161–170 of 338 posts
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Fortunately, the new moon is just a week away, at which point the "dark side" of the moon will be facing Earth and we'll have a clear view of his base.
The dark side of the moon always faces away from earth. It is more accurately called the far side of the moon. During a new moon the "dark side" is lit by the sun. It receives as much sunlight as the near side but always faces away from the earth.
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Which area are you in? Every large retail store is open (so far) in Southern California, with most retailers' inventory being purchased at full retail prices. I am not sure why the retailers don't switch to curbside-pickup model exclusively, instead preferring hordes of customers roaming around every single morning, but from what I hear, Instacart and store-specific delivery programs are overwhelmed.
They are open in Southern California, but running out of basics fast. I noticed a complete lack of certain produce, milk, eggs, bread, as well as the oft meme'd paper products. Every morning I go to the grocery store in my neighborhood looking for toilet paper and every morning there is some new staple nearly out of stock. I still have a few rolls left, and amazon seems to have a few remaining in stock, so things are…
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At least the airlines will get another bailout, after selfishly spending billions on stock buybacks while shrinking seats and hiking fees. Meanwhile, Joe Average, who ended up running a food truck when Wells Fargo "right sized" him during the last recession, will find a comfortable slab of concrete upon which to rest his head, under the viaduct.
Look, I complain about wealth inequality more than anyone I know. Stock buybacks had A LOT of problems people don't discuss. But this isn't really what ruined the airlines. UAL -- the hardest hit and worst buyback offender -- bought back $1.2Bn in 2015, $2Bn in 2016, $3Bn in 2017, $1.2Bn in 2018, and $3Bn in 2019. That's a total of $10.4Bn. To my knowledge, less than 4% of that was on borrowed money. They returned ro…
Ignoring Tech industry, most companies on earth could not withstand a 70% drop in revenue. The world we are in today is that everyone is trying to go for Big Revenue and Slim Profit Margin. A side effect from QE or worsen by it.
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> after selfishly spending billions on stock buybacks I've been seeing this on twitter a lot. Is there some context you can provide for why these particular repurchases were in bad taste, given no awareness of the upcoming pandemic. I am assuming you don't view repurchases as 'selfish' generally.
A buyback is a form of capital return to shareholders. Improvements in leg room, amenities, services, infrastructure, etc, are a form of capital return to customers. When executive compensation is tied to operating profit or market capitalization, there is an incentive to reduce the product quality (the air traveler experience, in this case) to the minimum competitive level and boost the share price. A buyback boosts…
In fact if airlines had actually reinvested that money, they would be even more fucked up than they are now. At least now they have free cash flow to make a temporary drop in revenue hurt less. Reinvesting money in the corporate world often involves converting cash flow into debt, which they’re probably going to have to do now to meet their existing financial obligations. Much better than if they were midway through financing some large fleet expansion and had less FCF on hand to weather the travel slowdown
I also hope Amazon does this responsibly, and creates the conditions in which the strictest possible social distancing could be maintained for people working in the warehouses.
It's pretty clear to me that we can't shut down the economy due to this for any extended period of time. We also can't do these planet-scale epidemiological drills every year. If that's the case, we should figure out a way to alleviate our current predicament as much as possible until there is a vaccine or a cure. Amazon can be a large part of that.
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And Amazon makes money by providing people with goods and services that they need in a manner safer than alternatives. Nothing wrong with that.
Nothing wrong with that, but it seems reasonable to me that once a company goes public (or hits a certain size), it no longer makes sense for one individual to have such a large stake in it no matter how essential.
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> after selfishly spending billions on stock buybacks I've been seeing this on twitter a lot. Is there some context you can provide for why these particular repurchases were in bad taste, given no awareness of the upcoming pandemic. I am assuming you don't view repurchases as 'selfish' generally.
A buyback is a form of capital return to shareholders. Improvements in leg room, amenities, services, infrastructure, etc, are a form of capital return to customers. When executive compensation is tied to operating profit or market capitalization, there is an incentive to reduce the product quality (the air traveler experience, in this case) to the minimum competitive level and boost the share price. A buyback boosts…
And generally speaking better leg room, amenities, and services dont sell more tickets. Your competitor will be gaining on you via even lower price. As shown by all the budget Airline. It was the customer than decides the more expensive plane ticket wasn't worth it.
I am not sure I have a solution to this problem.
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Perhaps an equivalent as in France could help? Macron has stated that no company, regardless of size, will go under merely as a result of this crisis. To that end, any French company at risk of going under will be allowed to stop paying rent and taxes during the shutdown. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https:/...
Such a simple and reassuring answer, why can’t we have that in America?
If everybody stopped paying debts and rent, the financial industry could crash overnight as suddenly nobody has the cash flow to pay each other any more. And that would trickle down immediately - not only as banks and property management groups go out of business, but in property tax revenues, pensions, people on fixed incomes, and then all the second and third order effects: insurance and reinsurance, massive market panics, etc. It sounds nice on an individual basis but the risk is insanely huge
One of the more worrying things to me is how this pandemic (and/or our response to it) will disproportionately affect small businesses and individuals. As Amazon hires 100k workers how many jobs are being lost by small businesses failing?
Perhaps an equivalent as in France could help? Macron has stated that no company, regardless of size, will go under merely as a result of this crisis. To that end, any French company at risk of going under will be allowed to stop paying rent and taxes during the shutdown. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https:/...
Wow!. Thank you I have argued that in crisis rent along with many other contract obligation should be exempted. I cant believe a government has actually done it.