Letters to the Editor
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This is all you need to know about Bear Fucking Stearns
I pulled my money from these clowns as fast as I could when this went down, circa mid 2003, and I was even a dealer of the brand:
"Bear Stearns has agreed to buy a privately held recreational equipment maker, CamelBak Products, for $210 million from the Bowes family, which bought it for $4 million in 1995, CamelBak said yesterday. John G. Bowes, CamelBak's chairman, owns the company with his daughters and said he would leave when Bear Stearns completed the purchase. CamelBak, based in Petaluma, Calif., was established in 1989 by a former paramedic, Michael Edison, and makes backpacks that allow hikers, runners and other athletes to drink hands-free during physical activity. It also makes those products for hunters, the government and the military. CamelBak's chief executive, Glenn Gross, 59, said he would remain after the purchase. "
Ahem. Camelbak? Makers of something original once, back when it was invented, now notable since 2003 for... introducing another bisphenol plastic bottle -- but with an adult sippy cup. That's it. Oh yeah, and also hydration packs for the Army, but that was already a front-loaded KT when BS bought it in '03. No way in hell could that company have been realistically valued beyond 10-20 mill, absolute tops.
What sort of country is it when the leading newspapers didn't even find this run-of-the-mill-waste-of-200-million-bucks remarkable? And now, here we are.
Everyone is fucking culpable. And that includes the ostensibly leftist assholes who also stood by and watched it happen too -- it's not like anyone in Camelbak's peer industries thought this sort of thing foreshadowed a greater problem. One trade pub after another, one newsgroup after another: Hey, we're all rich! Whoo hoo!
Except, we weren't.