Fortunately for the world, the era of money shuffling is now over. The greedy financiers will no longer be the tail wagging the dog. The banks will return to their traditional role of providing financial support to the real businessmen who need money to finance legitimate business transactions.

I guess that was my main point. The CAL/UAL merger now has to stand on its own business merits to get investors attention.

So to answer the question originally posed by iahflyer, this merger will only happen if there is a legitimate business case to be made. Perhaps, if the two airlines merged will result in less competition, higher ticket prices, etc will a business case be made.

As an aside, there was some discussion that the merger would need to be completed before Bush left office since he was viewed as more merger friendly. Right now, given the general panic in washington over the state of the economy, I think Obama and Democrats would have no problem signing off on a merger if union concerns were met and the case was made that it was necessary for survival and protection of jobs.