You've taken every angle into consideration and manage to not be an a) apologist; 2) a Henny Penny OMGtheskyisfalling type and D) not a Randy Quaid from MLII. Congratulations! This is the big picture from which we can all glean -- Sterling in a way is like the economy: investing too much with debt and thinking their investments are only going to get higher. Unfortunately, like the real estate market (yet ANOTHER angle in this whole debacle since their other interests have almost certainly taken a hit), the Fred, Jeff and Saul are seeing that their assets are depreciating. Sell, Mortimer, Sell!