Posted
Aug 17 2009, 12:15 PM
by
Minyanville
This article was written by Minyanville's Josh Lipton
This morning, longtime market pro Dennis Gartman weighed in with his views on the current Whole Foods boycott and controversy: “People who will go to a store wearing Birkenstocks and socks will take almost any outlandish position, and they’ve taken a position opposed to [CEO John Mackey’s] editorial in The Wall Street Journal last week that took Obamacare to task,” Gartman wrote. “When your own supporters are willing to abandon you, who will support you? It seems like a good question.”
In his outrage-provoking WSJ piece, Mackey called for a move toward “less government control and more individual empowerment” rather than “a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system.”
Bing: Whole Foods
Unsurprisingly, not all of Mackey’s Prius (TM)-driving customers agree with his views -- and some of those once-loyal, left-leaning patrons are now reportedly calling for a Whole Foods boycott on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Of course, Mackey's certainly managed to alienate them before: see CEOs Gone Wild: John Mackey for more. Investors should boycott Whole Foods shares, but not because of its stance on health care reform.
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