Posted on 11/19/2012 11:01:40 AM PST by GSWarrior
This mornings news that Hostess Brands, Inc. was shutting its doors after 82 years of operation (originally under the name International Bakeries Corporation) has elicited a lot of commentary from various sources. Culturally, Im seeing a lot of people lament the fact that some of their favorite brands of snack food or bread from Twinkies to Ho-Hos to Wonder Bread to Beefsteak Rye Bread will no longer be available. Politically, theres been a definite theme on the right blaming the Bakers Union for the companys collapse since they would not agree to a modification of their contract notwithstanding the fact that they had been warned that this would happen, and that even the Teamsters Union warned them that they were risking the fate of the company and everyones jobs by being so stubborn. Both of these reactions strike me as being wildly over blown, based largely on common misunderstandings of what actually happens in Bankruptcy Court and the business world, and both miss the point that the death of Hostess Brands is a fairly good example of the free market in action.
(Excerpt) Read more at outsidethebeltway.com ...
It’s a sad day for California. All those glaucoma patients with the munchies and no more twinkles...lol
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-16/hostess-liquidation-curious-cast-characters-twinkie-tumbles This guy names names ~ you don’t ~ bunch of lefty wankers took down this company. They owned it! Just like GM. Which will be going down soon. Some new owners are not reliable.
Same as GM ~ try this article: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-16/hostess-liquidation-curious-cast-characters-twinkie-tumbles
After the prescribed time the machine tells you it's done and you pull the product and wrap it in bags or place in boxes.
It's much more efficient to truck around glop to machines in the stores than it is to truck around finished product to the stores.
The alternative is to produce products with incredibly long shelf lives ~ they're a little chewier, but they can be sold in gas stations everywhere!
I’ve been buying their Stoneground Whole Wheat for years, at the “day old” store next town over. The moisture content is a little better than some other brands, so it freezes well, and is fine for five-six days after thawing.
Cost is about one third of fresh, and I really can’t tell the difference once it becomes a sandwich, toast, French toast, etc.
We have no free market. This would tend to disprove it, don't you think?
When we have places where bakeries are banned from producing an aroma, when sugar prices are artificially high (2x) by government barriers, when corporations are taxed the highest on Earth, when some companies are given government handouts (Solyndra, etc) and protectionist laws (domestic sugar for instance), when union goons make sure in some states that bread and snacks get different trucks (as an earlier poster noted) and likely make it hard to near impossible to fire bad workers (normal for unions).....
can anyone really pretend we have anything close to a free market??
The analysis was not only off-base, but irrelevant.
He seems to want go all the way toward building a case
that the “free market” should be allowed to work through its ineluctable process of separating the wheat from the chaff, and he makes some high-falutin’ references to creative destruction and Joseph Schumpeter, but he misses the entirely obvious point that its that intransigent union that effectively TOOK THE PLACE OF THE MARKET in the case of Hostess.The union practiced its own not-very-creative destruction in this case, and I wish I could figure out how it’s serving a Higher Agenda here, like one, for example, that’s satisfying the higher authority of the Obama Administration.This is a writer with no sense of irony, which is something we were all supposed to learn about in High School.
The Mexican BIMBO Corp are already pimping out Sara Lee and now they might get Hostess.... someday they might even nab Little Debbie....
The point here, is all the others in this market deal with the same thing.
If they were killed by Mexico Bakeries, your arguments would be valid.
If I bought this company, I would move the production. I think I would like to move it to some place like Utah.
That's the part that stood out the most to me.
18,500 employees, 33 plants, 12 unions, 40 pension plans, half of 'em multi employer orphan plans, more than 380 individual union contracts, 11 of those unions refuse to strike or honor the Baker's walkout or picket lines, a previous chapter 11 buyout/bailout to save jobs, and the NLRB.
The "free market" had nothing to do with it (free market wasn't in operation here), Hostess was murdered by a few Bakers union boss thugs, and an unknown number of Bakers union rank an file members.
Not every companies gets bailouts, not every company gets grants from the government, not every companies gets sweetheart deals from states and cities.
They are not treated the same.
Blaming the Bakers Union for the companys collapse is a fact nothing else caused it.
Greed will always do you in,helllllloooo Detriot.
True, I wouldn’t ever expect a bailout though.
Hostess was loaded up with debt by private equity.
In this case, it was DEMOCRAT run private equity, including Dicky Gephardt.
The archaic union rules certainly contributed also.
But notice how there’s NO MENTION in the media of the looting and pillaging done by Ripplewood. Imagine if it had been Bain Capital....
I am not an expect on the distribution of bakery products. However, I think these bakery’s were scattered all around the country so that they could ship competitively to all markets. I do not think you could have a bakery in just Texas, Utah, AL and be competitive to WA, ME and IL. Unless that is you are willing to give up 50% of the US market.
The owners are doctrinaire extreme Leftwingtards ~ they did it ~ mostly with other people’s money.
Grupo Beembo to the rescue!
¡Sí, señor!
We do not need another view from the left.
If even the teamsters were trying to educate them, you know that they are way off the left cliff.
The Lewinski’s (MSM] never MENTION anything bad about the stupid democrats.
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