The Undertaker asked:


There’s rumors that Sears may file for bankruptcy this year and go out of business. But since Sears has 400,000 employees nation wide, do you think the government would actually let that happen? And yes, I know other retail chains have recently gone out of business. But they’re all relatively small compared to the number of employees Sears has. Circuit City by comparison has only 30,000 employees. So do you think Sears could actually go out of business or will the government step in and try to prevent that from happening?

Yvonne

No Responses to “What are the chances that Sears will go out of business?”

1. The B on August 1st, 2009 2:33 pm

   Sears has a few different organizations under it (such as K-Mart) that might be broken up and sold to other companies instead of completely going bankrupt. That said, the outlook for Sears (steep drops in sales) and K-Mart (struggling greatly compared to competitors) are both very bad right now so it may very well file for banruptcy in 2009.

   Unless the government decides to change course, I don’t see them bailing Sears out. The rational for the bank bailout was a complete national economic collapse and money crisis, and the auto-bailout was to protect all of the American car industry from going under. Although it would be very bad, the collapse of Sears would not affect the U.S. in the same way as that, and a bailout for them would also open the floodgates to have to bail out the other retailers that are struggling (which is almost all of them right now).

   Just my guess is that 50/50 chance Sears/K-Mart is completely gone by the end of ‘09 and there will be no bailout for them.

2. Anjellikka on August 3rd, 2009 8:36 pm

   Surely not….i mean,that would be just wrong…….