Chip Munn said:
There is nothing I said that wasn't true and with all due respect, I believe your comments are inaccurate and off base. The principal issue is you and others do not like the remarks and the potential outcome, however, another respected airline consultant recently told a colleague of mine that for United to emerge the airline must sell assets.
How can you say that, Chip, and hope to retain even a shred of credibility on this Board? Let me make this so simple that even you will finally understand it.
1. You claimed that United's second quarter 2003 net loss would have been $1.096 billion if various credits (such as the $300 million in Federal aid and the $365 million tax refund) were removed from the calculation.
2. I responded that, while United's quarterly loss would still be quite large (around $730 million without the various credits), the tax refund was a cash flow item, not an income statement item. Thus, while a income statement credit for this amount would have accumulated over one or more previous quarters, the credit was not taken in the second quarter of 2003.
3. I provided a link to United's
press release where even a cursory review of the financial tables in the press release shows that there was no entry on the "Credit for income taxes" line.
4. Thus, your inclusion of the tax refund amount in your effort to determine United's "true" quarterly net loss was an error. This put the lie to your claim that United's second quarter net loss was really $1.096 billion.
5. You then compounded this error by refusing to admit it, despite the evidence provided to you and your statements in previous posts that you do admit it when you're wrong.
6. Then, as a proven liar who clearly doesn't seem to have any real understanding of the accounting principles used in financial statements (or else we wouldn't be going back and forth over this issue), you have the unmitigated gall to call me a liar (sorry, "inaccurate and off base") for pointing out your errors. Please be kind enough to support that unwarranted accusation by pointing out
PRECISELY what I have said on this subject that is inaccurate.
So where do we stand now? As I see it, you have some apparently uncontrollable need to cast any news about United in the most unfavorable light possible, as exemplified yet again by one of your posts earlier this morning where you took a clearly positive article about United and highlighted only a cautionary statement that the carrier is not making any predictions yet about its financial results in the Fall. You rely on "secret" sources that don't have a terribly good historical track record to support your theory about United's supposedly upcoming fragmentation, as you did again this morning with some second-hand comments that you didn't even hear directly. If necessary, you will even fabricate numbers to make any bad news about United look worse than it really is in an attempt to give your posts more dramatic effect. And when you're clearly caught in a lie, and shown evidence to support that assertion, you still refuse to admit it.
And contrary to your statement that I and others on this Board who often disagree with you simply "do not like [your] remarks and the potential outcome" of United's trip through the bankruptcy process, I believe that we really do understand that the carrier has recorded some horrendous financial results over the past few years and that, while United has clearly made substantial progress in improving its prospects since last December, it still has some serious hurdles that it must overcome in the future in order to emerge from bankruptcy. That said, I think you nonetheless go overboard with your constant negativity about United's future prospects (yeah, I know, you think United will survive -- just not in any currently recognizable form). In addition, I believe that 767jetz' post from early this morning said it best by laying out the "real" principal issues accurately and succinctly.
In sum, Chip, you have been proven to be a liar that seems to have some emotional need to constantly trash United yet won't admit it when you're wrong, and thus you've lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned. All JMHO, of course.
