Posted on 09/04/2011 7:39:45 PM PDT by Steelfish
Postal Service Is Nearing Default as Losses Mount By STEVEN GREENHOUSE September 4, 2011
The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.
The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.
As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This has already been posted.
Of course Con-gress will act. It one of the things they are actually supposed to do.
Oops.
and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force
End the postal monopoly. Let Fed Ex do it.
End the postal monopoly. Let Fed Ex do it.
10 years ago my wife and I probably mailed about 12 first class letters (bills) a month. Now we are down to 1 or 2. My company stays awake at night trying to think of ways to reduce USPS costs. And they are succeeding. The USPS is DOA. Wow. This will be painful to watch. In five years their workers will be milling about, with nothing to do.
Sounds like a headfake to me. I'm sure Congress will fall for it, too.
postal service can go take a flying leap IMO...
WHEN YOUR OUTGO EXCEEDS YOUR INCOME, YOUR UPKEEP WILL BE YOUR DOWNFALL.
( Maybe I should snail-mail that Paul Harvey quote to them? Darn! Where is that stamp!? )
“( - - - End the postal monopoly. Let Fed Ex do it. - - - ) “
Maybe this Federal Monopoly also violated the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Law?
I KNOW that obamatrauma”care” does.
Fedex and UPS will NOT deliver mail to rural areas, which already have a lack of postal services. Not everything can be done on line, and internet is also NOT available in a number of rural areas in the country. The problem is to make the postal service deposit in advance far more into the health services for the future of retirees and employees. The next problem is that postal service labor contracts are out of line when compared to other federal employees. These need to be changed immediately. Do close some post offices, but consider branches in stores like Walmart, small contract units in strip malls etc. Do continue services in rural areas, and places for elderly who can no longer drive.
A bailout will not increase the usage of USPS. It will be like the stimulus, it will only increase the deficit.
Well, if the USPS had not invested its $billions of surplus in housing derivatives and lost it, it might be in better shape, but alas....now it wants to be exempted from paying FERS for it’s retirees, claiming somehow it overpaid $75billion into the fund (but of course the money’s gone...somewhere). It was forced to put up $billions in ‘escrow’ to FERS in 2007 (for some reason) that zapped it’s surplus. Now of course, it wants us to pony up for it instead.
Funny isn’t it. In 2005 all it’s debts were paid and it had a surplus. Then in 2007 the commiecrats got congress and everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket since.
Just in time for Christmas!
I dunno, FedEx and UPS both deliver to my sons house in the boonies in Indiana...and they deliver to my house 12 miles out of town and to people all up and down our county road. I have a buttload of company checks sent to my house, simply because the postal service has this nasty habit of putting customer checks in other people’s mailboxes and when they put them back in their mailbox marked ‘wrong mailbox’ the dumbass postal service sends them all the way back to Atlanta to a returned mail center instead of the local post office to re-deliver.
Instant Fix:
Kick out the unions and lower the pay scale for those making an unreasonable amount of money for the work they do.
Yes, but it is not that easy. Remember that people who live out in the boonies get the same mail delivery as people in more densely populated areas. Ditto for post offices in rural towns. A real business entity will want to charge people more for delivery in different circumstances. I can just hear the farm state politicians of both parties howling if rural residents had to pay more for their mail service and postage. Once a government program is entrenched, it is awfully difficult to undo.
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