United Airlines says it will lay off 950 pilots
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Re-Heat said: "Irrelevant - executives are paid by returns to equity, not returns to the labour force. "
That said, the facts speak for themselves:
So far this year, shares of UAL have decreased almost 90% percent of their value...
At the annual shareholder meeting on June 12, they awarded themselves $130 million dollars: " Today, our stockholders showed their confidence in our Board, overwhelmingly electing Directors to another term, and approving an equity incentive plan that will enable United to attract, retain and reward key leaders."
You couldn't make this up
That said, the facts speak for themselves:
So far this year, shares of UAL have decreased almost 90% percent of their value...
At the annual shareholder meeting on June 12, they awarded themselves $130 million dollars: " Today, our stockholders showed their confidence in our Board, overwhelmingly electing Directors to another term, and approving an equity incentive plan that will enable United to attract, retain and reward key leaders."
You couldn't make this up
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It's the economy, stupid...
An old friend of mine who currently works as F/O on the B757/767-fleet has been noticed that he may expect to be downgraded (...) to the A320 accompanied by significant pay cuts. What a waste of resources to train somebody to fly a new airplane when the company is short of money... At least he still has a job.
Whatever the US Airlines are doing, they did not seem to have the right recipes since 9/11 while most of the others were thriving. This should not lull us into a false sense of superiority though. It's potentially dangerous and contageous and we should be aware of the fact that the well being of the world's biggest economy has quite an impact on our life.
Some wise man once said: 'If the US economy has a cold, Europe may expect to get a pneumonia...'. Not good.
At least he still has a job.Whatever the US Airlines are doing, they did not seem to have the right recipes since 9/11 while most of the others were thriving. This should not lull us into a false sense of superiority though. It's potentially dangerous and contageous and we should be aware of the fact that the well being of the world's biggest economy has quite an impact on our life.
Some wise man once said: 'If the US economy has a cold, Europe may expect to get a pneumonia...'. Not good.
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Folks, this is only the beginning. Those among us who feel unvulnerable because they are working in for a yet profitable airline should wake up and smell the coffee. We're in for a new era. I give you just a couple of years for people to discover the charms of a summer in Swansea or Le Touquet instead of swaning in Miami or the Malives.
Conference calls will replace those comfy Club class seats. The model used for projections is stuffed. How can one sill say airline transport is growing at 5% a year when capacity is reduced so drastically. This oil crisis is nothing like the others, oil production will never increase. wannabees should reassess their carreer moves.
I'd be very happy to still be able / allowed to fly a 320. Those 950 guys are not going to find a job tommorrow.
By the way, read this fantastic book " The Disposable American " by Louis Uchitelle ( New York Times ). In this case American can be replaced by every nationality under the sun. Chilling but so very true.
Conference calls will replace those comfy Club class seats. The model used for projections is stuffed. How can one sill say airline transport is growing at 5% a year when capacity is reduced so drastically. This oil crisis is nothing like the others, oil production will never increase. wannabees should reassess their carreer moves.
I'd be very happy to still be able / allowed to fly a 320. Those 950 guys are not going to find a job tommorrow.
By the way, read this fantastic book " The Disposable American " by Louis Uchitelle ( New York Times ). In this case American can be replaced by every nationality under the sun. Chilling but so very true.
Thread Starter
Some wise man once said: 'If the US economy has a cold, Europe may expect to get a pneumonia...'.
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The only "Alliance"
Any Economic Alliance can be compared to a single country. It isn't new, and they don't last, historically; the EU hasn't got off the ground yet.
Trading vectors are simply another lens to look through. The more there are the more one must stretch credulity to gain reasonable comparisons.
Nations are less interdependent now than in 1945. More stuff to trade, more places on line in manufacturing, resource, technology, etc. This dilution of resources and goods makes for a fluid and volatile political landscape. One thing about aviation, International travel will diminish markedly in the years to come.
United Air Lines is basically four separate concerns and one of them just died. Intrastate carriage remains successful, and because the US is geographically quite large, Aviation will be important here always.
In a perverse way, the EU is killing European aviation, as it diminishes the historical importances in the region. The EU will not work in the way it was intended. It is a "union" supposedly with common goals. Look at the history of unions, guilds and alliances. There is never enough glue to keep a mob of greed together.
Notwithstanding the illegality of determing people's future by strangers, unelected and perverse to the best interests of the "represented", when said potentates vote themselves treasure because they can, the game is up.
United still wants to be all wings to all people, it is an absurd idea.
Fortunately for the citizens, some countries are too large to support despotic government forever. It is a larger example of United's moment in the Sun.
Trading vectors are simply another lens to look through. The more there are the more one must stretch credulity to gain reasonable comparisons.
Nations are less interdependent now than in 1945. More stuff to trade, more places on line in manufacturing, resource, technology, etc. This dilution of resources and goods makes for a fluid and volatile political landscape. One thing about aviation, International travel will diminish markedly in the years to come.
United Air Lines is basically four separate concerns and one of them just died. Intrastate carriage remains successful, and because the US is geographically quite large, Aviation will be important here always.
In a perverse way, the EU is killing European aviation, as it diminishes the historical importances in the region. The EU will not work in the way it was intended. It is a "union" supposedly with common goals. Look at the history of unions, guilds and alliances. There is never enough glue to keep a mob of greed together.
Notwithstanding the illegality of determing people's future by strangers, unelected and perverse to the best interests of the "represented", when said potentates vote themselves treasure because they can, the game is up.
United still wants to be all wings to all people, it is an absurd idea.
Fortunately for the citizens, some countries are too large to support despotic government forever. It is a larger example of United's moment in the Sun.
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executives are all part of "good ol boys" clubs. they keep hiring their club mates and continue to reward awful decision making. if an employee has sub-par performance, they are fired. if an executive has sub-par performance, they are given bonuses, raises, and press releases come out talking about how these decision makers are such a necessity and paying them more to stay is almost a requirement!
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and the eu working with asia as their cheap labor force relies less and less on america. especially with the awful exchange rate, for some reason it seems american government decision makers are purposely trying to make america week economically. sure a devalued dollar does good for american companies selling abroad, but it also makes foreign companies lose money dealing with us, and they will turn elsewhere for business
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sorry guys simple question,(fortunately)not familiar with situations like this
since the rule last in first out applies,all furloughed pilots will be f/o's
does that mean that newly promoted captains will be downgraded back to f/o's?do they keep captain pay?
since the rule last in first out applies,all furloughed pilots will be f/o's
does that mean that newly promoted captains will be downgraded back to f/o's?do they keep captain pay?
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"The EU is positively worshipped in some countries."
Where is that then? Surely not within the EU, maybe apart from the receiving
parties....
Where is that then? Surely not within the EU, maybe apart from the receiving
parties....
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US currently imports 13millions barrels per day. At $137 thats $650billion per year extracted from the US economy. US production is declining and demand increasing. US oil consumption per head of population is twice that of the EU countries.
It's time to get rid of the central bank. It's printing presses are killing us. I've been hearing about this phoney "oil shortage" since 1971 when they told me we only had a few years left. Guess what? They were manipulating supply to rake in profits. Thirty years later it's the same old scam. untapped oil fields lay all over the world, (the Spratley Islands, Siberia, Indonesia) but with Texas oil men in the white house there has been no incentive to windfall tax companies who have curtailed their exploration in order to drive up return.
We have enough oil to turn this place into Venus. As aircraft ops only contribute less than three percent of the global carbon footprint, Aviation operations need to receive tax-free priority and be subsidized for the public good, as they were prior the the 1978 deregulation Act (in the U.S.). Private auto transport should be the real target before Airlines are allowed to wither into shoestring outfits. We can't go on letting every ox-cart driver in the third world upgrade to a steering wheel if we want to get control of commodity markets. (no, I don't know how we're going to do that part....)
That's what I think.
Thread Starter
Commodities are still priced in dollars and a lot of countries have their currency linked to the dollar. Many are thinking about switching away. They have partly over come the problem of being paid in worthless paper by asking two, three times as much for payment in dollars than some other countries.
Paper currency isn't completely worthless of course, but printing it results in inflation and the bottom line is any country that uses the Dollar will end up far poorer. India, China, ME and Europe will continue to grow with the increase in commodities prices but slower. Poland is an interesting case, their currency has boomed against all others and they are going to continue with a 8% growth this year.
US and world economies to 'de-couple'
FT.com / Markets / Insight - Emerging economies able to withstand US slowdown
pacplyer:"its media propaganda, its only paper money, there is no oil shortage, save the oil for aircraft, subsidise the airlines". Are you communist? thats then sort of thinking they used and it destroyed communism.
Paper currency isn't completely worthless of course, but printing it results in inflation and the bottom line is any country that uses the Dollar will end up far poorer. India, China, ME and Europe will continue to grow with the increase in commodities prices but slower. Poland is an interesting case, their currency has boomed against all others and they are going to continue with a 8% growth this year.
US and world economies to 'de-couple'
FT.com / Markets / Insight - Emerging economies able to withstand US slowdown
pacplyer:"its media propaganda, its only paper money, there is no oil shortage, save the oil for aircraft, subsidise the airlines". Are you communist? thats then sort of thinking they used and it destroyed communism.
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Almost spot on, pacplyer . . . . With the loss of the gold standard, the Kissinger agreement of 1974 dictated that the USA would excusivly purchase their oil from OPEC, in exchange that all OPEC oil sold to the World would be exclusively traded in US dollars. Arabs in return would be allowed to become rich, but the World would be forced to stockpile / support US dollars (thereby feeding congress's insatiable deficit spending appetite). Only Iraq and Iran were not signatories to this agreement (and we now know what became of Iraq).
The American /Iraq war of support (and other American deficit spending) has cost billions $$ in future American money spent. The European Union on the other hand has a much tighter leash on it's membership's fiscal policies. . .therefore a weak Dollar vs. Euro. There is no free lunch. . . The Euro / Dollar imbalance is now translating into a very noticeable reduction of the American quality of life.
For America - repair the weak dollar and you will help restore normal priced oil in America.
The American /Iraq war of support (and other American deficit spending) has cost billions $$ in future American money spent. The European Union on the other hand has a much tighter leash on it's membership's fiscal policies. . .therefore a weak Dollar vs. Euro. There is no free lunch. . . The Euro / Dollar imbalance is now translating into a very noticeable reduction of the American quality of life.
For America - repair the weak dollar and you will help restore normal priced oil in America.
Last edited by L-38; 27th Jun 2008 at 02:16.
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Are you communist? thats then sort of thinking they used and it destroyed communism.
LoL!
Peter, we're not far in aviation from being destroyed right now. I'm not that far left actually. I'm a conservative Libertarian. I believe in capitalism as long as it allows for meaningful competition in the marketplace devoid of big oligopolies. But the oil market today has nothing to do with the principles Adam Smith laid out of meaningful competition in the marketplace creating "an invisible hand" that will self regulate supply and demand. I don't like big government, but big Fortune 500 mafias are even worse. The apparent collusion in the oil world to manipulate markets needs to be brought under control.
We've been down this road before with the big Trusts and Monopolies. Of course then, we had a good republican president who could balance needs of industry with needs of citizens: Teddy Roosevelt. That got us in the habit of breaking up big abusers like Standard Oil. One hundred years later, we seem determined to repeat history and let the "Big Four" robber barons again take over everything of value and power. I call this "Corporate Communisim: The misplaced belief that all power and wealth should reside in the hands of Fortune 500 CEO's."
I object to these unelected CEO's (unelected by the people that is) running the country from the boardroom. Most of the time they're just not very good at it. How do I impeach a bad CEO as a US voter? I can't. Hell, I can't even seem to impeach a bad puppet president....
Good post L-38, I think you're right. Any country that tries to flood the world with cheap oil, and who won't take worthless dollars for it can expect an aircraft carrier with ill intent to anchor offshore. Venezuela and Sudan may wind up on the radar the way they're going...
Hence my theory that part of our bigger problem is really one of banking (The fed is a private corporation that should not get a cut of every dollar the U.S. prints.) We've gotten rid of the central bank three times before and it just keeps coming back like a bad dream. The 1800's Rothschild Bank Baron's Grandfather said something like: "give me control of a nation's money supply and I care not who makes it's laws."
Of course environmental groups are probably happy as hell, they've been pitching high pump prices as a way to save the planet for years.... No one seems to care about elderly people in the northeast freezing to death since they can't afford heating oil.
Better add one more conspiracy to pacplyer's list there, Peter: Texas oil and environmentalists colluding to jack up oil prices....
Now if I just had some proof!
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UAL and others are furloughing because of high oil prices. Is it temporary market supply and demand? Or is it planned government oil policy to bend to environmentalists?
Uh oh,
I might have answered my own question here......
It goes on to say that gov policy makers give a lot of weight to the London Society. Skip down to Living on the Ice Shelf, and if you can wade through it, it's clear that Author Davis won't be happy until we are all grounded:
Tomgram: Mike Davis, Welcome to the Next Epoch
Pilot groups need more pro-active lobbying of politicians to exclude public transport like airlines from oil company price gouging.
This is why I'm pro Union. Maybe Management and Unions can work together on this one. Give a management sanctioned PA asking SLF to lobby for exclusion of airlines to fuel taxes to impove safety. Hand out petitions.
What do you think?
Uh oh,
I might have answered my own question here......
The London Society is the world's oldest association of Earth scientists, founded in 1807... [their IICC commission] in effect, has bet the ranch, or rather the planet, on unplanned, market-driven progress toward a post-carbon world economy, a transition that implicitly requires wealth generated from higher energy prices ultimately finding its way to new technologies and renewable energy. (The International Energy Agency recently estimated that it would cost $45 trillion to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.) Kyoto-type accords and carbon markets are designed -- almost as an analogue to Keynesian "pump-priming" -- to bridge the shortfall between spontaneous decarbonization and the emissions targets required by each scenario. Serendipitously, this reduces the costs of mitigating global warming to levels that align with what seems, at least theoretically, to be politically possible, as expounded in the British Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change of 2006 and other such reports.
Tomgram: Mike Davis, Welcome to the Next Epoch
Pilot groups need more pro-active lobbying of politicians to exclude public transport like airlines from oil company price gouging.
This is why I'm pro Union. Maybe Management and Unions can work together on this one. Give a management sanctioned PA asking SLF to lobby for exclusion of airlines to fuel taxes to impove safety. Hand out petitions.
What do you think?
Last edited by pacplyer; 27th Jun 2008 at 06:40.
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I object to these unelected CEO's (unelected by the people that is) running the country from the boardroom. Most of the time they're just not very good at it. How do I impeach a bad CEO as a US voter? I can't. Hell, I can't even seem to impeach a bad puppet president....
Pilot groups need more pro-active lobbying of politicians to exclude public transport like airlines from oil company price gouging.
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Could this happen?
Triple warnings this past week: the Royal Bank of Scotland fears a steep fall in the world stock market; the bank of all banks in the world, the BIS, Bank of International Settlements, in Switzerland, said that a worldwide depression is now a distinct possibility; Morgan Stanley, a leading American Investment firm, signaled similar pessimistic messages.
So what's happening out there? Frankly, all financial institutions are in deep trouble, and the reason is the American dollar. The situation is so dire that it's not going to make a hoot of difference who becomes the next president of the United States: it's beyond the power of the rulers of the American political and economic system to curtail severe damage to its entire economic enterprise. Neither Obama nor McCain can do anything to stem the disaster that will be fully employed by the end of this year.
Part of the cause is that the USA happens to be the most indebted nation on the planet and its people the least prepared to cope with peak oil and peak food. Even now Americans throw away up to 40 per cent of the food they buy, their high-powered and fuel-thirsty automotive park cannot be converted to more efficient vehicles for many years, while their exurban lifestyle makes car-sharing and mass transport impossible for most.
So what's so inevitable of the current monetary scene?
The world's entire Gross domestic product is some $50 trillion, of which the USA accounts for about $13 trillion. However, it owes more than $2 trillion to foreigners, of which Japan and China carry about half and Great Britain some 10 per cent with the remainder divided over many countries. Canada has less than one per cent. The American public carries $9 trillion in credit-card debt and even more in mortgages. Its national debt is close to $10 trillion while its Social Security and Medicaid has a future liability in excess of $50 trillion, burdening the average USA household with debt totaling more than $600,000.
And then there are the outstanding derivatives! They grew from $100 trillion 5 years ago to $500 trillion in 2007. Warren Buffet -- the world's richest man after Bill Gates and a most savvy investor -- wrote in 2002: "We try to be alert to any sort of mega-catastrophe risk, and that posture may make us unduly appreciative about the burgeoning quantities of long-term derivatives contracts and the massive amount of uncollateralized receivables that are growing alongside. In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."
Now, when everything that can go wrong is going wrong, this financial WMD, this weapon of mass destruction, is no longer latent but out in the open ready to kill the American economy.
According to the LEAP think tank, based in Europe -- subscriptions cost 200 Euro or $300 per year -- in the next six months all factors affecting the economy will converge, and create a perfect socio-economic hurricane.
The root of the problem is always money, basically the US dollar of which there are trillions too many in circulations, so many that its value is decreasing, and the world doesn't know what to do with them. It's this flood of money that drives up the price of all commodities, including oil, of course. Nobody wants more US dollars, unless its value increases.
But that can only happen when the US pushes up interest rates, which will cause the US economy to die within a few weeks, as the real estate market falls to zero by lack of affordable credit, interest on Adjustable Rate Mortgage loans skyrockets, drastically shrinking consumption, and corporate failures multiply exponentially and stock markets collapse.
No, higher interest rates are not the solution. However, to do nothing is not an option either, because soon nobody will accept U. S. dollars anymore.
Basically the US has lost the ability to govern its own economic policy. Thanks to its trillions of debts, it is now powerless to avoid disaster. No wonder banks are getting nervous.
The immediate consequence of America's economic collapse will be the end of the war in Iraq, because, suddenly, as the greenback disappears as the world currency, the US will be forced to live within its means. Since the war is the most costly of all its undertakings, the troops will abruptly go home.
Curiously the WMDs -- the weapons of mass destruction -- were not in Iraq: they are in the heart of America, right on Wall Street. Pity the veterans and the wounded; there will be no money to look after them -- no pensions, no jobs, no medical care.
Eventually a new financial system will emerge, but only after a period of tremendous turmoil and pain.
Triple warnings this past week: the Royal Bank of Scotland fears a steep fall in the world stock market; the bank of all banks in the world, the BIS, Bank of International Settlements, in Switzerland, said that a worldwide depression is now a distinct possibility; Morgan Stanley, a leading American Investment firm, signaled similar pessimistic messages.
So what's happening out there? Frankly, all financial institutions are in deep trouble, and the reason is the American dollar. The situation is so dire that it's not going to make a hoot of difference who becomes the next president of the United States: it's beyond the power of the rulers of the American political and economic system to curtail severe damage to its entire economic enterprise. Neither Obama nor McCain can do anything to stem the disaster that will be fully employed by the end of this year.
Part of the cause is that the USA happens to be the most indebted nation on the planet and its people the least prepared to cope with peak oil and peak food. Even now Americans throw away up to 40 per cent of the food they buy, their high-powered and fuel-thirsty automotive park cannot be converted to more efficient vehicles for many years, while their exurban lifestyle makes car-sharing and mass transport impossible for most.
So what's so inevitable of the current monetary scene?
The world's entire Gross domestic product is some $50 trillion, of which the USA accounts for about $13 trillion. However, it owes more than $2 trillion to foreigners, of which Japan and China carry about half and Great Britain some 10 per cent with the remainder divided over many countries. Canada has less than one per cent. The American public carries $9 trillion in credit-card debt and even more in mortgages. Its national debt is close to $10 trillion while its Social Security and Medicaid has a future liability in excess of $50 trillion, burdening the average USA household with debt totaling more than $600,000.
And then there are the outstanding derivatives! They grew from $100 trillion 5 years ago to $500 trillion in 2007. Warren Buffet -- the world's richest man after Bill Gates and a most savvy investor -- wrote in 2002: "We try to be alert to any sort of mega-catastrophe risk, and that posture may make us unduly appreciative about the burgeoning quantities of long-term derivatives contracts and the massive amount of uncollateralized receivables that are growing alongside. In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."
Now, when everything that can go wrong is going wrong, this financial WMD, this weapon of mass destruction, is no longer latent but out in the open ready to kill the American economy.
According to the LEAP think tank, based in Europe -- subscriptions cost 200 Euro or $300 per year -- in the next six months all factors affecting the economy will converge, and create a perfect socio-economic hurricane.
The root of the problem is always money, basically the US dollar of which there are trillions too many in circulations, so many that its value is decreasing, and the world doesn't know what to do with them. It's this flood of money that drives up the price of all commodities, including oil, of course. Nobody wants more US dollars, unless its value increases.
But that can only happen when the US pushes up interest rates, which will cause the US economy to die within a few weeks, as the real estate market falls to zero by lack of affordable credit, interest on Adjustable Rate Mortgage loans skyrockets, drastically shrinking consumption, and corporate failures multiply exponentially and stock markets collapse.
No, higher interest rates are not the solution. However, to do nothing is not an option either, because soon nobody will accept U. S. dollars anymore.
Basically the US has lost the ability to govern its own economic policy. Thanks to its trillions of debts, it is now powerless to avoid disaster. No wonder banks are getting nervous.
The immediate consequence of America's economic collapse will be the end of the war in Iraq, because, suddenly, as the greenback disappears as the world currency, the US will be forced to live within its means. Since the war is the most costly of all its undertakings, the troops will abruptly go home.
Curiously the WMDs -- the weapons of mass destruction -- were not in Iraq: they are in the heart of America, right on Wall Street. Pity the veterans and the wounded; there will be no money to look after them -- no pensions, no jobs, no medical care.
Eventually a new financial system will emerge, but only after a period of tremendous turmoil and pain.