American Apparel to Go Bankrupt?

American Apparel, to put it nicely, is screwed. The company has seen falling sales since February 2009, when records were first made available. Even its 2010 first quarter report looked bleak: There was a 10-percent decline in same-store sales and an operations loss of $17.6 million. The company is struggling to manage the pile of debt it took on during its greatest years of expansion, too. And—to top it all off—American Apparel’s auditing firm, Deloitte & Touche, quit on Thursday after it “identified material weaknesses in [American Apparel’s] internal control over financial reporting ... and advised that the Company has not maintained effective internal control over financial reporting.” The reason for all this is, as Jezebel writer Jenna Sauers puts it, is because American Apparel “expanded beyond the point of rationality or even sanity.” To the formerly booming and trendy T-shirt maker, we say good luck.