President Donald Trump on [March 9th] said he has plans to help the cruise and airline industries that have been “hard hit” by an outbreak of the coronavirus, as his administration sent mixed signals over whether Americans should proceed with holiday cruise plans.I sure as hell hope that this is off the table. Most of the cruise lines are companies that are registered in other companies and their ships are foreign-flagged, crewed largely by third-world crews.
“We’re working with them very, very strongly,” Trump told reporters, referring to airline and cruise line executives who have met with White House officials in recent days.
If the cruise lines want a bailout, they should go ask the Bahamians, the Filipinos, the Panamanians, the Belizeans, or the Hondurans. Not us.
Fuck those guys.
Sniffy specifically mentioned cruise lines and back to work and lie in his tour de force tonight.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you.
ReplyDeleteIMO the Airlines should not be "bailed out".
If they want a loan, then fine, they can put up stock or pledge other assets.
None of this free cash so they can buy back their own stock using tax dollars.
I can at least see a logical reason why we would want to have functioning air travel going forward. Cruise ships? Not so much.
ReplyDeletePerhaps if we do end up bailing the airlines out, we can attach a few strings to the deal, like prohibiting the stock buybacks that they've been engaging in (and which have failed to juice their stock prices anyway) and demanding some consumer protections in their business policies.
And a question: did the massive consolidation they did achieve the stability they promised, or was it all corporate happy talk designed to distract the regulators while they stuffed their pockets with cash?
-Doug in Sugar Pine
If the cruise lines go bankrupt, someone would buy up the assets and put them back to work once things get back to normal. Too bad for the creditors and stockholders, but that's the breaks in capitalism.
ReplyDeleteIf the airlines go bankrupt, they stop flying -- and because of all the consolidation that has happened, that basically shuts down *all* air travel in many destination cities. Air travel is one of those things that's necessary for our current economy to work. Without air travel, things get bad *fast*.
So yeah, I agree with the rationale for bailing out airlines. Cruise lines... eh, not so much. They've been infection vectors for way too much time. Let'em rot in port. Nobody will care except a few moldy oldy people.
I'd be up for loans, but Free Money just because they are big enough I am against.
ReplyDeleteAs you point out, that's the downside of Capitalism.
If there is a market for the services, someone will step up and provide that service. If not, then it should fail anyway.
Yes, we do need airlines, doesn't mean we should prop 'em up when things get difficult.
Otherwise we just end up with an airborne Amtrack