Sam Zell--Poster Boy for Everything That's Wrong with Business Today

Why We May Help Pay for Tribune to Unload the Cubs By Deals Allan Sloan Tuesday, September 22, 2009 The Chicago Cubs aren't going to win anything this year despite having one of baseball's largest payrolls. But their bankrupt owner, Sam Zell's Tribune Co., may be about to hit a home run -- at your expense. Zell, whose tax dodging is a frequent topic of mine, is trying to unload the team in a deal that would divert almost $300 million from taxpayers to the creditors of Tribune, the nation's second-biggest newspaper company. . . . Zell, who took over Tribune in late 2007 and put it into bankruptcy protection a year later, turned out to be too clever for his own good -- or his creditors' good. He obsessed over sheltering Tribune's post-buyout profits but buried the company in so much debt -- $13 billion, just as the newspaper business fell off a cliff -- that there were no profits to shelter. . . . Zell's nonsale sale of the Cubs, which would work like this.

The Ricketts family, founders …