Moody's: Airline Outlook Remains Negative

[Dog Wonder]

I think I will just stay here on the warf with this vodca and some smokes.

 

[YVINTERN]

I think I will just stay here on the warf with this vodca and some smokes.

Did you bring the Blondie Maries?

 

[N965VJ]

Looks like a lot of the leisure travelers may not be flying to WallyWorld next year. It’s a good thing that Tempe has shown such a strong commitment to high-yield business customers, right?

9 reasons ’09 will be the year of the ‘naycation’

By Christopher Elliott
msnbc.com contributor
Dec. 8, 2008

<SNIP>
I’ve been talking with people in the industry, who tell me — direct quote here — that travel is poised to “drop off a cliff†in January. In other words, people are telling pollsters one thing but making other plans.

Specifically, they’re making no plans.

<>
“For me, avoiding air travel is my response to the lousy service by the airlines and TSA mock-security. The airlines have provided worse and worse service in an attempt to hold down prices, in a race to the bottom. Airplanes are dirty, amenities have been cut, and employees are upset all the time.â€
<>
People are forfeiting the great American vacation because they can’t stomach the travel industry’s lies anymore. Take the airlines, which earlier this year imposed a series of new surcharges in response, they said, to higher fuel costs. When fuel prices fell, what happened to the fees? They stuck around. “Jet fuel prices have gone from over $140 per barrel in August to under $50 in November, but airfares in October were actually up 10 percent,†says Chicke Fitzgerald, the chief executive of roadescapes.com
<>
Some industry segments, such as tour operators, obviously understand that customers want a reasonable price and good service. The most reputable operators, led by the U.S. Tour Operators Association, are offering incentives such financing plans and guaranteed rates. On the other hand, airlines are responding to the lousy economy by boosting fees and surcharges and raising fares instead of raising their customer service levels. That’s going to keep a lot of travelers home in 2009.

Linkage to the rest

 

[luvn737s]

What needs to happen is for the Fed to put extreme pressure on banks and other lending institutions to extend credit and loans, particularly in the housing and auto markets. If this doesn't work, the U.S. Government needs to set up a federal loan program and take a large portion of the bailout fund and establish a National Bank to make loans and ensure there is liquidity in the markets.

What the government should do is get it's nose out the market's business and allow things to cool down. Let the businesses that fail, fail.

One of the things government does worst is try to run a business. It's agendas and ulterior motives gum up it's ability to think like a business, hence the Freddy and Fannie debacle that began this domino effect. Unfortunately there are those in government who see opportunities in the panic to grab power that eluded them in the past, thus they have a vested interest in perpetuating the panic until they have squeezed all the leverage they can from it.

When you see the word "bailout", substitute the words "borrowing from the Chinese." During FDR's New Deal the country had excess capacity to produce goods, which was soaked up, not by the New Deal, but by WWII. Today, we no longer have the industrial infrastructure, the capital, or the willing trained labor to replicate the boom of the war years. We have all but closed down Americas industrial might and shipped it overseas. We are so in debt to the rest of the world that China can tell us to shut up about human rights and enjoy the Olympics. And our ever-shrinking agriculture industry is letting crops rot in the fields because American youth have been trained to not get their hands dirty and the illegal workforce is willing, but unable to work.

Obama thinks we can put people to work with public works projects, but he knows that most of America does not possess the skill sets necessary to build a bridge or road. Immigration will be the next crisis, and if the depression spreads worldwide, how long will it be before China strong-arms our government to relax immigration laws, perhaps even pushing the issue of relaxing the Constitutional requirement that the President be an American-born citizen?

The bills will be paid. By our grandchildren, who will be facing double or triple the taxes we pay and a stark and sterile lifestyle that we think only happens in Asian sweatshops. We are handing over our soveriegnty and our future one borrowed dollar at a time.

This recession has the potential for a significant positive lesson to be learned - Don't spend more than you make. EVER!

 

[freedom]

What the government should do is get it's nose out the market's business and allow things to cool down. Let the businesses that fail, fail.

{so on and so forth }

This recession has the potential for a significant positive lesson to be learned - Don't spend more than you make. EVER!

a very interesting assessment of our situation , and spot on about china paying for everything ...

However your incorrect about our children or grandchildren paying for this ... welcome to American my friend ... let me give you one of our more common phrases here "i'm not paying for this ####!" you see we are not some nation of highly honorable people who will toil for decades as a society to pay back debts made in earnest .... hell no .. we're the nation that says " you know , this #### is too expensive , i can't afford to eat out , or my new ipod , so i need to go BK and start over ....peace "

and sooner or later , the world will realize that a nation that is as developed as our is that is willing to saddle it's OWN children with debt levels that are just about astronomical may not in fact be the best candidate to count on for repayment of debt ...

So in a nut shell , spend WAY more than you make right now , and make sure it's all unsecured debt ... because unsecured debt is about to go the way of the dinosaurs and the music in this game of chairs is about to come to an end ...