Two brazen Boston bidders have actually put in bids for the teetering Boston Globe! If our quick math is right, the bids should be in the area of... negative $96 million.

Here's how the Globe describes its own balance sheet, roughly:

Real estate value: $48 million
Projected losses this year: $85 million
Total pension liabilities: $59 million

Mix those together mathematically and you'll see that a new owner could just eke out a profit if they were paid $100 million to take the Globe off the NYT Co's hands! Not that we are actually mathematicians. But perhaps these people are:

One group is led by Boston Celtics co-owner and Bain Capital executive Stephen G. Pagliuca and Jack Connors, the chairman of Partners HealthCare and a former advertising mogul. The other is led by Stephen E. Taylor, a former Globe executive and member of the family that sold the Globe to the Times Co. in 1993 for $1.1 billion.

If the original owners get it back, it would really help highlight just how completely the Sulzbergers got taken in this deal. And imagine, just a week ago the company was refusing to comment on "whether" they were planning on selling this paper. Jokers!
[Boston Globe. Pic: AP. Do not mistake our estimates for something "plausible!"]