American Airlines - Last one standing

sfb wrote:

The seller of the futures isn't extending credit. The buyer has a
contractual obligation to pay. Oil is a commodity that somebody will buy
so the exposure is limited to the difference between the future price
and the spot market price. If the airline goes broke and closes the
doors, it sells the futures contract for cash.

Since there is an exposure, this requires the seller to know that the
purchaser has the ability to buy the commodity. After all, if the
contract was for $30 per barrel and the price of oil dropped to $20,
then the seller would be getting $10 less per barrel then they would
have receive had a more stable entity had purchased the option.

Do you think they just sell options to anyone with the cash to cover the
cost of the option or do you think they look at the person's/company's
ability to actually covre the purchase of the commodity? IF it was only
an issue of cash to pay for the option cost, then why wasn't this done
by the other carriers?

On 2005-09-17, Icebound wrote:

As far as "protecting the poor slob", I am personally intrigued by the
various proposals that call for elimination of all current forms of tax, and
replacing them a single tax-on-fund-transfers sort of approach.
http://users.ixpres.com/~concepts/ for one example.
Implementation might be a bitch, or not. But the simplicity and inherent
fairness is intriguing.

Agreed.


Another proposal is Linders Bill:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/taxes/a/aafairtax.htm which *does* put
it all explicitly consumer's head. If that bill ever sees the light
of day, it will interesting to hear the debate.

The basic problem is that the entire process of federal "revenue
sharing" is clearly designed to circumvent the restrictions on federal
authority in the constitution. Debate on that point will be muted at
best.

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:

I don't recall any fitting that description. Was it at an airline terminal?

No. Hartsfield has four parallel runways. There are crossover taxiways between
them. At the time, the terminals were all on the north side of the field. We
were building a tunnel between the center two runways. Today, this tunnel links
the new terminal and the concourses which are located between the center two
runways. Today, the old passenger terminal to the north of the field is the
cargo terminal.

Back then, all traffic headed to the north side of the field; cargo, GA,
airlines, etc.. There were taxiways between the runways to allow traffic to get
there. I was posted on a dirt road used by construction vehicles which crossed
one of these taxiways. Since the tunnel base was about 60' below ground level,
trucks coming out of the jobsite couldn't see traffic on the taxiway. My job
that day was to flag the trucks down if there was a plane coming. Looking at a
diagram, it seems that I was located somewhere in the vicinity of what is now
F5, though E5 ran all the way across back then (E5, F5, and J were all one long
road).

As I recall, the DC-3 landed on the runway just north of my position (that would
be 8R). I saw him land, and he turned off towards the terminals (away from me)
on the taxiway I was guarding. That was a few hundred feet away from me. I
remember the symbol, the "Southwest" markings, and the curtains in the windows.
It looked like new.

I don't recall watching to see where it wound up, and I wouldn't have known
which of the buildings was what anyway (except for the tower).

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.