My grandfather worked for Sears for 45 years (1941-1986). Lived a good middle-class life, had a lake house, retired well.
It's sad to see what Sears has become. They got rid of the catalog business at just the wrong time. If they had held on to it just a few more years, it would have been an easy transition into an internet model in the late 90's/early 2000's, and they would have beat lots of other retailers to the punch.
For anyone that thinks Sears is gonna make a comeback or might be a good investment, you need to Google "Sears Re-Insurance". That's the company ol' Fast Eddie Laempert set up to shift all the good real estate holdings into. He also owns the Kenmore/Craftsman/Die Hard names, so he gets a " royalty" on all the merch sold, even if Sears itself doesn't make much of a profit on it.
He has also loaned Sears his own money on occasion. My guess is, that he has made himself a "secured" creditor, so that he will receive whatever money/value Sears has left in a bankruptcy, while the stockholders and others are left with nothing.
