Friday, October 17, 2008

NOW SOMEBODY ELSE KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT HOW IT FEELS TO LOSE SOMETHING ABOUT WHICH ONE CARES DEEPLY: I've had my disagreements in this space with the good people of Oklahoma, most of whom are not directly at fault for the fact that they've ended up with the NBA team that was stolen from Seattle. But one thing on which even the Oklahomans seemed to agree is that Aubrey McClendon, the vice-douchebag to Clay Bennett's douchebag-in-chief, is an impressive douchebag.

McClendon is in the news again this week. He leveraged himself heavily to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of shares in his own company, Chesapeake Energy, as it rode energy prices to a high of $74 a share in July. Then something something economy (sorry for the technical jargon there), and the next thing McClendon knows, Chesapeake is trading at $12 and his lenders make a margin call, forcing him to sell 95% of his holdings, awesomely right before a 31% bounce.

Now, the guy still has a $42 million stake in Chesapeake (and presumably has other holdings as well), so even apart from his douchebaggery you probably wouldn't feel sorry for him. But he does seem to have downgraded to "fabulously wealthy" from "NBA-owner wealthy" in a few short months, and that's something, right? So here's hoping McClendon is going to have to sell his share of the Team That Is Dead To Me so that he can keep paying his landscaper and manicurist and anti-gay rights interest groups, preferably to some out-of-town millionaire looking to pave the highway to a different NBA-less city.

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