In our current series on rebates and "creative financing," vendors, printers and dealers all have pointed to overcapacity of production as the ultimate source of the phenomenon. Extraordinary "deals" are being concocted to move pre-press equipment, large presses and consumables into a market that already has too much of everything.

These deals may appear at first to be a buyer's bonanza but our study leads toward the opposite conclusion of the harm these schemes inflict upon the printing trade. Unsustainable printing firms are being subsidized against the healthier ones. Vendors are selling themselves into a place of no recovery. Dealers are being cut out of the supply chain, eliminating their margins but also their services to the trade. Our inquiry painfully reminds us of the days of reckoning that are approaching.

We were therefore quite surprised to read Dr. Joe Webb's assessment that overcapacity may be a chimera, or even an industry myth and his implied recommendation that printers should take advantage of predatory pricing opportunities.