The Demise of Busch

Lady Drake:

Hi Orion Blaster!

Who were the idiots on the A-B Board of Directors who sold Busch for a paltry $52 billion? It's worth way more especially to us native citizens of St. Louis. They are REALLY getting rid of Busch Gardens & selling their interest in Busch Stadium? It's named for them!! I CAN'T believe it!! The old boys are probably rolling in their graves by now! What are they going to do with Grant's Farm & the Clydesdale's? How many people are going to lose their jobs? Is it really a done deal or do they have to get permission from the government for the sale to go through? If this is ALL true we need to hang some Busch Directors from the yardarms & then make them walk the plank out to some chum!!! I call for our flags to fly at half mast in honor of the death of a FINE institution such as A-B & their beers Busch & Bud!!!!!!!!!!!! Bring out the kegs as well! I raise my cup...A-B has been in St. Louis for way over a 100 years; even before the Civil War. All I heard was the Belgians were going to make St. Louis their North American Headquarters. What a rip off!!!!!! It's a SAD state of affairs for this to happen to our American beer & all it represents!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In mourning,

Lady Drake


Tampico:

The merger makes no sense. A merger makes sense when there is overlap. There is practically no overlap in products, departments or advertising by InBev and AB. So why would InBev do it?BUD (the ticker for A-B) spends a ton of money on things that do not bring an immediate return. BUD sponsors countless softball leagues. BUD spends billions on traditional advertising. Busch also has the gardens, Clydesdales, stadium, Grant's Farm and association with every major charity in St. Louis, East St. Louis, Edwardsville and even on down to Carbondale. It is clear that InBev could not justify the merger with "overlap" since there is no domestic overlap. What InBev will do is make up for the savings that they will not get on reducing overlap is they will eliminate all the money that Busch spends on being a good citizen and good neighbor.

I have a personal reason for being loyal to Busch. In the late 1950s my father was a struggling tile layer in St. Louis. I was a toddler and my brother Tim was a baby. We lived in a working class neighborhood in a small apartment in north St. Louis until my dad got the contract to lay tile in the bathrooms and kitchens of an opulent Busch mansion. I believe it was Auggie Busch's mansion. The Busch contract enabled my father to save a down payment for a home and eighty acres in southern Illinois near the small town of Vienna. This is where I grew up until we moved up by Chicago when my dad changed jobs and went to work for the Illinois Farm Bureau. I was a Busch beer drinker until they decided to reduce Busch to a non-premium beer and place their emphasis on Budweiser. Even then I would drink Busch products anytime I listened to a Cardinals game (which was most summer days until we moved out of KMOX range toTexas). International corporations don't care about being good citizens anymore than the US government cares about what the American people want. We are just peasants. The elites view us as idiots and will do anything they want to us unless we stringently object and then they will have the courts make the unpopular decisions against the will of the people. The game is rigged and we are the losers.

Adios Busch. This is why I like corporations better than the government. When I get stiffed by a corporation I can choose not to give them any more loyalty or money. When I get stiffed by the government I still have to support the government with tax dollars. Look for more foreign takeovers because of the declining dollar. Look for the dollar to decline further because the government is about ready to start printing more free money to get the slacker vote and get the financial support for their campaigns by corporations that receive corporate welfare. Slackers and corporations own Congress now.

We need to hope for a Collapse because it will save us the trouble of a violent revolution.