I thought about that recently — how many places you know can’t possibly make it and yet they still exist.

Only three possibilites: (1) They’re somehow getting way more customers in a way that’s invisible to an observer (unlikely); (2) they don’t mind flushng capital down the toilet year after year (also unlikely); or (3) it’s money laundering.

I used to think (3) was the most unlikely, but after the amount of wide-scale fraud that’s been exposed the last few years in virtually every aspect of society, it’s looking like the best explanation — at least in a lot of cases.