Not to mention what got the economy into this mess. The reality is that for about 30-40 years, inflation has mostly gone up, forcing costs to go up while salaries have only marginally gone up. That has led to this credit crunch - as people could afford less, credit is the only thing that kept it going. The world was building a house of cards and the last cards (hedge-funds, low-rate mortgages, margin trading, credit card debt) where the final "cards" that made the whole house collapse.
What led to all this? Corporate greed exacerbated by lack of regulation to control corporations that where allowed to write the law books and police themselves. This obviously didn't work and people are just only now getting outraged because the credit dry-up means that they can no longer afford their lifestyles and are much more aware of how under-payed they've been for years.
Just look at how much a family home used to cost 30 years ago as compared to the average college-educated employee pay package. It was 2, maybe 3 times their yearly salary - now it is more like 15 to 20 times as much! If you want property values to go up and airline ticket prices to go up you need to put enough money back into the system so that it can be spent in those tickets and expensive houses. Otherwise you are only increasing the credit / debt. That is not the way that debt works - eventually you have to pay that debt, which is where we are now. Except that so much debt was allowed to accumulate that there isn't enough money to pay it off.
In order for the world economy to return to normal and prosper / grow is for that balance to return. These downturn / upturn cycles in the economy are completely unnecessary and caused by the extremes of greed which destabilize the equation causing so many problems for everyone. We can't just trust that Capitalism will keep things going right - obviously this failure was rooted primarily in Capitalist nations like the US and the European Union . There needs to be laws in place to control human greed and more importantly, they need to be enforced.
If there is one thing you can count on is Human greed - we can't allow it to go unchecked any further. Giving Cathay concessions is irresponsible and we would only be making the situation worse. Do you think that property prices are gonna go down if things improve? Sure, the housing allowance will keep pace, but it is useless if you can't afford the down-payment. And food / supplies are not getting any cheaper either. We need to stand our ground - they've already got concessions when they got the B-scale, the C-scale COS08, the medical co-payment, and the 20% productivity increases they've already gotten since this major expansion started. We need to stop subsidizing their prosperity NOW! We are not seeing our fair share. If they want cost cuts they need to start with the top.
Sorry for the long rant.