Are today’s Class 1 railways to big to fail?
Define failure!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I would define business failure as bankruptcy, then a collapse of the enterprise.
No-one's too big to fail, and in my opinion if you're "too big to fail" then you're too big!
But what do I know?
Well, I do know this, if you're so big your failure will have a devastating effect on the nation and it's economy, then you're really too big.
But in answer to the question, are today's Class 1's too big to fail?
Nope. No-one is. In my opinion, anyway.
Most of the nation's major air carriers have recently gone through Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. So far, the reorganizations appear to have been successful.
"Too big to fail" does not refer to being too big to be subject to the risk of failure. It means too big to be allowed to succumb to that danger of failure. It refers to being so big that the greater good of the country would be so severely damaged by a corporate failure that the government must step in and provide a bailout to prevent the failure.
Of course in pure economic terms, no business entity is too big to fail. And these same economic principles apply to the economics of government itself. So even though government can rescue companies that it deems too big to fail, government itself can fail if it gets deep enough into the same red ink predicament as the companies it rescues.
Excerpt from Federal Reserve History article
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/failure_of_continental_illinois
When Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company failed in 1984, it was the largest bank failure in US history, and it remained so until the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The Chicago-based bank was the seventh largest bank in the United States and the largest in the Midwest, with approximately $40 billion in assets...Its failure raised important questions about whether large banks should receive differential treatment in the event of failure...
The unusual treatment of Continental Illinois gave popular rise to the term “too big to fail.” The term refers to a financial institution whose failure could spill over to other firms or sectors of the economy, and thus is expected to receive government support in the event of trouble. The larger the firm, the more likely the spillovers. As a result, the larger the bank, the more likely regulators may be to rescue the firm rather than liquidate it, and thereby protect all creditors. Moreover, banks may expect that the creditors of larger institutions are more likely to be protected, so they have incentive to become large in the first place.
I think the creation of Canadian National Railways back in the 1918-1923 era may be a case study. The Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk were both in major financial difficulties (for somewhat different reasons). If matters had run the normal course it would likely have brought at least one major bank down with them and destroyed faith in the whole financial industry and investment opportunities, wreaking havoc on the Canadian economy for years to come.
A significant difference is that instead of the railway corporations being bailed out and allowed to resume an independent existence, the government took over ownership. (And eventually, some 75 years later, sold it back to the private sector.)
Too big to fail ? Lets look at a RR business that many said that phrase . Railway express agency. 75,000 employees all terminated . A few ( too few ) persons in the airline industry said that the REA shutdown was an example that the airlines in trouble would be allowed to fail .
REA's position in the market was being overtaken by UPS at the time REA ceased to exist. UPS even predated REA in existance, having been originated in 1907, with REA being created by the US Government in 1917. At the time of it's death, REA was not too big to fail - it had been failing for a decade or more.
To clarify Balt's observation on REA. The Railway Express Agency was not a government agency, it was more of a forced consolidation of several express firms and was owned, in varying percentages, by the underlying railroads.
Remember the film, "The Aviator" abut Howard Hughes? Juan Trippe of Pan Am thought that his airline should be the only international carrier. Hughes took the position that TWA should be allowed to compete. Both were right. Both carriers are long gone. Wasn't General Motors too big to fail? Goldman Sachs?
Whenever I hear a politician say that government should be "run like a business" I wonder, which ones? The Pennsylvania Railroad? Studebaker? Skytrain?
54light15 Remember the film, "The Aviator" abut Howard Hughes? Juan Trippe of Pan Am thought that his airline should be the only international carrier. Hughes took the position that TWA should be allowed to compete. Both were right. Both carriers are long gone. Wasn't General Motors too big to fail? Goldman Sachs? Whenever I hear a politician say that government should be "run like a business" I wonder, which ones? The Pennsylvania Railroad? Studebaker? Skytrain?
I would think that should be stated "in a businesslike manner" rather than the zoo Washington has become.
Norm
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