I was reading the comments on the WSJ article, and man, does this guy get it. This is a must read, I had to bring it here since I know not everybody is subscribed to WSJ:
When the smoke clears, the forensic accountants and certified internal auditors will go in and calculate exactly what Lampert took out of Sears/K-Mart in interest payments, management fees and how loans were structured to be over-collateralized with real estate and other assets. If Lampert effectively stole the company by driving down the stock to nothing while he stripped it of cash, credit and assets, there will be a reckoning.
Sears was the place my mother shopped for appliances, Tuff-Skin jeans for her boys (remember the trampoline ads?) and literally everything else. My father bought his Craftsman tools, Die-Hard batteries and everything else we needed as to hardware. We even bought our doghouse at Sears.
Today the stores are depressing shells, lifeless and in some cases, inventory-less too. This was allowed to happen, encouraged even by a set of tax laws that gave Lampert the chance through financial engineering to make a lot of money as he killed an iconic brand/company. Sigh.