The end for Kodak?

[BrianShaw]

Interesting. Do you greet your friends like that?

I suspect we are dealing with a "loner" here.

 

[Steve Smith]

So they are splitting film across two divisions? Sheesh, they really ARE lost...

It won't be split internally. That's just the way it will appear to buyers and their accounts system.


Steve.

 

[hpulley]

Shares up 50% by close:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577152503598025844.html

 

[michaelbsc]

Shares up 50% by close:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577152503598025844.html

Which means they're still at less than 1% of former value.

It's heartbreaking.

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

The maker of Twinkies just filed for bankruptcy too. Now what will happen to them??? Kodak, and now Twinkies......this can't be happening...

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=15337452&sid=74

.

 

[BrianShaw]

Dang, not Twinkies. What is happening... surley a sign of "the end". One of the two Hot Pocket factories is laying off a third of their work froce. Maybe they will go next. Dang.

 

[keithwms]

Polaroid, Kodachrome, NASA, Fermilab, Hot Pockets, Twinkies.... maybe the Mayans were on to something.

 

[eclarke]

All things aside, If you bought Kodak stock on Friday, today alone you made good profit on your money...

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

Dang, not Twinkies. What is happening... surley a sign of "the end". One of the two Hot Pocket factories is laying off a third of their work froce. Maybe they will go next. Dang.

XD

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

All things aside, If you bought Kodak stock on Friday, today alone you made good profit on your money...

37 cents to 77 cents right now. Yes, very good. But I did not have the cojones...bought Tri-X and TMY instead! :-D

 

[railwayman3]

All things aside, If you bought Kodak stock on Friday, today alone you made good profit on your money...

On paper. maybe, but take out the buying-and-selling spread
(notoriously high on "penny stocks") and brokers charges for the two deals, and I don't think you would have had much profit left. (Unless you had been willing to risk very large $$ in a very speculative investment.)

 

[keithwms]

All things aside, If you bought Kodak stock on Friday, today alone you made good profit on your money...

Dead cat bounce. I did consider buying a few days ago but was more comfortable with making BAC my risk play, for the reasons railwayman just mentioned. BAC worked out very nicely, thank you very much.

 

[TimVermont]

I did my part and purchased 45 pro-packs of TMY120.

 

[Steve Smith]

Unless you had been willing to risk very large $$

Then you would have owned the whole company!


Steve.

 

[Vaughn]

Yes, there seems to be zero initiative in DC to create real jobs. Our current batch of politicians are just sitting back, waiting for the nondurables consumer economy to improve with consumer confidence. Their implied message: if you think the job market is bad, blame yourself for not feeling confident enough to put more on plastic. Meanwhile, we're just pissing away manufacturing capacity and technical talent. Don't get me started

What we need is a President fully experienced in taking operating profitable companies and stripping them of their assets and putting all the workers on unemployment. I think one is running for the office now...

Vaughn

 

[keithwms]

What we need is a President fully experienced in taking operating profitable companies and stripping them of their assets and putting all the workers on unemployment. I think one is running for the office now...

Vaughn

Well those are the official Dem talking points, but a closer look reveals that he left several companies far better off than when he joined them. And M&A is risky business. Anyway, who in the current WH has ever actually created a job? Yeah... it's hard to think of one.

Romney's people haven't found their message yet, that's clear. But they have plenty of material to build on. I told them they should turn this silly firing controversy around and point out that somebody who knows how to streamline a business also would know how to streamline the government and save a few bucks. We could use a little more fire under the deadwood in DC.

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

Whoa. 82 cents now!

 

[DREW WILEY]

I don't think creating jobs in China counts.

 

[keithwms]

I don't think creating jobs in China counts.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[DREW WILEY]

Putting thousands of tax-paying neighborhood mom n' pop operations out of business, and laying off
tens of thousand of US mfg employees to create minimum wage strip mall jobs selling almost 100%
made in China goods doesn't count either. By the time these guys run for office they're already bought and paid for by someone who does not have your interest in mind. They're out to mine and
burn the middle class as much as dirty coal.

 

[keithwms]

The US hasn't had a solid manufacturing economy for a long time; some geniuses decided that we're better off doing virtual reality work and sending real manufacturing abroad. That trend is nothing new. On the surface, the current Administration's push for "green" jobs sounds good, but when the consumer economy heads south, ventures like that dry up very quickly (solar has been decimated, and not just because of Solyndra). The "shovel ready" jobs also haven't materialized.

If you read the little Tyler Cowen book that I mentioned in my blog post, I think you'll see very quickly that the trend we're seeing started many decades ago and leads nowhere good. When you say "sci & tech" in the US today, people think you mean iPods, iPhones... but unfortunately there aren't any iJobs. And that's not going to get better.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'm a professional buyer Keith, so know the scenario all too well. It's useless to point the finger at
one political party or the other. Wall St has gotten out of control and there are deep personal incentives in play to take advantage of the public. Part of my own success even in the depth of the
recession was simply to avoid distributing products of publicly-traded companies. Too much smoke and mirrors just to get a few people on top rich quick. Big corporate headhunters still try to recruit
me, but the reason I do things well in my own tiny niche is because I believe in supplying my own
customers with reliable things that will help them become more productive and profitable - a ridiculously old fashioned plan that still works every time. But none of these marketing monkey MBA's
want to hear that kind of thing. Apparently neither does Kodak.

 

[Photo Engineer]

In a recent list of big sellers in goods made here in the US, the top item is military aircraft and the second is vacuum tubes. Yes, the old analog standard, vacuum tubes.

But, I have posted this before, and that is that we are a service economy here in the US (one service is actually our superb medical system if you don't mind paying for it). At the rate we are going, and with our current education system, we will be a 3rd world nation in a generation!

The whiz bang economists and business admin people are driving some of this and the poor education in hard science is driving more people into becoming economists and BA people. But, this is not the place for the long story. They even alluded to it on NBC news about 1 month ago as contributing to the big unemployment where there are a lot of BA, Accountant, and Social Workers looking for jobs and one company can't hire engineers and tool and die workers due to lack of education and math skills.

Sorry for the rant.

PE

 

[keithwms]

You will also like Cowen's book, Ron. It's exactly along these lines. The problem with so many economists is that they really don't understand the role of education, invention and entrepreneurialism in the modern technology-based economy. If a Ford or Land or Eastman tried to start a business in the US today, well... they wouldn't.

 

[Ektagraphic]

In a recent list of big sellers in goods made here in the US, the top item is military aircraft and the second is vacuum tubes. Yes, the old analog standard, vacuum tubes.

Just out of curiosity, since I am passionate for American industry...where is this list?