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I disagree with you on Amazon.com going out of business. They haven't turned a profit yet due mainly to the reinvestment of revenues into infrastructure. They were about to turn one last year but the dot.com implosion set them back a bit. I think they might surprise everybody and show a profit sometime this coming fiscal year. Unlike most dot.coms, this is no house of cards. They are selling real products and offer real services. For example, I won't buy a book or a CD anymore unless I check the reviews on Amazon.com first. Then I usually buy it through them.

On the con side, Amazon.com was definitely overvalued on the stock market. And they expanded into other areas too recklessly. Everybody knows them for books and music. When they started selling garden rakes and other gardening tools, what the hell were they thinking? I go to Home Depot for that stuff. Who's going to pay to have a step ladder shipped to their house?

If Amazon.com is unable to turn a profit, look for them to get snapped up somebody like Wal-Mart. They are definitely not going away however.

As for Service Merchandise, it never did have that "status symbol" name brand that is so important for jewelry. If you buy your girlfriend an engagement ring or watch there, you certainly aren't going to tell her where you bought it from. Might as well tell her you got it from a gumball machine at the penny arcade. It just has no "class appeal." As for electronics and consumer appliances, Circuit City and Wal-Mart destroyed them. I'm sure that's why those sections started disappearing.

From a retail standpoint, it was terrible service. Fill out a slip, often without being able to even examine the product, and then pay for it. THEN wait about 20 minutes for it to come down a conveyor belt, only half the time it NEVER came.

Good riddance to a sorry company, IMHO.

If you're that confident, then buy the stock......their "pro-forma" profits are nonsense, since it doesn't count debt service.......that's like you saying you could afford to own a house if you didn't have to make the mortgage payments......Amazon is wonderful, I use it allcthe time....but they don't have a viable business plan..however,the jigs up this quarter, cause after they pay all their vendors, they'll announce their cash position, and you'll see how bad shape they're in...and they can't either borrow any more, or issue stock..so, it's belly-up time.....also, they're not really making any money on the books and records, despite what they say...I can give you the chapter and verse if you're interested, but trust me on this one....regatrds..