Magna Going Down?

My friend Steve has been on the Magna Death Watch as long as Frank Stronach, of Magna Entertainment Corporation (MEC), has been in the horseracing game. Steve was my Federal Tax professor in Law School. He introduced me to handicapping and horseracing in 1993 when he was on Federal jury duty (he was serving at my courthouse at 40 Foley Square.) I came up with Sea Hero (son of Polish Navy) for the winner of the Kentucky Derby and I was right. I must admit I was enamored with the name which is sometime a winning strategy for beginners. Lucky, you bet!

That said, after the Belmont Stakes last year he started his own blog. He had gotten some really good feedback from his posts in the NYT’s Triple Crown blog the Rail so he broke out and what a good thing it was.

So, after reading Andy Beyer’s article in the WAPO yesterday and being a little behind the curve, I immediately went to Steve’s blog. Needless to say he didn’t disappoint. The whole structure of the Bankruptcy, as Beyer explained it, was fishy to me and, as reality would have it, it was rotting from the head. Hopefully Steve is right and all those corporate bankruptcy specialists on the court get the picture and what is so wrong with it. Also, as you may not know many Federal Judges are also horseracing aficionados so hopefully there is some insight on the court about the game as well.

I know that when I worked in the Federal Courts and the endless “Devil His Due” litigation and then the “Milkshake” controversy was in our court one of our counselors would interrogate me all the time on various aspects of the litigation she was mediating. I found this very funny as I am not an expert in anyway. But I guess she felt she had to go with what she had.

So, as Andy explains “greed,” per se, didn’t have anything to do with this particular corporate meltdown but there certainly was a huge amount of hubris. This hubris and mismanagement has already had a huge effect on Maryland racing according to Beyer. And as this Bankruptcy filing suggests, and as Steve points out, it is continuing. Doesn’t this sound familiar!

My question is: will there be a Triple Crown with the Preakness next year?