LOL at the Drudge Report:

Starbucks to close 600 stores!

Starbucks Corp. has announced it’s closing 600 underperforming stores in the United States. The Seattle-based premium coffee company also announced Tuesday it expects to open fewer than 200 new company-operated stores in the United States in fiscal 2009. The company says it will try to place workers from closed stores in remaining Starbucks.

Ok, I guess that’s panic-worthy!

Hold on, Tweek. Check out this story from Channel 9 News in Orlando:

Florida may be hit especially hard by store closures and cuts at Starbucks. The coffee giant announced plans Tuesday to close 600 stores nationwide, slashing about 12,000 jobs. Central Florida’s slumping housing market may make it a target.

Experts believe many of the job cuts and closings could come from the 100-plus locations in Central Florida area. “I’m so depressed. Personally, I’m probably partially responsible for it, because I used to do Starbucks a lot and now I’ve had to cut back,” said customer Eilleen Antonescu.

Starbucks’ biggest national problem is lower-priced competitors, like McDonalds, offering similar coffees. But analysts say the company over-expanded in Central Florida, as well. In the Mall of Millenia area, for example, three Starbucks locations lie within walking distance of one another. “Companies, when they think they’ve turned onto something big, they over do it. They don’t know how to cut back, how to take it slowly,” Antonescu said.

Lewis Black saw this coming:

Why is there a Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks?

Don’t forget the absolutely awesome Onion stories:

New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks

Starbucks To Begin Sinister ‘Phase Two’ Of Operation

Crude But Functional Starbucks Hewn From Rock Facing

When all the Starbucks have closed you’ll have to get them digitally from Facebook from then on.

Source: BreitBart/AP

L.A. Sees More Homeless Living In Cars

Having lost her job and her three-bedroom house, Darlene Knoll has joined the legions of downwardly mobile who are four wheels away from homelessness. She is living out of her shabby 1978 RV, and every night she has to look for a place to park where she won’t get hassled by the cops or insulted by residents. “I’m not a piece of trash,” the former home health-care aide said as she stroked one of five dogs in her cramped quarters parked in the waterfront community of Marina del Rey.

Amid the foreclosure crisis and the shaky economy, some California cities are seeing an increase in the number of people living out of their cars, vans or RVs. Acting on complaints from homeowners, the Los Angeles City Council got tough earlier this year by forbidding nearly all overnight parking in residential neighborhoods such as South Brentwood. But some people are just crowding into other parts of the city, including the seaside community of Venice, where dozens of rusty, dilapidated campers can be seen lined up outside neat single-family homes. The stench of urine emanates from a few of the vehicles, and some residents say they have seen human waste left behind.

In Los Angeles, as in many other cities, it is illegal to live in vehicles on public streets. But the law is not easy to enforce. Police have to enter a vehicle to find signs that people are living there, such as cooking or sleeping, and occupants often refuse to answer when cops knock. An easier way is to restrict overnight parking. In L.A., a first offense carries a $50 fine, and subsequent violations can cost as much as $100.

Los Angeles is the nation’s homelessness capital, with an estimated 73,000 people on the streets. A survey of 3,230 homeless people last year in Los Angeles County found nearly 7 percent living in vehicles, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Knoll said she can barely afford to drive around with the rising price of gasoline eating away at the $950 monthly disability check she receives because of mental illness. She said she is also sick of police waking her up in the wee hours by pounding on her vehicle with their nightsticks, and she is tired of fighting with residents who call her “lowlife scum” and hurl other insults. “We need somewhere we can have a safe haven, where we won’t be harassed,” Knoll said as the wind from a passing car rocked her RV. “I never thought I’d be living like this, but I’m stuck. This is it for me.”

OddCulture thinks Darlene Knoll should drive that RV right out of California and into a state where the cost of living is cheaper. Also, give away 4 dogs. Finally, blame Ronald Reagan for closing down the asylums.

Bye, Bye, Bye

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Boy band mogul Lou Pearlman was sentenced this morning to 25 years in federal prison for running a lengthy, systematic con that artificially inflated his net worth and cheated people out of $300 million.

During Pearlman’s sentencing in U.S. District Court this morning, Senior U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp offered Pearlman an incentive to pay back his investors: for every $1 million he puts back in investors’ pockets, he gets one month off of his sentence. Since Pearlman’s sentence is for 300 months, he can avoid prison altogether if he forks up the cash. “I’m going to give you the keys to your jail cell,” Sharp said. But attorneys in the case say it’s unlikely there are any vast sums hidden and the prospect of Pearlman getting out of prison is unlikely.

Pearlman, 53, was once the toast of Orlando. His financial empire included popular musical acts like the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, an airplane charter business, and Church Street Station, an iconic piece of real estate in Orlando’s downtown.

Funny Flag:

Peacock also argued that Pearlman’s opulent lifestyle was a business requirement.”Mr. Pearlman did live large, if you will, but judge, he was in the entertainment business,” Peacock said.

I’ll buy that for 2 dollars!

We don’t normally do economic or financial news stories here at Odd Culture, but this one is a doozy. Remember when you read this story that Bear Stearns was trading around the $80 per share range only a few weeks ago:

J.P. Morgan to Buy Bear Stearns:

J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share in a stock-swap transaction, people familiar with the matter say. J.P. Morgan will exchange 0.05473 shares of its common stock per one share of Bear Stearns stock. Both boards have approved the transaction.

While J.P. Morgan is eager to snap up some of Bear Stearns assets — such as its prime brokerage business that caters to hedge funds — Chief Executive Officer James Dimon was reluctant to pursue the deal without certain assurances that would protect his firm’s exposure, said people familiar with the matter.

Despite the emergency funding from J.P. Morgan and the Federal Reserve that was announced Friday and gives Bear access to cash for an initial period of 28 days, the clock is ticking against the 85-year-old company. Regulators, bankers and investors are concerned that the firm could plummet even further when markets open Monday. A continued exodus by parties that Bear trades with could even cause the investment bank to collapse.

Federal regulators also are trying to prevent Bear’s crisis from mushrooming into a systemic threat to the stability of financial markets and other securities firm, for which confidence is essential to their ongoing operations. Unwinding Bear also would be a nightmare because it trades with nearly every firm on Wall Street.

Any deal would all but wipe out Bear Stearns shareholders, whose shares have not traded below $20 since 1995. The pain would be most acute for Bear’s own employees, who were seeped in a culture of firm ownership — and own about a third of the outstanding shares.

The likely sale of Bear Stearns is the latest in the cascading mortgage-related blows that began last summer and have resulted in staggering losses and write-downs on Wall Street, the ouster of CEOs and an epidemic of worry that the financial system faces even more turmoil.

More fun images at LOL-FED.

Yes, this morning, AOL dropped eight hundred and fifty MEEEEEEEEEEEEELION dollars on Bebo.

Bebo, a social networking site with even less content than Facebook and MySpace. Bebo, a video site with videos lamer than YouTube.

Bebo.

Of course, with the dollar sinking below 100 yen this morning, it’s not as if that $850MM is really worth all that much. But it still leaves the question of where the hell did AOL get that much money. Couch cushions? Or just printing worthless stock?