Newswatcher5

Earnings Preview: Sears Holdings

Does anyone ever get tired of seeing this same old quarterly story coupled with almost desperate speculation on what "miracles" will be wrought by Mr. Lampert in order to try to justify all the hype these same publications were spewing about him up until about a year ago?

Sears has been suffering same store sales declines for years now. For a while after he stepped in, Mr. Lampert was able to provide some return solely through cost cutting and tight fisting, at first enough to offset the sales and market share losses.

Alas for him, this is not a sustainable business model... sooner or later you run out of cuts to make and ways to hang the bottom line on the backs of your employees.

Now the time has come when there's nothing left to cut and there's a need to try to figure out how to get back all those sales and some of that market share he frittered away pretending to have a plan that was going to work.

Unfortunately, the emperor's new clothes, at least in the form of Mr. Lampert's radical makeover of the retail industry look suspiciously like an empty suit.

Mr. Sullivan, if you read this, don't be drinking coffee. ;)