Days after its feel-good announcement that it had secured the necessary financing from GE Capital to avoid insolvency (except, as MobyLIves reported, it actually hadn’t), the Borders Group announced last night that it will nonetheless be “delaying” January payments to “vendors, landlords and others.”

One of the first reports, from Jason Boog at Galley Cat, quotes at length from the company’s statement, in which it apparently speaks abut itself in the third person:

The delay is intended to help the company maintain liquidity while it seeks to complete a refinancing or restructuring of its existing credit facilities and other obligations … Borders emphasized that it understands the impact of its decision on the affected parties, but that the company is committed to working with its vendors and other business partners to achieve an outcome that is in the best interest of Borders and these parties for the long-term.

An analysis by Maxwell Murphy in the Wall Street Journal observes that this “marked the first time Borders said landlords and ‘others’ would also share in its woes. This news … shouldn’t shock; one of the conditions of the GE Capital financing is that Borders finalize a store closure program that sees it identify and close underperforming stores ‘as soon as practicable.'”

All of which prompted Mike Spector and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg to observe in another WSJ report that “indications grow that the bookseller could be headed for bankruptcy court.”

Spector and Trachtenberg’s report continues,

“It seems very likely, if not inevitable, that Borders will have to file bankruptcy,” said Donald Workman, who heads the bankruptcy practice at law firm Baker & Hostetler, and isn’t involved with the negotiations.

… ”It will ultimately be a liquidation,” said Mr. Workman, referring to Borders. “The market can’t support two huge chains of bookstores, just as the market could not support Best Buy and Circuit City,” he said. Right now, he added, “you have a game of chicken between the publishers and GE. We’ll see who blinks.”

But it’s much less of a showdown than that. Publishers have made clear to Borders that they are unwilling to provide it with the kind of “financing” the company needs to meet the terms of GE Capital’s offer — that is, they’re unwilling to turn all the money Borders owes them into loans, especially given the general perception that Borders hasn’t come up with a viable plan to pay them back, let alone move into the digital future. Most publishers are also hesitant to commit to the management team that got Borders where it is in the first place — having the courts take charge seems like better management to them. Now, Borders needs to add negotiating with landlords to its woes.

So, while the newspapers seem to be waiting for someone to “blink,” the industry itself seems to simply be waiting for Borders to say, “Uncle.”