Losing Money

The big buzz in Baltimore's financial district yesterday, as expected, was of money. Losing it, mainly, on the stock market, and possibly a little on the slugfest between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.As both men try to trump Roger Maris in baseball's hallowed record book, James Loftus reported "friendly bets" being made among the 80 to 90 people who work at his law firm, Friedman and MacFadyen. He made one himself. Not a "real" money bet, you understand.If McGwire racks up more homers than Sosa by season's end, his friend has agreed to pay his way to the Orioles game in Boston on Sept.

The Heart Center of Towson, a catheterization lab, has closed, Raytel Medical Corp., its owner, announced yesterday.The lab had four employees.Raytel, based in San Mateo, Calif., acquired the Towson facility in September as part of its purchase of Cardiovascular Ventures Inc. of New Orleans for $21.6 million. CVI owned eight centers in four states and an 18-physician practice in Florida."At the time of the CVI acquisition, we identified the Towson facility and one other as candidates for either closing or restructuring," said Richard F. Bader, chairman and chief executive officer of Raytel.

It would not be a stretch to suggest that Beavis and Butt-head would be better candidates than Bud Selig for the position of permanent baseball commissioner.They're currently popular, something Selig cannot say. They've demonstrated an ability to generate tens of millions of dollars (their movie made more money in its first weekend than the Milwaukee Brewers' payroll for the 1997 season). And ol' Beavis and Butt-head are big with the coveted under-25 set.But there's bound to be a Beavis and Butt-head sequel, making them unavailable, and unless the powers of the commissioner are altered, it won't really matter if Selig or Jerry Reinsdorf or Donald Fehr holds the job.About the only real power the commissioner is afforded now is ceremonial.

A few dust-covered rolls of toilet paper sit in the storefront window of Fuller's Package Store. It's not much of a display, but chances are the cars zooming by on Bestgate Road are going too fast to notice."

The NHL's lockout of its players continues into its third day today, with the league and the NHL Players Association planning to resume talks tomorrow, but with few players apparently believing any good news will emerge soon.After a 90-minute meeting among Washington Capitals players yesterday that included a discussion of the issues, the union's position and a letter sent by commissioner Gary Bettman to all players detailing the standoff, several Capitals left for distant homes while others made plans for recreational and family activities.

While the idea of a strike rubs many baseball players the wrong way, no one is more upset than the fans who watch the players and the employees who work at ballparks."

NEW YORK -- It's not the players' fault.Not the strike, which starts tomorrow and amounts to baseball's version of the War of the Worlds.And not the game's economic structure, which is the result of collective bargaining, not grand larceny.The owners started this.Fans blame the players, because everyone knows who they are, and everyone knows their average salary is $1.2 million.No one knows what the owners make -- check that, lose. One day 19 teams are losing money, the next day it's 12-14.

The waiters all wear leisure suits at this restaurant in the middle of nowhere, this restaurant that serves soybean burgers and little else.The eating establishment, call it Pit's Burgers, is losing money. But the owner of Pit's Burgers doesn't want to move his restaurant from the run-down, bowl-shaped building in the middle of nowhere, to a more uplifting environment in a more populated area.He wants to stay where he is, even if it means losing money, and he wants to stay in business, even if no one in the area cares much for soy burgers.

It's official! The sports world has gone totally bonkers! (Love those exclamation points!)The players, owners, fans and the media, we've all gone crazy, slipping into a state of abject confusion with no leader in sight to lead us out of bewilderment.Just a few days without baseball and men who have been involved with the game for years are asking if the strike will extend through the 1995 season. And, if so, is this the end of the Grand Old Game (Little League, high school, college, amateur ball included)

NEW YORK -- The countdown continues. The Great Baseball Strike of 1994 is scheduled to begin in four days, and there is no sign of any thaw in the frozen collective bargaining negotiations between the players and owners.For this stare-down to end without baseball's eighth work stoppage in the past 22 years, somebody will have to blink in a hurry, but the nature of the issues -- and the ideological barriers to a settlement -- makes a compromise seem unlikely and a lengthy strike appear almost inevitable.

One benefit of living in a rich country is that we can pay psychologists and professors to explain why wealth doesn't make us very happy. It's true. Researchers have found that, once people can meet basic needs, psychological dividends from additional money steadily decrease. Making $100,000 does not make you twice as happy as $50,000. So why does losing money, and the prospect of losing money, make us so miserable? The short answer is that it doesn't have to. If you think about money in the context of what economics says about true fulfillment, having less of it shouldn't be quite so painful.

Among the many rationales used to defend the welfare state, the most powerful is that it is necessary in order to take care of the poor and the downtrodden. But the amount of money required to bring every poor person in the country above the official poverty line is a fraction of what is spent by government on the welfare state. Put bluntly, the poor are in effect being used as human shields in the political wars over government spending, which extends far beyond anyone who could plausibly be called poor.

SAN FRANCISCO - In a concrete tower on San Francisco's Market Street, where employees of such Internet companies as IXL Enterprises Inc. once toiled, developers are building the city's latest hot product: apartments. Tishman Speyer Properties LP is converting the top half of the 40-story building at 575 Market to housing from offices left vacant in the dot-com bust. "Housing in San Francisco so far has been a very, very strong performer," said Ezra Mersey, Tishman's managing director. "We're confident it makes sense."

John M. Rusnak, the Allfirst Financial Inc. currency trader who lost $691.2 million in one of the biggest banking scandals in history, pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of bank fraud, part of a deal with prosecutors that calls for him to serve 7 1/2 years in prison. Rusnak, 37, won't be formally sentenced until Jan. 17, but his plea agreement calls for a 90- month prison term followed by five years of supervised release. He also will be barred from working at a bank or other federally insured financial institutions, and he might have to make restitution, though that would be based partly on his ability to pay. Rusnak, who appeared in U.S. District Court in Baltimore before Judge William M. Nickerson, did not speak with reporters on the advice of his attorney.

"You seem much better this week." "Better, doctor, yes ..." "Can you talk about why?" "In a word, in one wonderful word, doctor: Schadenfreude." "A good word -""- excellent word, only the Germans - ah, but that's always so hard to say, isn't it? I mean, who else would think to couple Schaden, "to harm," with freude, "joy," and come up with exactly why it is that the more the NASDAQ falls the better I feel. Schadenfreude: glee at another's misfortune." "The dot-coms' demise, you mean ... " "Yes, yes, yes. I can breathe again.

In another move to clean up its balance sheet, Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. said yesterday that it will sell its money-losing Aspect English-instruction subsidiary for $22 million - one-third of what it paid for it in 1998 - to an unnamed group backed by investment firm Warburg Pincus. Aspect, which Sylvan bought for $65 million from its San Francisco founders in 1998, has been a drag on Sylvan's earnings for the past two quarters. Its revenue for the first half of 2000 was $20 million, a $5.2 million drop from the first half of 1999.

The Columbia Council tentatively decided last night to freeze $132,000 in capital funds for the city's horse center -- rather than close it or lease it -- pending a comprehensive, outside review of the facility. The study, which could cost $25,000, would include a determination of the facility's selling price and the feasibility of selling it -- possibly to the county -- as well as an evaluation of how the center might operate more efficiently. The center, an 88-acre site off Gorman Road, has come under the 10-member council's scrutiny in the past year because of financial losses and sparse residential usage.

U.S. Foodservice, the Columbia-based food distributor whose stock price has fallen on concerns about growth, plans to close its San Francisco distribution operation and cut jobs elsewhere as it tries to reinvigorate the price of its shares. The decisions to close the distribution center and cut jobs were both listed in a Feb. 10 filing made with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington and come less than a month after the company's second-quarter earnings disappointed analysts.

The big buzz in Baltimore's financial district yesterday, as expected, was of money. Losing it, mainly, on the stock market, and possibly a little on the slugfest between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.As both men try to trump Roger Maris in baseball's hallowed record book, James Loftus reported "friendly bets" being made among the 80 to 90 people who work at his law firm, Friedman and MacFadyen. He made one himself. Not a "real" money bet, you understand.If McGwire racks up more homers than Sosa by season's end, his friend has agreed to pay his way to the Orioles game in Boston on Sept.

The Heart Center of Towson, a catheterization lab, has closed, Raytel Medical Corp., its owner, announced yesterday.The lab had four employees.Raytel, based in San Mateo, Calif., acquired the Towson facility in September as part of its purchase of Cardiovascular Ventures Inc. of New Orleans for $21.6 million. CVI owned eight centers in four states and an 18-physician practice in Florida."At the time of the CVI acquisition, we identified the Towson facility and one other as candidates for either closing or restructuring," said Richard F. Bader, chairman and chief executive officer of Raytel.