Absolute home run, Judy! Ah, baseball, how we miss you.

Black pinstriped jacket over a white t, with (I like to think real) diamond earrings. Really knocked it out of the park today, lady. Looks like you might have trimmed your hair on the right, or is it behind your ear? I think you cut it. Nice work, but will be hard to slick back in a ponytail, if you do that. Ah, you probably don’t.

My new heroine, Cornell professor Rosemary Batt, was on the show tonight talking about the evils of private equity.

Ok, I couldn’t get a good photo of her, but we should listen to what she has to say. I won’t exerpt her scholarly pieces here, but tonight she boiled it down: clothing store sales are down 80% since the coronavirus lockdowns started, but that’s not what killed retail giants Neiman Marcus, J. Crew, Sears and JCPenney. I learned tonight that 10 of 14 retail bankruptcies are caused by private equity wringing all of the cash out of the businesses. Plus, it’s cool to be a female prof in the world of finance.

Don’t let your eyes glaze over! This is what happened to Toys R Us, remember them? BEFORE coronavirus, 1.3 million Americans had lost their jobs in retail in a decade due to private equity investing in and bankrupting retailers. Senator Warren (remember her?) had a plan for that. She introduced a bill to help curb private equity investment in retail, but it didn’t get anywhere.

Here’s a short piece about private equity, featuring Taylor Swift in gold lame, in case you want to read more:

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/6/21024740/private-equity-taylor-swift-toys-r-us-elizabeth-warren

And one from the Grey Lady:

I know, heavy stuff for the Thursday before Memorial Day, but this is a blog about clothes and clothes stores are dropping left and right. Just don’t blame it all on COVID.

Tomorrow, those clothes horses, Mark Shields and David Brooks!