocolate stuff. White frosting on top, of course.

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:22:45 -0600, Dean Hoffman
wrote:

On 11/20/12 11:04 AM, HeyBub wrote:

Hostess has an immense infrastructure - umpty-ump bakeries, trucks, etc.
They could simply reformulate some of their products:

* New Twinkie (with apologies to New Coke) - A delicious sponge-cake outer
layer surrounding a stalk of celery! Delicious, and good for you too.

And more ...



Peanut butter on a celery stick surrounded by a whole bunch of
chocolate stuff. White frosting on top, of course.

I watched a video from yesterday. "Greg" put Twinkies and milk in a
blender and made a shake (his invention). "Bob", the admitted ever
vigilant liberal drank his glass without tipping the glass down once.
Even the conservatives liked the shake.

Might tastes good with ice cream and bacon.

On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 07:00:56 -0500, Jim Elbrecht
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 06:10:46 +0000, nestork
wrote:


How does that work now?

If Twinkies were Hostess' best selling product, and Hostess is no longer
gonna be producing them, what's to stop every other bakery from
producing their own version of Twinkies.

When Hostess sells the licensing & recipe to Twinkies [and a few
others] the new owner will have to protect the patent just like
Hostess did.

I'm quite sure there are no patents involved in the Twinkle, or Wonder
Bread. There are probably a pile of trade secrets and certainly
trademarks that will bring money but any patents would have expired
*LONG* ago.

On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:28:52 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:57:53 -0800 (PST), Davej
wrote:

On Nov 16, 3:31*pm, The Daring Dufas the-daring-du...@stinky-
finger.net wrote:
When I heard about the possibility of Twinkies going away, something
told me this would happen. ^_^

"While the company was filing for bankruptcy, for the second time,
earlier this year, it actually tripled its CEO’s pay, and increased
other executives’ compensation by as much as 80 percent."

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...all/?mobile=nc


The CEO and board of directors that allows it should be out of a job.
Maybe even jail time for extortion or stealing.

Huh? Where do you get extortion or theft? Aren't they under the
control of the bankruptcy court?

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 18 Nov 2012 05:56:41 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:


And look where it got them. They decided that being
able to collect unemployment for a couple years, food
stamps, free healthcare coming, was a better deal than
working. Apparently even the Teamsters thought they
were nuts, but then this is the new leftist order in the USA.


Hey! Mitt is Back!.
You're a ****ing piece of ****, just like Mitt.

Don't bottle up your emotions, Vic, tell us how you *really* feel. (-;

--
Bobby G.

z wrote:

I'm quite sure there are no patents involved in the Twinkle, or Wonder
Bread. There are probably a pile of trade secrets and certainly
trademarks that will bring money but any patents would have expired
*LONG* ago.

It seems to me I read that there was a patent at one point on the upside down
continuous cooking process (the base of the twinkie is actually on top when it's
baked), but I did a quick search and didn't find anything. If there was, it
definitely would have expired by now.

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:37:37 -0700, Robert Neville
wrote:

wrote:

I'm quite sure there are no patents involved in the Twinkle, or Wonder
Bread. There are probably a pile of trade secrets and certainly
trademarks that will bring money but any patents would have expired
*LONG* ago.

It seems to me I read that there was a patent at one point on the upside down
continuous cooking process (the base of the twinkie is actually on top when it's
baked), but I did a quick search and didn't find anything. If there was, it
definitely would have expired by now.

Could easily be. There may even be patents covering the current
process but they're certainly not necessary to make a Twinkie, since
they've been made since the great flood (and those are still on the
shelf - in original condition).

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:



Trader believes you although have to pay top dollar to get the best
CEO's,
the people who do the actual work don't much matter, pay-wise. No need
to
pay them a reasonable wage. That's hard for at some people to swallow
when
the bosses fatten their paychecks at the same time they ask their
workers to
take a paycut. Obviously Hostess workers didn't buy it and America isn't
buying it. The truth is that a small group of people making up executive
compensation committees decides what executives are worth, not the
market.
I think most people want that changed.

Nonsense. For the most part the market (as in stock market) is making
those decisions, at least in public companies.

Utter nonsense. As hard as stockholders have tried to limit runaway
executive pay, they've never gotten very far. Somewhere along the line,
CEO's decided they had to get the big money contracts that basketball stars
got even though there's no real comparison. Sports stars get their pay
because very, very few people can play at their level. CEO's like to
*think* they play at that level, but the truth is they are not ranked by
games won, RBI's, etc.

If the market, as you falsely claim, is making those decisions then
shareholder outrage might have some effect on lowering the skyrocketing
compensations packages that are plaguing American business. It hasn't.

Among the nation's top firms, the S&P 500, CEO pay last year averaged
$10,762,304, up 27.8 percent over 2009. Average worker pay in 2010? That
finished up at $33,121, up just 3.3 percent over the year before.
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/execut... tax_dodging/

Are you going to try to get us to believe that there's only a small class of
people capable of running a major corporation? That's utter nonsense, too.
Each major CEO has at least 10 executive VP's that are doing the real work
and could move right into a leadership role - they often do when a "star"
CEO shipwrecks and abandons his job.

What are America's CEOs doing to deserve their latest bountiful rewards?
We have no evidence that CEOs are fashioning, with their executive
leadership, more effective and efficient enterprises. On the other hand,
ample evidence suggests that CEOs and their corporations are expending
considerably more energy on avoiding taxes than perhaps ever before - at a
time when the federal government desperately needs more revenue to maintain
basic services for the American people. This disinvestment also undermines
the infrastructure and services that small and large businesses also depend
upon.

In public companies a very small (and if you look at the K-1s fairly
consistent) amount of
money is paid in actual salaries.

You keep harping on that. So effing what? What stockholders care about is
"What is this guy costing us?" Very, very few of the stockholders that
actually fund these companies through stock purchases approve of these
massive compensation packages, yet they climb ever higher. Yet you continue
to falsely claim the market, and not compensation committees, are setting
compensation packages. That's as funny as the claim that cutting taxes on
the rich helps everyone. Study after study has put the sword to that lie.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/news/bu...andeconomy.pdf

Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had
little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However,
the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing
concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. The share of
income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945
to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession.

What did the Republicans do with this data? The supressed it because it's
at odds with the BS philsophy that tax cuts for the rich benefit everyone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/bu...tax-rates.html

As you can see, well over half of
the biggest compensation packages were where the stock part grew, the
stock contribution during the downturns was much less.

No one but you appeats to care whether they get their money from stocks,
salary or company product. When the ratios of compensation that Han pointed
out grow from 25X to 360X something's wrong. Your average CEO hasn't been
able to become 360X more efficient than the lowest worker. He's learned,
with the help of compensation committees, how to game the system.

There's an implication when you pay someone 100's of times what they *used*
to earn that they really are worth that much to the company. Look at
Hostess. How many hot shots CEOs (7?)came and went and didn't do a damn
thing to improve the company? Instead they drained it of critical capital
at a time when an owner CEO might decide to take a pay cut to help his
business survive. If the magical CEOs are so damn good, why did each one
fail so miserably?

More importantly these huge compensation packages are often at the
expense
of the business, the workers and the customers of that business because
that
money could be used better elsewhere.

Most of compensation packages are stock and come at the expense of
the stockholders through dilution.

"At the expense of stockholders" That's the key - it doesn't matter whether
it's salary, stock or all the company office supplies they can steal. CEOs
are getting paid far more than most every stockholder I know thinks the
should get. They feel, as I do, that the money wasted on "star" CEO's could
and should be put into hiring real workers who would pay real taxes on the
salaries that they would then spend, boosting the economy. CEO's are just
going to stash their cash in the Caymans.

In all of your response, you someone seem to have overlooked discussing how
the free market setting of salaries you allege actually works? When we
start to examine how CEO compensation packages are set, we're going to find
a fascinating web of back-scratching of do-nothing board members, "in the
bag" compensation committees and CEO's who reward those heaping rewards upon
them. Each time, they look at the overinflated salaries of other CEO's and
cry "Me Too!" thus ratcheting up compensation packages to obscene levels as
if there really was a shortage of competent managers.

The CEO of a family run business often puts every dime he makes back
into
the business. Not true of today's overpaid and interchangeable ruling
class CEOs. What gets me is how unspecialized these guys are - the
utter
reverse of something like the medical profession. They go from heading
a
computer company one month to an entertainment company the next and
finally
a soap company. You would expect that a CEO would be a subject matter
expert
of his industry to command such lofty compensation.

Why? They are being paid to run a company, not make soap. Different
skills sets. Although the Peter Principle obviously applies.

Good golly. If you don't understand why the head of a PC company should be
pretty damn familiar with PCs, then there's not much hope, but I'll try.
CEO's were jealous of the sports stars that were bringing home huge
compensation packages. Those sports stars have track records that show, in
game after game, year after year, they are the best at what they do.

However, you can't take a Stanley Cup winner and stick him in pro baseball
team and expect him to flourish. Yet we do that with CEOs. They command
the top compensation deals and yet they are strangely fungible. It defies
common sense as does so much conservative crapola.

Vulture capitalists are not the princely rescuers of failing businesses
as
Trader would have us believe. Look below for a detailed review of how
vulture capitalists decimated a solid American business by saddling it
with
debt. Everyone needs to understand that companies like Bain always win
just for setting what often amounts to enormous bankruptcy bustouts in
motion:


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/bu...l?pagewanted=a
ll
And there are others like a steel company in Indiana that is alive
because of Bain and recently added staff. You can cherrypick on both
sides.

It they were so proud of their records they'd be open about all their deals,
not just the ones that appear to be successful. The truth is they kill far
more than they save and they leave taxpayers and creditors on the hook for
much of their "streamlining" - that's why the Feds are on the hook for more
and more pension failures each year. Vulture capitalists socialize the
losses and privatize the gains.

When Trader says these venture capitalists risk their own money, he's
not
being quite honest. They buy these companies with money raised from
investors and not their own cash. Then they squeeze every last ounce of
equity and credit from these businesses, convert that into fees and
other
compensation, extracting it all up front and as quickly as possible so
that
they end up with no skin in the game at all. A small profit or morely
likely a large loss awaits the real investors.

These, by the way, are not venture capitalists. By definition,
venture capitalists only invest in new companies.

By your definition. There are plenty of other ones.

https://vcexperts.com/encyclopedia/chapters/15

But I'll agree to just change that to "vulture capitalists" that look around
for business that they can saddle with unconscionable debt before kicking
their cash-squeezed carcasses to the curb. That's their modus operandi, for
the most part.

Like any pseudo-Ponzi scheme, it's the last group of investors that gets
screwed to the wall. "Zeroed out" as I once heard Hank Paulson say.
That
$1/4B of Mitt's didn't come from any kind of honest labor, as most
working
people understand the term. It came from devouring American businesses
like
cancer, just the way Simmons was looted.

Bain was actually successful about half the time. The others, at worst,
kept people employed a few years longer. From Wiki:

Much of the firm's profits was earned from a relatively small number of
deals, with Bain Capital's overall success and failure rate being about
even. One study of 68 deals that Bain Capital made up through the 1990s
found that the firm lost money or broke even on 33 of them. Another
study that looked at the eight-year period following 77 deals during the
same time found that in 17 cases the company went bankrupt or out of
business, and in 6 cases Bain Capital lost all its investment. But
10 deals were very successful and represented 70 percent of the total
profits.

From the same Wiki article:

1994, Bain invested in Steel Dynamics, based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a
prosperous steel company that has grown to the fifth largest in the U.S.A,
employs about 6,100 people, and produces carbon steel products with 2010
revenues of $6.3 billion on steel shipments of 5.3 million tons. In 1993,
Bain acquired the Armco Worldwide Grinding System steel plant in Kansas
City, Missouri and merged it with its steel plant in Georgetown, South
Carolina to form GST Steel. The Kansas City plant had a strike in 1997 and
Bain closed the plant in 2001 laying off 750 workers when it went into
bankruptcy. The South Carolina plant closed in 2003 but subsequently
reopened under a different owner. At the time of its bankruptcy it reported
$553.9 million in debts against $395.2 in assets. Bain reported $58.4
million in profits, the employee pension fund had a liability of $44 million

Skim the cash, socialize the losses (Uncle Sam will take over those pension
liabilities!) and privatize the gains. Who do you think got to pocket the
shortfall of $150M+?

If that doesn't sicken people who believe in the American dream of
building
a successful business, I don't know what will. The tale of Simmons is a
tale of corporate rape. The was a time when investing in the American
stock
market was investing in American business and the future. Now it's just
a
huge legalized gambling house with the odds tilted strongly against the
small investor.

Nonsense, just those who don't pay attention to the world around them or
chase the newest and shiniest object. I have stayed fully invested since
the late 70s and have made total returns north of 7% annual on average,
some more and some left.

OK - since your situation worked out, everyone else must by extension,
mirror your results.

Vendors that did business with them will likely get stiffed, too when
the
company finally succumbs to the effects of vulture capitalism. People
like
Mitt made enormous profits gutting American businesses, saddling them
with
crushing debt, stripping workers of benefits, shifting pension
obligations
to the taxpayers and somehow converting what we would call a salary into
a
capital gains. Where do people think $225M worth of wealth comes from?
Saddling America with debt and selling it for for scrap when business
after
business died from carrying the burden of borrowed money. Is it any
wonder
he lost?

You overlook the winners such as ToyRUs, Domnios Pizza, AMPad flourished
for awhile, but interesting went bankrupt more 4 years after Bain got
out, Staples. When Bain Capital scooped up a substantial share in
Burger King in 2003, the nation's No. 2 fast food restaurant was
languishing. But within three years the fast food chain boosted record
revenue of $2.05 billion, according to its 2006 annual report.

One has to look at how they achieve those results. It's usually by slashing
benefits and wages. Great for the rich investors, not so good for the
people working there. So when those workers end up on tax-payer funded
Medicaid or going to ER's and all that money Bain et al. make tends to come
from the pockets of workers and taxpayers.

They won some and they lost some and had nothing to do with Simmons.

They worked closely with one of the outfits that did. More from Wiki:

Bain led a consortium, together with The Carlyle Group and Thomas H. Lee
Partners to acquire Dunkin' Brands. The private equity firms paid $2.425
billion in cash for the parent company of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins
in December 2005.

The tale of Simmons and Hostess just happen to illustrate in brutal detail
how many of these vulture capital operations *really* work. Saddle 'em up
with debt, convert assets into fees, force huge concessions from workers and
then stick the government, investors and creditors with huge bills
post-bankruptcy and laugh all the way to the bank. But not, thank God, the
Presidency.

--
Bobby G.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message

stuff snipped

This is Hostess' second bankruptcy, so I don't know if that qualifies
as "several".

He may have been referring to how many irreplaceable, uniquely-qualified,
won't work for a cent under $1M CEOs that Hostess has had on its Voyage to
the Bottom of the Sea of Debt.

The interesting thing is that they came out of the initial bankruptcy with
more debt than
they went in with.

That's what a highly trained, uniquely skilled, obscenely compensated CEO
does. Saddle the company with as much debt as possible, convert it to fees
and bonuses you pay to your buddies, and burn your creditors and the US
government.

Much of this was because they did not shed (as most do) the pension
requirements.

Ah, "shed" - that's a remarkable euphemism - like stockholders who are
"zeroed out."

Tell us what happens when a company under reorganization "sheds" its pension
liabilities? Who gets stuck with the final bill?

From what I can tell of Hostess is that they were robbing the pension fund
to pay executive bonuses. Bonuses "earned" even though the company was, as
you note, plunging deeper and deeper into debt. It's hard to keep worker
morale up when management asks them to keep taking bigger and bigger pay and
benefit cuts while lavishing money on the managers who steered Hostess onto
the rocks.

--
Bobby G.