Napoleon III and the Impressionists

This blog, in general, stirs up a couple of recurring themes in my email.  The majority accuse me of being either a lefty academic socialist or of being a right-wing fascist, then a few mad people want to know how they can apply to Enema U, and most of the rest complain about the “too damn many stories about Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Please forgive me: I can understand why people might tire of French history—particularly if they have seen that recent horrible bio-pic about ‘the Little Corporal’.  I’ll try and tone it down for a while.

So, Napoleon III—a totally different guy—had successfully gotten himself elected President of the French Republic and, by skillful and underhanded use of his executive power, had managed to seize the country and (like his uncle, who shall remain nameless) make himself the emperor.  

Note.  I’m still thinking about that awful movie.  Of course, Josephine was worried about not bearing a certain Corsican an heir.  Despite the movie showing a middle-aged emperor with a young Josephine, it was actually the other way around with a post-menopausal Josephine terrified that she would be tossed out on her tired ass in favor of a fertile tart who could produce an heir.  So, Josephine came up with a plan to keep that ass on the throne by marrying off her daughter from an earlier marriage to the emperor’s favorite brother, Louis Bonaparte.  Josephine hoped that, if that union produced a baby boy, the emperor would be satisfied with a combination nephew and grandson for an heir.  The plan did produce a male child, but the emperor still divorced Josephine and remarried.  That male child eventually became Napoleon III, so while Josephine’s plan did not save her marriage, it did provide an heir.  Why didn’t that dreadful movie tell that story?

While Napoleon III initially came to power through a popular vote and was initially seen as a proponent of some liberal reforms, his rule gradually became more authoritarian.  As he consolidated power, curtailed freedoms, and limited political opposition, he faced criticism for suppressing democratic ideals.  An inept example of 19th century authoritarianism, the emperor might have been termed a fascist a century later.

Napoleon III's foreign policy involved military interventions, and he faced significant setbacks (“He chose…poorly.”).  One notable example was the French intervention in Mexico, which resulted in establishment of the short-lived, French-supported regime of Emperor Maximilian I.  The military venture faced resistance and it ultimately ended in failure for Napoleon III (It ended even worse for Maximilian, who was executed!).  The French Army, after losing in the Crimean War, suffered one setback after another, seriously eroding any sense of French national pride. 

Chief among Napoleon’s problems was the problem that plagues all bad leaders.  As James Carville once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  Economic issues, including financial crises and difficulties in managing the economy, contributed to public dissatisfaction.  The French economy experienced “challenges” and there were concerns about inflation and rising unemployment.

Napoleon III may have been a lousy emperor who ran France like a carnival on acid, but he wasn’t stupid and he knew that he was losing the support of the people, so he sided with a strange group in order to gain the support of the common people.  

In one of his more public roles, the Emperor supported the arts—he was a patron of the arts and supported various artists and cultural initiatives.  He sponsored the construction of grand public buildings and monuments, including the renovation of Paris under the direction of Georges-Eugène Haussmann.  The redesign of Paris included the creation of wide boulevards, public squares, and parks (in large part giving the city of Paris the look that we know today).  While the emperor supported the arts, this support was used to enhance the regime's legitimacy and present an image of prosperity and refinement.

During the mid-19th century in France, the annual official art exhibition, known as the Salon, was organized by the Académie des Beaux-Arts.  It was a prestigious event, mostly because of its exclusivity and was the venue where artists could showcase their works.  However, the selection process for inclusion in the Salon was highly competitive and many artists found their works rejected by the conservative jury of the Academy, a group that firmly believed that the pinnacle of artistic expression had already been reached and there was no need for either growth or change.

In 1863, a significant number of artists, including some who were trying to portray both light and color, had their works rejected from the official Salon.  The rejected artists, feeling that their innovative and non-traditional styles were not being given due recognition, loudly protested against the decisions of the staid Academy and appealed directly to their emperor.

Napoleon III, recognized the growing discontent among artists and saw an opportunity to align himself with public sentiment.  By authorizing a separate non-government exhibition, the Salon des Refusés, he could appeal to the public's appreciation for new and unconventional artistic expressions.  This move allowed Napoleon III to position himself as a supporter of artistic freedom and innovation a move far more calculated to curry public favor than an actual appreciation of a new art form.

The artists who participated in the Salon des Refusés included Édouard Manet, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Cézanne.  While the public was...intrigued…by the daring new art, the Academy and most art critics were appalled.  The new style was light, bright, and painted in a hurry, even appearing unfinished and scandalous.  The unconventional and daring nature of the artworks appealed to a segment of the public that was eager to see something new and different from the academic norms.

The art critic, Louis Leroy, reviewed a later exhibition in the satirical magazine "Le Charivari," and used the term "impressionists" to describe Claude Monet's work, Impression, Sunrise.  In his review, Leroy commented sarcastically that the painting looked more like an "impression" than a finished artwork. He used the term "impressionists" as a way of deriding the artists who painted in a style that he perceived as unfinished or sketch-like.  According to Leroy, it was not a real painting, only an impression of one.

Leroy's use of the term was not intended as a compliment, but the artists embraced it, and the term "Impressionism" became associated with a revolutionary and innovative approach to painting.  The Impressionist movement was a rebellion, a markedly radical change from the academic conventions of the time.  Impressionist painters sought to capture the effects of light, color, and atmosphere in their works, often employing loose brushstrokes and focusing on everyday scenes.

Over time, the term, "Impressionism", became widely accepted and is now used to describe one of the most influential art movements of the late 19th century.  The Impressionists played a crucial role in challenging traditional artistic norms and paved the way for new approaches to painting.

So, in an unintended consequence of his quest to curry public favor, it was Napoleon III who gave the world the art of the Impressionists.

Free Croissants for Everyone!

A couple of weeks ago at the bowling alley, my shirt did not cover the top of a long scar from my chest surgery.  “What’s that from?” someone from the other team asked.

“Autopsy scar,” I answered.

“Really?”

“Yes.  I’m the first living heart donor.”  I replied.

The strangest part of the story is that I think the guy believed me.  He's not alone, from the mail I get, more than a few of my readers fully believe that I’m heartless.  And after today, that number is likely to increase because I’m about to dump a lot of cold water on something we all wish was true.  Who doesn’t want to feed the hungry?

In 2016, France passed a law that made it illegal for any grocery store larger than 4000 square feet to throw away food that was reaching the end of its salable lifespan.  Instead of simply tossing this still useful and nutritious food, it would go to a charitable non-profit organization that would make sure that the food reached those in need.  Not only would this help reduce a ridiculous amount of food waste but would help clean up the environment since decomposing food releases carbon into the atmosphere.

Who could possibly be against that?  Well, me.  This seemingly kindhearted proposal costs more than it is worth.

Before going into why I think the program is misguided, I should point out that the program has two goals:  to feed the hungry and to eliminate food waste and its negative effects on the environment.  I don’t know anything about food waste, but since the French government says only 5% of the nation’s food waste comes from grocery stores, it doesn’t seem like this program will do much to solve the problem.  I will, however, comment about the program’s goal of feeding the hungry.

This is a misguided and economically unsound idea that, while it will feed some hungry people, will do so at an exaggerated price, creating relative shortages and higher prices for all consumers, which results in lower profits for both farmers and retail establishments while increasing the cost of government.  It would be far cheaper for the government simply to buy the food and give it away.  The program is inflationary, and it creates what economists call “dead weight loss”, meaning that resources could be more efficiently allocated.

That sounds unreasonably harsh, so let me explain.

First, this will lead to a higher cost for the grocery store.  No matter how simple the government program is made for the stores, it will be more expensive than simply throwing the food away.  Stores will not be able to sell remaindered produce to those who currently use the waste to feed farm animals or to make compost.  And while the people may be poor, they were buying food before the program was implemented and those sales, as small as they might have been, would have been sales that will be lost for the store.  

In addition, implementing the law requires supermarkets to establish mechanisms for the proper sorting, storage, and transport of unsold food.  While these measures contribute to the overall goal of reducing food waste, they also incur additional operational costs for businesses.

As profit from selling produce diminishes, stores will attempt to minimize their losses by buying less produce, which results in less unsold surplus.  Farmers faced with a decline in sales will produce less.  Since governments raise revenue through taxing sales, a decline in sales will reduce tax revenue even as the cost of enforcing the new program will increase government cost.  

It might be easier to visualize how this works if we consider the extra cost imposed upon the retail organizations as a sales tax.  Since the sales tax increases the cost of an item, it reduces the amount sought by consumers, moving the supply line left on the graph (right).  Since consumer demand (red line) stays constant, the intersection of the demand line with the new supply line shows that the price goes from P1 to P2 while the quantity sold drops from Q1 to Q2.  

There are two general rules about any government program:  1.  The program expands over time, and in only the seven years this program has been in place the punitive fines to stores in violation of the program have increased substantially.  2.  Anything you tax decreases while anything you subsidize increases.  Already in France, the number of people receiving the free food has increased.  Since more people are obviously in need of food assistance, there are calls to expand the program.

The bottom line for the program is simple.  The cost of “free” food has been shifted to food producers, retailers, and consumers.  The French government spends money regulating and enforcing the transfer of food, financed by taxpayers.  The availability of “free” food entices more people to use the program, and the increased number of people on the program serves to validate not only the initial need for the program but justifies the program’s expansion.

It would have been cheaper for the French people if the government had directly subsidized food programs for the poor.   This reminds me of the tariffs imposed a few years ago by the government to save jobs in manufacturing.  Ten years later, the Congressional Budget Office released data that showed that several thousand jobs that had an average payroll of $65,000 a year were saved at an overall cost of only $200,000 each.  It is a wonder the program wasn’t immediately expanded.

Now, seven years after the implementation of the French law, what has been the result?  If you search the web, all the charitable organizations love the new regulations—as do the climate activist groups.  If you do a Google search, the top dozen responding sites have names like FoodNOW.com and ZeroWasteEurope.eu and, predictably, these organizations think the new regulations are fantastic.  There are no organizations on the web representing the tired French economists who are weary of being called heartless for trying to explain macroeconomics. 

Currently, France is pressuring the European Union to adopt the law, and it is only a matter of time before California, Oregon, or one of the other liberal states that substitute ‘caring’ for ‘thinking’ adopts a similar law.

The Last Gasp of Bed, Bath, and Beyond

Two weeks ago I wrote about the causes of the corporate murder of Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  While the company is as dead as Julius Caesar and the remains have been thoroughly scavenged by jackals, there is still one last chapter about the demise of the company.  I need to tell you the other half of the story.

Wait!  Haven’t I seen numerous recent television commercials for BB&B offering me all sorts of remaindered junk for incredibly cheap prices?  Of course you have, but that company is actually Overstock.com who bought the name of the defunct company.  They own the name and they can call themselves Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but it is not the same company where you used to shop for towels.  When companies like Polaroid, Bell and Howell, or Sharper Image go bankrupt, marketing companies buy the name and use it for advertising purposes, hoping to milk any remaining goodwill and legitimacy the name still generates.   This is why no one tried to purchase the name “Enron”.

The defunct corporation, that we will now call Used-To-BB&B, is still going through the bankruptcy process and one of the last pieces of business is it’s $37.65 million lawsuit filed with the Federal Maritime Commission against Overseas Orient Container Line, the company that brings its merchandise from China to ports in California.

Think back just a few years to when we were all staying home for just a few days to “flatten the curve” of new Covid cases.  Those few days turned into quite a few months and all over the globe, factories shut down, dock workers neither loaded or unloaded ships, and with all the ships waiting their turn to be unloaded, the waters off the coast of California began to look like a seagoing used car lot.  

When a cargo container was unloaded, there were no trucks waiting to haul the container away, so those containers of merchandise took up most of the storage space in the dockyard.  Since there were no workers to load an empty container back on the ship, what little storage space left was overcrowded with empty containers.  Depending on your political party, this was either a mild kink in the supply line or a galloping clusterfuck.

Since freight companies don’t make any money while ships sit idling at anchor and both the banks holding the loans on the ships and the crews on the ships expect to be paid whether the ship moves or not….the shipping companies started to playing dirty.  They began charging extra for “expedited” shipping, which was basically nothing more than moving a ship up to the front of the line to be unloaded first, if and when both dock workers and trucks could be located.

Since the shipping companies were under contract to provide timely service at a set price, the extra fees do seem something that Used-To-BB&B might be able to sue about.  But the shipping companies added to the extra fees by charging both demurrage and detention fees.  Let me explain—no, that will take too long, let me sum up.

Demurrage refers to the extra charges incurred when the consignee (the party receiving the cargo) exceeds the allowed free time for the use of a shipping container at a port or container yard.  Since the filled containers couldn’t be removed from the shipping yard because of the congestion in the port and the shortage of trucks, this hardly seems fair.  Even if the congestion were magically removed, the ports were closed due to the need for social distancing.  Effectively, the shipping companies wouldn’t allow the containers to be picked up but were charging extra because they weren’t.

Detention charges, on the other hand, are incurred when the shipping container is retained by the consignee or shipper outside the port or container yard for longer than the allowed free time.  This charge by the shipping companies was really cute since the container couldn’t be returned because the ports were closed, and even if they were open, the containers could only be returned if you had an appointment and the shipping companies refused to give anyone an appointment.  And even if you had an appointment, and the port magically opened, there were no trucks to return the container.

So, Used-To-BB&B had merchandise sitting offshore that they had paid for but couldn’t get delivered unless they paid extra.  Then, they were charged extra because they couldn’t get a truck to pick up the freight because the trucks weren’t running and the port was closed.  When they finally did get the merchandise, they were charged extra because they couldn’t get an appointment to return the empty container with trucks that weren’t running to a port that was closed.

These extra fees and charges were not what bankrupted the company, though that is exactly what is being claimed by Used-To-BB&B in court.  In the long run, I’m not sure how interested the Federal Maritime Commission will be in finding for a company that no longer exists, and against the shipping companies that work daily with the commission.  Only time will tell, and even if Used-To-BB&B wins, the funds collected will not come close to paying off all of the outstanding debts.

I am sure about one thing, though.  The lawyers on both sides will make a fortune.

Another Napoleon Story

The movie Napoleon is out and The Doc and I went to see it.  Interesting.  Lavish sets, good music, and gory battles all combined to make a rather lackluster movie about one of the most exciting personalities in history.   I can’t really put my finger on what went wrong, but somehow the movie just missed the Mark.  (Pun intended.)

I wasn’t overly upset by the numerous historical mistakes.  He was too old, she was too young, he didn’t witness the execution of Marie Antoinette, and there was no need to invent a story about Napoleon’s army shooting a cannon ball into the side of a pyramid.  Nor was there any need to invent a totally bogus version of the Battle of Austerlitz, turning a minor incident that killed at most a few men into a catastrophe that wiped out the Allied army.  The technical advisor for the film was probably a sociologist.  

Of more interest than the actual movie was the fact that the theater had only four people for the noon matinee, perhaps because the tickets were twice the normal price.  Even worse for the theater was that the screening room next door was showing a Beyoncé movie to a completely empty theater.  I’m studying economics, not marketing, but wouldn’t it make more sense to fill the theater with people who had purchased discounted tickets?  After all, people who aren’t in the theater can’t buy the overpriced popcorn.  Shouldn’t the people who run movie theaters being doing something different before their whole industry collapses?  According to the news, 3000 theaters have closed nationwide since the start of Covid.

Instead of wasting your time watching a three-hour movie in an empty theater, there is a far more interesting story about Napoleon out there, and it involves a painting by one of the best Spanish artists, Diego Velazquez.  If you are unfamiliar with his work, you can read about his most famous painting that is one of my favorites, here.

What art historians call spoliations napoléoniennes (and what everyone else calls “Napoleon stealing European art from every country he marched an army through”), started in 1794 and lasted for almost two decades.  Exactly how much art was looted is impossible to determine but it numbers in the thousands of pieces.  Most of it was sent to the newly established Musée du Louvre in Paris, with significant numbers ending up in the hands of various military officers, both French and British.  After Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo, the coalition of victors—calling themselves the Congress of Vienna—declared that all of the art had to be repatriated.  Surprisingly, some was.  Not very surprisingly at all, lots of it still hasn’t been.

The Spanish Royalty had amassed a fabulous collection of art, and when Napoleon invaded Spain and put his brother Joseph on the throne as a puppet king, Napoleon ordered his brother to send the best works north to Paris.  The Emperor intended to build a new museum, the Musée Napoléon that would outshine the Louvre.  Joseph loved the idea of a new museum so much that he decided he needed his own museum, a Museo Josefino.  As he looted the various royal residences of Madrid, Joseph kept what he thought were the best paintings for himself and sent 50 of the rest—still fabulous works of art by famous painters—across the Pyrenees to Paris.  

Most of the paintings that Joseph kept for his museum were eventually seized the British Army when Joseph was forced to flee.  Over sixty of those paintings are on display at Apsley House, the home of the Duke of Wellington, with various other paintings scattered in museums across England.

One of the paintings sent north was a full-length portrait (right) of Queen Isabel de Borbón, the wife of Spain’s King Philip IV.  Velazquez had done the painting in 1620, but after the Flemish artist Peter Rubens suggested that Velasquez study the work of the Italian masters, Velazquez decided to make some changes to the painting in 1631.  If you look closely, even a poor dumb ‘ol country boy like me can see where changes were made in the outline of the skirt.

The painting hung in the Buen Retiro palace, a royal residence in Madrid, next to another Velazquez masterpiece, a painting of her husband King Philip IV, one of the last good Spanish monarchs before the royal family took up the hobby of inbreeding.  Joseph wasn’t a great judge of art, so Philip’s painting remained in Spain, where it now hangs at the Prado Museum in Madrid while that of his wife was sent to France.  Since Napoleon’s private museum was never built, it was displayed in the Louvre and since it was already part of that museum’s collection before Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, it was never returned to Spain (in defiance of the Congress of Vienna).  Another reason it remained in France is that as soon as the exiled King Ferdinand of Spain finally regained his throne, he was too busy attacking his enemies to worry about art.

France went through a few political upheavals, too, and as the Bourbon family regained the throne, a French official did a little looting of his own and moved the painting from the museum to his own home.  When the monarchy fell and Napoleon III came to power, the family in possession of the painting sold it to a British art dealer.  In the next century, the painting was sold twice more, both times to private collectors.

Today, the anonymous private owner has decided to sell the painting through the Sotheby’s auction house.  Since the majority of works by Diego Velazquez are in large museums, it has been a few decades since a painting of this quality from one of the Spanish masters has changed hands.  While the auction is not until February, it is expected that the painting will go for at least $35 million.  It is certain to set a new record high price for a Velasquez painting.

If Enema U would cancel football for the next five years, it could add this painting to the university art museum.  

If I had to bet, I would guess that the painting will disappear, probably in the hands of a private collector in Dubai.  What I’m hoping for—besides the obscure chance that sanity will hit Enema U—is that the Spanish government will buy the painting and reunite Queen Isabel with King Philip.

The Untimely Death of Bed, Bath, and Beyond

To start with, I should probably admit that I never really liked this store.   With the partial exception of the kitchenware, the rest of the inventory might as well have been invisible.  If the assorted bedding, towels, and whatever else was in there had been free for the taking, I doubt that I would have left with anything.

Since I enjoy cooking, and live in a New Mexican desert where there is a shortage of stores that sell kitchenware, I would occasionally pick up a small item or two there.  And I might window shop there to compare items before I bought them more cheaply online.  Overall, this was just another store, like Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, and Best Buy, that holds absolutely no interest for me.  After all, it’s not like they sell books.

Still, B3 was a Fortune 500 company whose 1530 stores had an annual revenue of over $12 billion and its demise needs to be examined.  Unfortunately—particularly for its employees—an economic postmortem shows that B3 committed suicide.

The company started 52 years ago when two managers, Leonard Feinstein and Warren Eisenberg, lost their jobs when a New York regional department store folded.  Correctly predicting that the day of the department store was over, the two men opened a specialty store that sold only bedding and linen.  

Originally called Bed ‘n Bath, this was one of the first of the specialty stores that eventually came to be known as “Meme Stores” or “Category Killers” that rapidly spread across the country.  Chains like Best Buy, Ikea, OfficeMax, and Barnes and Noble built large superstores overstuffed with narrow lines of inventory that overwhelmed the competition since a department store that could only hold a narrow inventory in each category.  Shoppers that needed a widget naturally went to Widget World where they could select between numerous models of both left and right-handed widgets.

Bed ‘n Bath faced competition from similar stores, so Feinstein and Eisenberg came up with a marketing plan that made their fledgling company a success.  Changing the name to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, they added kitchenware and standardized an appealing store design.  The stores were very large, roughly 20,000 square feet, with high ceilings and inventory stocked so high that customers could easily discern the different departments.  Instead of the usual advertising, B3 mailed out discount coupons.  Hundreds of millions of coupons each year, with at least half of those damn little blue and white discount coupons being mailed to my house.  

Part of the marketing plan was pure genius.  Individual store managers were given the authority to vary the inventory in their stores to fit the needs of the customers who shopped there.  If the corporate chain running the local grocery store was smart enough to do that, then the shoppers wouldn’t be forced to choose among items that some idiot in Chicago erroneously believes are the ingredients for Mexican food.  

The marketing strategy worked for a long time.  The company expanded, opening new stores across the country, and the stock price grew dramatically.  But, just as the department stores declined over time due to new innovations, so too did the new specialty stores.  Slowly over time, e-commerce began to steal sales from traditional large box stores.

Most of the surviving box stores countered this with an online operation of their own.  A few companies, like Sears, B3, Circuit City, and Federated failed to do this properly and none of them are still in operation.  Sears in particular failed at this, though they had an online operation, it was impossible to use.  I tried to buy a Craftsman weed eater from them once and found it listed on their website multiple times with five different prices, all of which were higher than the same product on Amazon.  If you can buy a Sears product from Amazon cheaper than you can buy it from Sears…. Well, it doesn’t take a fortune teller to predict the chain’s demise.

Facing declining sales, the Board of Directors for Bedbugs, Battleaxes, and Boredom held a small revolution, the founding partners resigned, and a new Chief Financial Officer was hired.  Gustavo Arnal was brought in to save the company with a new marketing plan.  At the same time, Ryan Cohen was elected to the Board after buying ten percent of the outstanding stock.  Each of these men had an independent plan for the company.

Arnal wanted to introduce store brands to the outlets.  A B3 labeled product would assure the customer of quality while simultaneously making the company more profits.  All the surviving big box chains do this, and it is usually a successful strategy.  In the case of B3, the new products were introduced too rapidly, and sales of the new line were sluggish—and when Covid hit they all but stopped.  To counter this, the company resorted to issuing even more little blue discount coupons.  While the strategy did continue to bring in shoppers, the discounted sales were not profitable.  For the last five years the chain was in operation, sales climbed each year even as profits steadily declined.

Still, the company would have survived if not for the actions of Ryan Cohen and the rest of the board of directors.  The Board began an aggressive campaign of buying back the company common stock.  As each share of stock is purchased, the value of the stock still issued rises on the market as the total value of the company is divided among a smaller number of stockholders.

Contrary to what numerous politicians scream about, there is nothing inherently wrong about a company repurchasing its own stock, just as there is nothing wrong when the company sells its stock.  As Warren Buffet once said, critics of stock buybacks are “either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue” or both, and all investors benefit from them as long as they are made at the right prices.

In the case of B3, the price was horribly wrong as the company paid an average of $44 a share for a stock that should have been valued in the single digits.  Worse, the company was selling bonds to raise the cash to buy the stock, incurring an ever larger debt.  Altogether, the Board of Directors paid over $12 billion to purchase some of the stock of a company that was worth, in total, an estimated $500 million.

Now there is a tactic for selling stock that is called “pump and dump” where you artificially raise the price of a stock you own so you can sell at an inflated price.  This “pump and dump” tactic is illegal.  Far be it for me to insinuate that someone in the company was guilty of this—at least in print—but some people made a lot of profit by selling their B3 stock off for a lot more than they had paid for it.  For instance, Ryan Cohen made a profit of $68 million by selling his stock in the summer of 2022.

If the company hadn’t borrowed so much money by selling those bonds, there would have been no problem.  Even with the bonds, it was possible for the company to survive, perhaps by selling more stock or selling off all or part of the company to raise funds.  Instead, Gustavo Arnal jumped out a window and committed suicide.  The fact that Arnal committed suicide just days after a $1.2 billion lawsuit was filed against both Arnal and Cohen is probably an accident.

You can imagine what that did to the price of that stock.  It dropped like….well, a CFO falling from the 18th floor of his apartment building.

The company folded and all assets were sold.  One of those assets was the company name, which sold to Overstock.com for $21.5 million.  Overstock, now rebranded as Bed, Bath, and Beyond, is now selling goods exclusively online.

So, did Cohen deliberately kill B3 to make a profit off of the carcass?  It's a little confusing and the Feds are still investigating.  But remember that weird stock trading scandal a couple of years back involving Gamestop?  The one where the stock shot up 1500% and the company officers dumped their stock just before the price crashed?  Cohen was on the Board of Directors of that company, too.