Economy: The wrong solutions
The Issue: Running an airline is a business like any other under the blue skies of paradise.
Our View: The usual political approach politicians offer, not to mention arrogance, isn’t the right approach.
Any form of business or industry involves shareholders or investors to which management must answer to in annual board meetings. Investors look at the bottom line to see if their money made appreciable profits over the last year.
If the business isn’t doing well, the CEO must trim operations cost which may include the release of employees from the payroll, among others. The existence of any business is solely reliant upon the profit it rakes in. If the bottom line figures show red ink, it’s time to cut back in basically every aspect of operations. It’s a business decision that must be made forthwith.
Such was the case of Continental Airlines some three years ago. It had to decide to cut a once lucrative route–direct flights from Japan–that came tumbling down during the onslaught and peak of the Asian crisis. And it had to do so in order to avert any further loss to the tune of some $3 million a month.
We can kick our feet, rant and yell all we want with our well-honed political solutions however irrelevant, but nothing will change the fact that the Asian crisis is far from over. Today, Japan is at a “standstill” given the downturn in the US economy and a frugal consumer. These phenomena dash our hopes for real recovery. While Japan wrestles with internal and external economic influences, we begin to catch the flu with greater severity this time around.
Nothing looks bright and not when our elected policymakers have done nothing in the previous legislatures ,but trumpet to current and future investors that these isles has put up its guard in the form of protectionist policies. Its action should have been the complete reverse, but then what’s there to expect from policymakers who have no inkling of the damaging effects of ill-conceived policies.
Where we are today is the direct and combined results of protectionist and strangling policies. Friends, it need not be this way. Think about it this November when you head to the polls.
