What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[RobDownSouth]

Anybody notice American Airlines just filed for bankruptcy?

Yup. That leaves Southwest as the only major carrier who has never filed bankruptcy.

They said their comparative labor costs are $600 million per year higher than Delta and United, but they also said as recently as last month that they were not going to go bankrupt, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[richard_daily]

Anybody notice American Airlines just filed for bankruptcy?

No, nobody noticed...

 

[richard_daily]

Yup. That leaves Southwest as the only major carrier who has never filed bankruptcy.

They said their comparative labor costs are $600 million per year higher than Delta and United, but they also said as recently as last month that they were not going to go bankrupt, so take it with a grain of salt.

It find it curious that it's so easy for a giant corporation to file bankruptcy, yet keep getting loans and operating without penalty.

I wonder why they didn't close the bankruptcy loopholes for companies when they did for individuals?

 

[unregistered]

 

[JohnnySavage]

Right after 9/11 I loaded up on airline stocks, thinking the government would never let them fail. It did. I was just 9 years ahead of my time. To this day I refuse to fly US Air.

As an amusing anecdote; I made up for my too big to fail blunder in 2001 by hitting a home run in AIG's too big to fail in 2009.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It find it curious that it's so easy for a giant corporation to file bankruptcy, yet keep getting loans and operating without penalty.

I wonder why they didn't close the bankruptcy loopholes for companies when they did for individuals?

Millions upon millions of dollars in tangible and liquid assets like planes and routes.

When the big go down in a free market, those below them win.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Right after 9/11 I loaded up on airline stocks, thinking the government would never let them fail. It did. I was just 9 years ahead of my time. To this day I refuse to fly US Air.

As an amusing anecdote; I made up for my too big to fail blunder in 2001 by hitting a home run in AIG's too big to fail in 2009.

*chuckle*

 

[richard_daily]

Millions upon millions of dollars in tangible and liquid assets like planes and routes.

When the big go down in a free market, those below them win.

The big don't go down, they just get hired to be the CEO of another company, and run that one into the ground...

That's how the "free market" works.

So much for "meritocracy".

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

It find it curious that it's so easy for a giant corporation to file bankruptcy, yet keep getting loans and operating without penalty.

I wonder why they didn't close the bankruptcy loopholes for companies when they did for individuals?

Because those bankruptcy loopholes were bought and paid for by corporations who are buying legislation through lobbyists and their newfound unlimited backing of politicians who will safeguard their fortunes at the expense of "We The People".

 

[RobDownSouth]

They are in the middle of labor negotiations with pilots.

Was just reading that. Looks like the pilots were playing hardball, and refused to allow their membership to even vote on American's proposal. They played "chicken" and lost.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Because those bankruptcy loopholes were bought and paid for by corporations who are buying legislation through lobbyists and their newfound unlimited backing of politicians who will safeguard their fortunes at the expense of "We The People".

No doubt...

Those people in Washington need money to get reelected. BP paid Obama huge...

They are not about to target big business; it votes in dollars.

When Government gets so powerful that its purchase price is cost effective, even imperative, to business, then business will purchase government indulgences.
A_J, the Stupid

This is why our Founding Fathers and we Libertarians argue for a limited government in the face of those arguing for a social safety net government...

 

[patrick1]

No doubt...

Those people in Washington need money to get reelected. BP paid Obama huge...

They are not about to target big business; it votes in dollars.

When Government gets so powerful that its purchase price is cost effective, even imperative, to business, then business will purchase government indulgences.
A_J, the Stupid

This is why our Founding Fathers and we Libertarians argue for a limited government in the face of those arguing for a social safety net government...

Just point me at the places where your founding fathers argued for that. I'm happy to read and debate it.

At the risk of being tedious, I'm a libertarian too, though left-libertarian. Followers of Ayn Rand don't own the word

Patrick

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The big don't go down, they just get hired to be the CEO of another company, and run that one into the ground...

That's how the "free market" works.

So much for "meritocracy".

Do you have a point there?

Where else do you get the "expertise" required to run a company?

Washington DC? Maybe the directors of the Post office, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae?

A lot of the airlines problems come from unstable fuel costs and unions. The Left fully supports the environmental movement that causes wild swings in the energy market and is the lover of unions who can cripple a company in a heartbeat.

We have no "free" market because the government regulates the airline industry and the energy industry. So blaming the free market is somewhat of a fool's game. You might research a bit about the miracle of the Soviet Air system sans "Capitalism."

It is popular today to blame capitalism for everything that displeases. Indeed, who is still aware of what he would have to forego if there were no "capitalism?" When great dreams do not come true, capitalism is charged immediately. This may be a proper procedure for party politics, but in Scientific discussion, it should be avoided.
Ludwig von Mises
A Critique of Interventionalism (1929)

"The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry."
Ludwig Heinrich Elder von Mises

 

[richard_daily]

Was just reading that. Looks like the pilots were playing hardball, and refused to allow their membership to even vote on American's proposal. They played "chicken" and lost.

The company is using bankruptcy as a means strengthening their position against their workers...

It's pretty disgusting. I'll definitely never fly them again.

 

[richard_daily]

Do you have a point there?

Where else do you get the "expertise" required to run a company?

Washington DC? Maybe the directors of the Post office, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae?

A lot of the airlines problems come from unstable fuel costs and unions. The Left fully supports the environmental movement that causes wild swings in the energy market and is the lover of unions who can cripple a company in a heartbeat.

We have no "free" market because the government regulates the airline industry and the energy industry. So blaming the free market is somewhat of a fool's game. You might research a bit about the miracle of the Soviet Air system sans "Capitalism."

It is popular today to blame capitalism for everything that displeases. Indeed, who is still aware of what he would have to forego if there were no "capitalism?" When great dreams do not come true, capitalism is charged immediately. This may be a proper procedure for party politics, but in Scientific discussion, it should be avoided.
Ludwig von Mises
A Critique of Interventionalism (1929)

"The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry."
Ludwig Heinrich Elder von Mises

So running a company into the ground is "expertise"?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Just point me at the places where your founding fathers argued for that. I'm happy to read and debate it.

At the risk of being tedious, I'm a libertarian too, though left-libertarian. Followers of Ayn Rand don't own the word

Patrick

I'm a right-wing Communist.



When are you going to admit you're an Anarcho-Syndicalist?

What you seek is in Federalist, in the Constitution, the 10th Amendment and Obama's own words about a negative charter that explains what the government cannot do to you instead of what it should do for you. But much like the Koran (and the life of Mohammed), if the words do not convey the meaning I speak of, then one merely needs to look at the example followed by the Federal Government in its first century and a half as opposed to what took place after FDR.

 

[JohnnySavage]

The company is using bankruptcy as a means strengthening their position against their workers...

It's pretty disgusting. I'll definitely never fly them again.

Then you are going to have to drive everywhere.

Every full-fare airline has used B/R to reset its contracts, and so has Amtrak.


Trump has declared B/R three times but has no problem getting financing. Individuals are too hung up on their personal ethos to understand its just money. Although that attitude is changing. Lots of people underwater on their mortgages are realizing they should walk away - just like a corporation would do.

 

[richard_daily]

I'm a right-wing Communist.



When are you going to admit you're an Anarcho-Syndicalist?

What you seek is in Federalist, in the Constitution, the 10th Amendment and Obama's own words about a negative charter that explains what the government cannot do to you instead of what it should do for you. But much like the Koran (and the life of Mohammed), if the words do not convey the meaning I speak of, then one merely needs to look at the example followed by the Federal Government in its first century and a half as opposed to what took place after FDR.

What a cop out... You can't even point him to the specific things that you profess to believe?

That's either lazy, or you're lying.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

So running a company into the ground is "expertise"?

Well, let's put it this way...

If the CEO is rehired, then the new employer, with no gun to his head, ascertained, for themselves, in a "free" labor market, that of everyone applying and available for the post, this person has the expertise to further them and protect their investment.

That's why government is a revolving door between Wall Street and the corridors of power...



No Wall Street failure has ever rendered their "expertise" useless to government.

Not even cheating on their taxes is of any concern to the political class...

 

[richard_daily]

Well, let's put it this way...

If the CEO is rehired, then the new employer, with no gun to his head, ascertained, for themselves, in a "free" labor market, that of everyone applying and available for the post, this person has the expertise to further them and protect their investment.

That's why government is a revolving door between Wall Street and the corridors of power...



No Wall Street failure has ever rendered their "expertise" useless to government.

Not even cheating on their taxes is of any concern to the political class...

Your example is cronyism... plain and simple. It's horrible when it's done in the public sector, but you're fine with it in the private.

And what you fail to ascertain, is there is little difference between government and corporate powers... Yet you blindly support the latter, no matter what the cause.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

What a cop out... You can't even point him to the specific things that you profess to believe?

That's either lazy, or you're lying.

I don't want to get into that debate in this thread...

The evidence is rather overwhelming if one understands the Constitution.

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."
Thomas Jefferson

"To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, & the fruits acquired by it.'”
Thomas Jefferson

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Thomas Jefferson

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson

With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
James Madison

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
Thomas Jefferson

"The Tenth Amendment is the foundation of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.
James Madison

.
.
.

Have a Nice Day!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Your example is cronyism... plain and simple. It's horrible when it's done in the public sector, but you're fine with it in the private.

And what you fail to ascertain, is there is little difference between government and corporate powers... Yet you blindly support the latter, no matter what the cause.

In the private sector, the "cronies" pay the price for a failed enterprise.

When it is done in the public sector, We, the People, pay the price for the failed enterprise, not the people who foisted it upon us, they go upon their merry way and do it again.

You confuse blindly supporting just law and the rule of man. It is an egregious, highly obvious partisan error.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

NOVEMBER 29, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Donald Berwick Bows Out
A tale of presidential cowardice.

On the day before Thanksgiving, controversial health wonk Donald Berwick tendered his resignation as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Sevices. “It’s unfortunate that a small group of senators obstructed his nomination, putting political interests above the best interests of the American people,” said deputy White House press secretary Jamie Smith. “One of [health care’s] most distinguished leaders and voices got mugged by partisan Republicans who know better and who got away with it,” wrote John McDonough of the Boston Globe. Berwick, however, wasn’t done in by Republican intransigence. He was done in by presidential cowardice. And therein lies a microcosm of everything that’s been wrong with Obamacare.

Let’s review the history. In April 2010, President Obama nominated Berwick, a decorated triple-graduate of Harvard and dean of the liberal health-policy community, to run the agency known as CMS. Berwick, who has tenured faculty appointments both at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, also founded a think-tank called the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which focuses on improving health-care delivery, and where Berwick collected compensation of nearly $900,000 in 2009. Berwick has had his admirers on the right; Newt Gingrich once saluted Berwick for seeking a “dramatically safer, less expensive, and more effective system of health care.”

Berwick was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his involvement in Tony Blair’s ill-fated efforts to improve Britain’s National Health Service. It was during this period that the NHS set up its notorious health-care-rationing board, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which routinely stymies the use of life-saving treatments in order to save money. Speaking at the NHS’s 60th anniversary in 2008, Sir Donald extolled the NHS as far superior to the American health-care system, a system veiled by the “darkness of private enterprise.”

“Please don’t put your faith in market forces,” said Berwick. “It is a popular idea: that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can do. I do not agree. I find little evidence anywhere that market forces, bluntly used, that is, just consumer choice among an array of products with competitors’ fighting it out, leads to the health care system that you want and need. In the US, competition has become toxic. . . . Do not trust market forces to give you the system you need. . . . I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do.” Berwick, as head of CMS, sought to be one of these “leaders with plans.”

Berwick deserves credit for his intellectual honesty. Unlike the president, who repeatedly tries to describe his health-care agenda in chin-strokingly centrist tones, Berwick embodies what that agenda is really about: an attempt to move America in the centrally planned direction of Britain, a move that Berwick is “romantic” about.

Unfortunately for the subjects of Her Majesty, the NHS stands out as the worst health-care system in western Europe. Health outcomes for British patients are among the poorest in the developed world, and British health spending grows at a faster rate than America’s, despite the NHS’s extensive rationing program.

It was precisely for these reasons that the Republican minority in the Senate was looking forward to Berwick’s confirmation hearing. It was to be an important civic moment, a moment in which America’s most eloquent defender of socialized medicine would be forced to match wits with . . . a bunch of politicians. It was going to be great television.

It never happened. President Obama, fearing that Berwick’s testimony would reinforce the public’s doubts about Obamacare, took advantage of Congress’s brief Fourth of July break to install Berwick at CMS via a recess appointment.

This was an egregious move. Presidents Bush and Clinton had both used recess appointments to appoint nominees who were actually being stalled, by filibusters or Senate holds. But no one was stalling Berwick’s nomination — quite the opposite. And this maneuver was undertaken for a man who was to control a budget of $800 billion, larger than that of the Department of Defense. It has become a familiar pattern: President Obama frequently seeks to implement an agenda in private that he is unwilling to defend in public.

If Republicans were “caricaturing” Berwick’s positions, as the New York Times alleged in a Wednesday news piece, why didn’t the president give Berwick an opportunity to express himself more fully? Indeed, Obama’s Senate end-around was clearly designed to prevent an honest debate about the centrally planned approach to health policy, and to spare vulnerable Democrats from having to publicly support Berwick’s philosophy. Indeed, Obama had originally sought to nominate Berwick in early 2009, but chose not to, because he didn’t want to risk adding more controversy to his health-care agenda.

And it wasn’t just Republicans who were appalled by Obama’s maneuver. “I’m troubled that, rather than going through the standard nomination process, Dr. Berwick was recess-appointed,” said Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the nominee, and answered.”

Last week’s resignation ended Berwick’s 14-month Washington odyssey, but it’s the end neither of Berwick nor of Obamacare. Berwick’s top lieutenant, Marilyn Tavenner, will take over as acting administrator of CMS, where she will be tasked with installing Obamacare’s NHS-style rationing board — the Independent Payment Advisory Board — and implementing its massive expansion of Medicaid. It remains to be seen whether Tavenner will be confirmed, or whether Republicans will return the favor of Democrats, who refused to confirm a CMS head for President Bush from 2006 to 2009.

Berwick, meanwhile, can return to Boston as a martyr for socialized medicine. He likely will be able to improve on his old $900,000 pay package. And he will finally, once again, be able to say what he truly thinks. The world will be a better place for it.

Avik Roy is author of The Apothecary, a blog on health-care and entitlement reform, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

 

[koalabear]

Or people spend at Christmas, miracle!

Stocks rise on consumer confidence data
Consumer confidence rises more than expected. US home prices fall in the third quarter. American Airlines declares bankruptcy. An Italian debt auction garners high demand. European finance ministers are expected to expand the region's bailout fund.


DOW 11,605.24 +82.23

 

[richard_daily]

In the private sector, the "cronies" pay the price for a failed enterprise.

When it is done in the public sector, We, the People, pay the price for the failed enterprise, not the people who foisted it upon us, they go upon their merry way and do it again.

You confuse blindly supporting just law and the rule of man. It is an egregious, highly obvious partisan error.

No, in he private sector, the failed enterprises just get rolled over into the next one... that's the way of he corporate american ponzi scheme... cook the books, pretend it's all better than it is, and invest in china with american tax dollars achieved by buying off legislators.