Take a look at how a Private Equity Firm dismantles stores, and then think of Sear's unfolding saga.

[JHB]

5. Worse, it's been going on for a long, long time

These practices date back to the 70s. They picked up steam during Reagan's deregulation, and has kept going on, as the OP makes plain.

Trade deals get the lion's share of attention, but IMO this is the big unsung driver of wage stagnation and rising inequality.

The following story ran Oct. 26, 1991, on Day Seven of the nine-day "America: What went wrong?" series published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/From_the_archive_Raiders_work_their_wizardry_on_an_All-American_company.html

Raiders work their wizardry on an all-American company
When takeover artists targeted Simplicity Pattern Co., it had $100 million in reserves. Today, it is $100 million in debt.
by By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

It was the fall of 1979 when the first of the moneymen descended on Simplicity Pattern Co. By the time they were finished a decade later, a company that once had $100 million in the bank was more than $100 million in the hole.

***

But, as with many mature companies, the earnings from Simplicity's major business - the sale of [fabric] patterns - had begun to trail off in the late 1970s, a problem the company's management had yet to deal with. Then came the moneymen.

***


They had, in fact, driven Simplicity to the edge of bankruptcy. In that decade, the moneymen:

Bought and sold the company four times and made tens of millions of dollars running up the price of Simplicity stock in threatened and actual takeovers.
Drained $100 million that Simplicity had in its bank account and investment portfolio.
Raided the company's pension funds on two occasions, taking out $10.7 million.
Issued bonds and borrowed from banks, sending the company's debt soaring from near-nothing to $100 million.
Sold off properties to raise badly needed cash after they had depleted the company's $100 million cushion.
Created so much debt that Simplicity could no longer generate enough cash to make the interest payments.
Defaulted on the interest payments on bonds and bank loans.

It was just one more American business success story - if you measure success by how much money assorted investors made buying and selling Simplicity stock, buying and selling the company itself.