Death of an American Icon

As you know, the Lou was in the national news yesterday because of the sell-out of Anheuser Busch to InBev.

The InBev leader appears to be the only one happy about this. No one in the Lou is. To no one's surprise, the first change made will be to cut costs. That means labor, benefits, and probably charitable contributions. InBev in Belgium has no charity program, so it is unlikely that the $13 million/year that AB gives to local charities will not be affected.

There was a movement on to stop the takeover and my cousin, Dan, was on the front lines. It was a wasted effort, though, because the takeover was inevitable. In the end, InBev sweetened the deal considerably, and that caused the change to become a "merger" rather than a "hostile takeover." But I don't personally see the diff.

Things that make sense always take a back seat to things that make money. And if AB had been able to fight off this merger, it would have had to raise capital anyway by making the same cuts in salaries and bennies, etc. that InBev is making, so the end result would be the same.

The only thing that opponents could have achieved is keeping a foreign national from assuming ownership of an American icon. I think we should get used to this kind of thing, though. It certainly appears that America's tenure as a world power is drawing to a close. Our dollar is weak, our economy is shot, our leaders are stupid and our values are skewed. We place way too much importance on irrelevancies, and not enough on important matters.