Sorry to burst your bubble, but you and Mako need to take your tinfoil hats off.

If you "hide" finances it's a crime that usually results in jail time as the Enron executives found out. People like Lorenzo make no bones about bleeding a company dry, but there is no "hidden" money when a company uses corporate cash flow to enrich themselves.

Show me a financial statement to support your allegation, and I will reconsider my position.

Once Delta and Northwest merged the remaining players were left at a competitive disadvantage that could only be overcome by further industry consolidation. No one was better or worse, it was a simple fact that ALL the remaining majors needed to consolidate to survive. Size matters in our industry and none of the players were immune nor were any of them going to survive without a merger. If you don't believe me I will be happy to show the actual quarterly reports from that era.

More importantly we are doing well now, and the industry is finally on solid footing after 100 years of bankruptcies. We should be thankful we all ended up on the other side of that story, and look at the past as a step necessary to get to where we are today which is a pretty darned good place, AND we should all be proud of our heritage because each of the survivors had something good to bring to the table.