Friday fuds.

I slept in until 10:00 this morning, which never happens. Usually I'm up by 8:00 or 8:30.

I needed to take Dad to his Doctor's coffee conclave, and rushed on some cloths, brushed my teeth, gulped some coffee and headed out. I hate rushing like that.

Anyway, all I can think is that with Linda gone to Oklahoma, I'm not being woken by her morning sounds (not that she's loud or anything.) I also started watching the series Lillyhammer on Netflix, which I couldn't stop watching, so went to bed later than I normally would with Linda here. (The show has some really cute "fish out of water" moments (gumpah out of Brooklyn moments?) -- and a lot of lame ones. Nearly a very good show, but not quite.)

So, if I was single, I'd probably be staying up late and sleeping late and all that.

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On the following issues, please understand that I'm just speculating and could be wrong and have no inside knowledge. In fact, I'm not even going to use names here, so you can just see all this as a hypothetical...


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The Restaurant situation in Bend seems kind of strange to me. There are owners who seem to be trying to declare personal bankruptcy, when it's pretty clear the debt comes from the businesses -- which is puzzling. I mean, there are several ways to read it. Maybe they are doing the honorable thing, and taking a personal hit. Or maybe the opposite, they figure their true wealth is in the business and they are already in trouble with their personal debt, so they can take care of two problems.

I don't know.

How does a business own manage to raise the money for new restaurants, if they are having money problems?

I'm guessing that their growth rate and overall revenue were pretty good. I'm guessing their cashflow absolutely sucked.

See -- growing rapidly will automatically show an increase in revenue. Your overhead may fall within reasonable perimeters.

But growth puts a huge strain on cashflow.

Ironically, one of the ways to address this problem is to grow even more -- borrow money, based on your good sales, and then use at least some of the money to stave off the cashflow problems.

I more or less did this. Back in the late 1980's I had spectacular sales -- increasing sales, but it was all going in service to keeping up with growth. So I went and borrowed money based on those spectacular sales. I didn't hide anything, but the loaners focused on the sales and the overhead, and not the cashflow. I'm guessing that these expanding restaurant empires laid out all the facts, but accentuated the growth and possible growth, and didn't point at the cashflow or possible problems.

Is that wrong? Is it illegal?

I don't see how. I've mentioned before, most small businesses necessarily have to leverage whatever they got, which is another word for risk.

When sportscards collapsed on me, then the overhead didn't look so good, and the cashflow got even worse.

So I think it's the wrong maneuver in the end, because it's a short term solution, and the cashflow problem will probably return.

Unless everything goes right.

You know, which never happens.

And when everything doesn't go right, you declare bankruptcy.

(Or like me, you live poor as a churchmouse for a decade. I paid off all the debts plus humongous interest, so no one was hurt but me and my family. )

Anyway, I'm just guessing here. But if I'm anywhere close to right, then each party was seeing what they wanted to see. Both parties can be both right and wrong.

On the other hand, how do you become managing partner to a new restaurant in the same space as a restaurant you failed in?

I don't understand high finance, or low.

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I'm not judging the guilt or innocence of the RPA director, just noting that he had a huge number of defenders on the KTVZ comments site when he was arrested.

I'll be interested to see if he gets as many defenders with this second arrest....

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"Bend Home Prices Dip in 4th Quarter." Bulletin, 2/24/12.

I stopped giving the advice of "Wait two years to buy a house" about two years ago. But I'm wondering if I couldn't safely still give the same advice.

At least, I don't think it would hurt.

But people need to buy houses when they need to buy houses, and when they can afford to.

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