AMR Files Bankruptcy, So it Pensioners Are Flying Blind - Rodney Johnson/HSDent (11/30/11)

Back in 2002-2004 United Airlines had a problem.  Its costs were out of control, its pension obligations were skyrocketing, and the company was losing money.  So they did what any business would do – they asked the US government for an emergency loan.  When they were turned down, the company filed for bankruptcy and foisted its pension liabilities onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.  This is how things work in America.  If you are a private company that has a pension and you go bankrupt, your existing pension assets and your existing pension liabilities are handed over to the PBGC.

Outlook 2012 | The US Economy - Jeff Thredgold / Tea Leaf

What we now call the Great Recession officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. It was the longest, the deepest, and the most painful recession since the Great Depression.

By my count, that suggests that the current U.S. economic expansion is now reaching the two-and-a-half year mark. The current expansion has been less than satisfying both statistically and emotionally, with major headwinds still in play involving weak residential and commercial real estate markets, uncomfortably high unemployment, major European financial risk, and elevated levels of anxiety about the direction of the federal government.

 The P.T. Barnum Bond Market - Rodney Johnson/HSDent (11/29/11)

The Financial Times ran a story about Italians being urged to personally buy Italian government bonds out of a sense of patriotism. Hmmm. This has been tried before, as the Japanese government ran an ad years ago portraying young women as preferring men who buy Japanese government bonds. I’m not sure either campaign was successful. The Italian government certainly convinced individuals to buy more government bonds over the last two days, but they did it the old fashioned way – by enticing them with money.

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