Important Takeaways:
- One of America’s biggest flooring suppliers has filed for bankruptcy – the latest in a long line of retailers this year to face money problems.
- LL Flooring will shut 94 of its 442 stores, which are spread out across 47 states, to cut costs and make the company attractive to a buyer.
- The retailer, which specializes in hardwood flooring, has faced falling sales over the past year as families cut back on remodeling their homes.
- As well as cutting costs under the Chapter 11 bankruptcy, bosses at LL Flooring are talking to several potential buyers for the 30-year-old company.
- Bosses say they expect the company will survive and will meet all existing orders while it reorganizes.
- LL Flooring is the latest to shutter stores this year, with the US on course to lose nearly 8,000 physical locations by the end of 2024.
- Macy’s is closing 150 shops – a third of its total – while Dollar Tree is shutting 1,000 and drug store Rite Aid will close almost 800.
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Important Takeaways:
- Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary reveals why restaurants are closing down across America and warns MORE closures are on the way
- The US restaurant industry finds itself on the menu.
- Seemingly every day, there’s a headline announcing a bankruptcy, layoff or store closure impacting one of the country’s most beloved brands.
- Last month, Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 after closing nearly 100 stores. Cracker Barrel – with restaurants in 45 states – has seen its share value plummet over the last year. The once-booming chain Boston Market, which boasted 1,200 locations in the 1990s, is now reportedly down to two do
- So, what’s behind this fast-casual reckoning?
- It’s proof the inflation virus is still infecting America’s post-pandemic economy.
- Supply chains crippled by the COVID pandemic lockdown haven’t recovered. Food costs – especially for proteins like chicken, beef and seafood – are up 30 to 40 percent over the last 36 months. Worst of all for the restaurant industry – customers haven’t returned from the shutdowns.
- Business closures and social-distancing mandates forced people to change the way they eat. Sixty million Americans – a massive chuck of the population that is aged 60 years and above – were forced to use their smartphones to order a ‘treat’ dinner for the very first time in 2020.
- In order to survive, many have had to transform themselves into commercial kitchens specializing solely in takeout.
- Some businesses will have to go bankrupt, reorganize themselves entirely and move to less expensive areas.
- However, there’s nothing to be done when consumers simply refuse to spend.
- Newsom signed a law in September jacking up the minimum wage for fast-food workers from $16-per-hour to $20 – making decades-old businesses unprofitable overnight.
- One California trade group estimated the Maduro-style edict led to the firing of nearly 10,000 workers even before the law went into effect on April 1.
- A West Coast Burger King franchisee with 140 restaurants announced he’d replace workers with digital order-taking kiosks. A major Pizza Hut operator eliminated delivery services and laid off thousands of drivers.
- Now, just 90 days into the new regime, businesses are dropping like flies.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. bankruptcies surged 18% in 2023 and seen rising again in 2024 –report
- U.S. bankruptcy filings surged by 18% in 2023 on the back of higher interest rates, tougher lending standards and the continued runoff of pandemic-era backstops, data published Wednesday showed, although insolvency case volumes remain well below the level seen before the outbreak of COVID-19.
- Total bankruptcy filings – encompassing commercial and personal insolvencies – rose to 445,186 last year from 378,390 in 2022, according to data from bankruptcy data provider Epiq AACER.
- Commercial Chapter 11 business reorganization filings shot up by 72% to 6,569 from 3,819 the year before, the report said. Consumer filings rose 18% to 419,55 from 356,911 in 2022.
- For the final month of the year, total filings dipped to 34,447 from 37,860 in November, though they were up 16% from a year earlier.
- Bankruptcy case counts are expected to keep climbing in 2024, though there is still some distance to go to top the 757,816 bankruptcies filed in 2019, the year before the pandemic struck.
- Household debt did, in fact, stand at a record high $17.3 trillion at the end of the third quarter, according to data from the New York Federal Reserve
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Important Takeaways:
- The rise of the MEGA bankruptcy: 459 US firms have filed for bankruptcy this year – the most since 2020 – and 16 had more than $1 billion in assets
- Large-scale corporate bankruptcies are at their highest level since 2020 as elevated interest rates continue to batter businesses.
- Economists warn large-scale bankruptcies can have devastating consequences
- Some 459 firms filed for bankruptcy so far this year – already more than in 2021
- Bed Bath and Beyond, trucking firm Yellow and Silicon Valley Bank among the biggest casualties
- David’s Bridal have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy thanks to a perfect storm of rampant inflation, high rates and supply-chain disruptions.
- Economists warn the rise in large-scale collapses can have devastating consequences on the economy.
- For example, the demise of trucking firm Yellow – which reportedly had $2.15 billion in assets at its time of filing – reverberated through domestic shipping and real estate markets to Wall Street.
- The rise in bankruptcies coupled with a weakening stock market and surge in credit card delinquencies has sparked fears the US is heading for a recession.
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Important Takeaways:
- Bankruptcy becomes official for Yellow freight company; trucking firm going out of business
- U.S. trucking giant Yellow Corp. has announced that it has declared bankruptcy following a tense standoff with the Teamsters Union and after a massive pandemic-era federal loan failed to stave off the company’s mounting debt.
- The freight company based in Nashville, Tennessee, which employs about 30,000 workers, said in a news release on Sunday that it was seeking bankruptcy protection so it can wind down its business in an “orderly” way. The Chapter 11 petition was filed in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware.
- While a Chapter 11 filing is used to restructure debt while operations continue, Yellow will liquidate and the U.S. will join other creditors unlikely to recover funds extended to the company, according to the Associated Press.
- A dominant player in the supply chain industry, Yellow became the third-largest small-freight-trucking company in the U.S. with clients that included both big box retailers and small family businesses.
- But the company had an outstanding debt of about $1.5 billion as of March and has continued to lose customers as its demise appeared imminent.
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Revelations 13:16-18 “Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.”
Important Takeaways:
- David’s Bridal filed for bankruptcy protection days after the company announced it would lay off more than 9,200 employees across the nation.
- The wedding retailer said in a press release Monday that its stores would remain open and fulfill orders without delay as the company looks to sell all or some of its assets. Its online platforms will also remain available to help with customers’ wedding planning needs.
- David’s Bridal started as a small bridal salon in Florida in 1950. The chain now has about 300 locations across the country.
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Revelations 13:16-18 “Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.”
Important Takeaways:
- #1 We were warned that a great commercial real estate crisis would be coming, and now it is here.
- With recent stress in the regional banking sector, sentiment in US commercial real estate (CRE) – and especially the office sector – has turned negative as investors prepare for potential spillover effects (with JPM, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs all joining the gloom parade), especially as high-profile defaults continue to make headlines as borrowers face higher debt service costs and refinancing becomes much harder ahead of a $400 billion CRE debt maturities this year alone…
- #2 We were warned that there would be widespread layoffs as economic conditions in the United States deteriorated. Sadly, that is now happening all around us. For example, on Monday accounting firm Ernst & Young announced that they will be laying off thousands of highly paid workers…
- #3 We were warned that the largest corporate debt bubble in the history of the world would eventually burst, and now corporations are beginning to default on their debts at a rate that should deeply alarm all of us…
- #4 We were warned that we would witness a dramatic surge in bankruptcies in 2023, and that is precisely what is happening…
- Bankruptcy filings across the United States rose for the third straight month in March in all major industries. A total of 42,368 new bankruptcies were filed last month, according to data from Epiq Bankruptcy, a provider of U.S. bankruptcy court data, technology, and services.
- #5 We were warned that the rest of the world would eventually start rejecting the U.S. dollar, and now “de-dollarization” is happening at a “stunning” pace…
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Ezekiel 7:19 “They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall become abhorrent; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not satisfy their souls, or fill their stomachs, for their iniquity has become a stumbling block.”
Important Takeaways:
- Retail price of gold in Japan hits all-time high of $67 per gram
- The retail price of gold in Japan has hit an all-time high of 9,000 yen ($66.94), according to data released by one of the country’s largest producers and sellers of precious metals, Tanaka Kikinzoku, on Monday.
- The record price was fixed amid investors’ growing interest in stable assets following the bankruptcy of one of America’s largest banks, Silicon Valley Bank.
- On March 10, the California Department of Financial Protection announced the bankruptcy of SVB, the 16th-biggest lender in the United States. It served mainly employees in the technological sector and companies financed with venture capital. It became the largest bankruptcy of a US bank since the 2008 financial crisis as estimated by the CNN TV channel.
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Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived
Important Takeaways:
- Now that pandemic aid has vanished, bankruptcies are on the rise
- Total bankruptcy filings in January shot up 19% in January to 31,087, up 19% from a year ago, according to data from Epiq, a legal research firm. The number of Americans who filed for bankruptcy across Chapters 7, 11 and 13 shot up 20% in January from a year ago.
- The surge in filings comes as rising interest rates and high inflation continue to stress household budgets.
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Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’
Important Takeaways:
- Bed Bath & Beyond looks for capital infusion, buyer ahead of likely bankruptcy filing
- The retailer is in the midst a sale process in hopes of finding a buyer that would keep the doors open for both of its major chains, its namesake banner and Buybuy Baby, said the people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
- A Bed Bath spokeswoman said Wednesday the company doesn’t comment on specific relationships but has been working with strategic advisers to evaluate all paths to regain market share and enhance liquidity.
- Earlier this month Bed Bath warned it may need to file for bankruptcy after its turnaround plans failed to substantially boost sales and repair its balance sheet.
- The company reported net losses that exceed $1.12 billion for the first nine months of the fiscal year.
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