Originally Posted by
saab2000
Of course it's political. Your obvious contempt of the other decisions of the current administration is quite out in the open.
How are those subsidies/assistance (whatever you want to call it) any different from the gov't sponsored sham bankruptcies that allowed massive cuts to employee pay and benefits under the guise of 'restructuring' while the upper managements laughed all the way to the bank?
Just sayin'....
Call it what it is at least. But it is political.
If the easy bankruptcy laws (which have since been change IIRC) had not existed, we would now probably be living in an airline world without United Airlines and US Airways. And maybe one or two others.
And anyway, distasteful as those bankruptcies were, many folks still have jobs because of them.
I also don't wish to make it political. This is not the place for that. But at the end of the day it can't really not be political. It's the nature of the beast when dealing with corporations worth billions of dollars and which employ tens of thousands of people, all of them voters.
I have an enormous amount of respect for the current administration. They have a very difficult job ahead of them. I apologize if my verbage implied something else.
The difference between airline bankruptcies and auto bankruptcies is the US government is providing tens of millions in DIP financing and ensuring organized labor gets significant ownership in the reorganized companies.
I wish the airlines were so lucky. Which was my point. Will the government largess continue if the airlines get in trouble again or was it a one time good deal for the auto companies and the UAW?
I was hoping for a non political discussion of the policy issues as they relate to the current macro environment. Perhaps, that is not possible given the very real emotions out there. Could we get a ruling from the moderator on this? Have we crossed the line? close to it? In lieu of a moderator ruling, I will avoid even any policy issues. I apologize for violating any TOS.
Greg