Kiss Yellow trucking goodbye. Let’s discuss what that means.
It’s far too late to save Yellow. The Teamsters Union would rather have the company go broke than make any union concessions.
Craig Fuller, founder/CEO of FreightWaves, American Shipper, and CEO of FLYING Magazine explains in a series of Tweets and articles.
March Towards Liquidation
“The company failed to make payments to its pension plan. The Teamsters have threatened to strike on Saturday if not resolved. In its weakened state, doubtful that Yellow can recover from this.”
Willing to Sacrifice 22,000 Union Trucking Jobs
Freight Waves explains Why Teamsters is Willing to Sacrifice 22,000 Union Trucking Jobs
Last month, Teamsters claimed Yellow one of the largest trucking companies in the United States, told the union that Yellow would be out of cash by August. To avoid demise, Yellow’s executive team said Teamsters, which represents some 22,000 Yellow employees, must permit operational changes the union previously approved.
Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien’s response? Go ahead and shut down. Twelve days later, O’Brien tweeted a picture of a gravestone: Yellow, 1924 to 2023.
On the surface, it’s mysterious why O’Brien would settle for the company shuttering instead of seeking to retain 22,000 Teamsters jobs. Unionized trucking jobs are so rare that one might think a so-so union job is better than no union job at all.
However, labor experts say that this move isn’t surprising. Rather, it’s a sign that union leaders like O’Brien and Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, have sharply changed from those of the past few decades. Rhetoric is now proudly militant, and jobs that aren’t up to Teamsters’ standards won’t be tolerated.
Yellow isn’t the only freight company in a showdown with the Teamsters this summer. The union and UPS have been locked in months of negotiations for the next five-year contract. The current one expires on July 31, and UPS employees have voted to authorize a strike if no new contract is reached.
Teamsters President Posts Yellow Gravestone
Potential Supply Chain Chaos
Possible UPS Strike
There is massive oversupply of truckers. A Yellow bankruptcy will remove some of that supply but I doubt it will do much good.
The Genuine Irony
“Yellow drivers are looking into non-union trucking roles.“
Dow Transports
Q: Does that make any sense at all?
A: In a contrary sense, yes.
Q: How so?
A: Bull markets and bear market rallies tend to end on good news, not bad news.
Q: What good news is coming?
A: Watch the reaction to UPS /Teamster agreement.
At some point, seemingly good news is going to get blasted.
Cease Business With Yellow Now!
“Yellow customers: Consider shipping through an alternative carrier immediately. You don’t want freight in Yellow’s network. A liquidation appears likely and you are unlikely to see your freight again if it happens – and there will be no one to file a claim against.“
Blame the Messenger
Strike Notice
Strike Notice Irony
The Teamsters Union issued a strike notice for July 24. Will Yellow be running any trucks by then?
Questions abound.
What About UPS?
Don’t Use Yellow Take II
Fuller replied “Steve doesn’t want his customer’s freight ending up on eBay next week.”
View of the Day
JB Hunt Misses Expectations
Intervention by Biden?
Bloomberg reports “President Joe Biden and the US Congress intervened to stop a railroad strike in December. But railroads are governed by the Railway Labor Act, which specifically calls for such action if mediation fails. UPS’s union workers aren’t subject to this restrictive labor law. Biden could invoke emergency provisions under the Taft-Hartley Act, as former President Jimmy Carter did to break up a lingering miners’ strike in 1978. That would be a controversial move for Biden, who has touted his support of the labor movement. O’Brien said he has asked the White House on several occasions not to intervene in case of a UPS strike.”
Unusual Demand Weakness
“Americans are simply buying less food”, not trading from brand names to store names says Conagra. It’s been this way since Easter.
That may be the most important observation in this post.
Inflation-Adjusted Retail Sales Weak Four of the Last Five Months
Yesterday, I noted Inflation-Adjusted Retail Sales Weak Four of the Last Five Months
Adjusted for inflation, retail sales are down from a year ago for five consecutive months and seven of the last eight.
The consumer is definitely weakening as rate hikes and inflation take a toll.
A 5 Percent Pay Cut is Coming for 37 Million Student Loan Borrowers
Bear in mind that effectively a A 5 Percent Pay Cut is Coming for 37 Million Student Loan Borrowers
The return of student loan payments will put a crimp on retail spending for millions of borrowers.
Well, not to worry. I am sure we can all make ends meet by travelling more by air and having our toenails painted more frequently.
Manufacturing and shipping? Who needs ’em? The bulk of the service economy clearly runs by itself.
Sarcasm aside, the ultimate irony would be a recession right now just as nearly every economist has abandoned the idea.
So much for fiduciary responsibility, at a time when the transports are flying
there is a shortage of workers, it goes both ways.
The Teamsters lose their health coverage on Monday if Yellow doesn’t make the payment. Why wouldn’t they strike? I’m not a union stooge but why on earth would they NOT strike when Yellow is not upholding their part of the deal they made. My brother in law works there and is ready to find a new job on Monday. No healthcare means they need to kick in $2k a month to continue coverage.
This was a known issue years ago. Yellow asked for concessions and said it would go broke if it did not get them. The Teamsters union said prove it. So Yellow did.
Both sides to blame here.
I wonder if the union posture is influenced by the fact that the federal government has bailed out both multi-employer pension plans and other pension plans in the recent past? At the same time, Yellow seems to be a company that has been teetering on the edge for decades.
No discussion in this thread whatsoever about the fact that Yellow got a huge $736 million government loan a few years ago that now won’t be paid back. Sure, it’s all the union’s fault, not management.
“The Treasury made 11 loans under the national security carveout with the bulk of the $736 million going to Yellow.
The government received a 30% equity stake in Yellow, which was described as in “precarious financial position” at the time, as part of the lending agreement.”
It’s the government’s fault for making a stupid loan.
I spent some time on Highway 5 today which runs the length of California; North to South. Saw lots of Big Rig Trucks. I really take my hat off to the American Trucker.
And I take my hat off to Mother Truckers and gender equality.
The statistic that always floored me (and I’ve forgotten the names of the individuals involved) was something I read at the time that GM nearly went bankrupt and the CEO was eased out, Ivy League MBA and all. He was being paid $23 mlll. GM made (and still makes) terrible cars. At the same time, the CEO of Honda Motor, which makes excellent cars, had a Ph.D. in engineering and was being paid $1.5 million. It is a matter of some note when a US auto executive is a “car guy” — i.e. has some first-hand experience making cars. Every US business school should be shut down yesterday. What’s happening to US companies is a consequence of elevating bean-counters over people with primary experience of what their company does.
“Sarcasm aside, the ultimate irony would be a recession right now just as nearly every economist has abandoned the idea”
If you believe in presidential cycle’s, then the 3rd and 4th years are usually good for the market.
And apparently, increased interest rates are good also.
Life does move in cycles. For 50 years we’ve been dealing with the hollowing out of America work due to Reagan Republicanism. Maybe, just maybe, the tide has turned. Perhaps people making minimum wage with no health or retirement benefits just so the rich can get super rich isnt such a good thing. Last time I checked, truck driver was the #1 most common job in most of the states. The teacher shortage, the doctor and nursing shortage, the pilot shortage and now the driver shortage … Labor may once again be moving on top. 1962 is back! And some people will be very upset by that ….
Apparently you weren’t around back then. After years of Democrat misrule, culminating in the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, Reagan was elected and the country turned around. No American president since then has been as good – certainly not the current one.
So many long winded responses which say so little. Here is all you need to know:
1) Yellow made a deal that it cannot live up to. Yellow is the bad guy, not the unions. The first rule of transportation has always been “don’t change the deal”.
2) Why do you think Yellow can’t make the expected payment? Anyone? Anyone at all? Well, just look at their financials. $165mn of cash is holding down $1.62bn of debt. Yellow is not a privately owned company. It’s owned by the banks. And the banks will no longer be loaning out the cheap money that yellow used to build this debt Ponzi of a company. Good, honest people were likely pushed out of the trucking business by Yellow’s ability to purchase equipment and facilities without FIRST having had to earn the money to do it.
Liberal debt ponzi companies make up most of our liberal economy and as the ability to take on cheap debt collapses, so will the Ponzi economy. If you do not own physical gold and silver, now would be a fine time to begin accumulating.
Debt increased the carrying capacity of the economy immensely. What do you suppose will happen when the ability to use debt like that goes away, suddenly? THINK.
Agreed. Artificially low rates distort an economy in many ways.
All of our money supply is created as debt. Private banks create all dollars digitally when they issue loans. (Proofs at bankLIESdotORG).
Government forces us at gunpoint to use dollars to pay for taxes, fines, fees and licenses. But government doesn’t create any dollars. ONLY private banks and the 12 bank-owned Federal Reserve Banks create dollars. This system forces us into endless, unpayable debt to private banks.
If you feel that strongly about it start a bank and really make money.
Physical gold and silver are important.
More important is someone local to sell gold and silver to.
I can’t help wondering why Amazon has not opened up their shipping business to outside customers just like they opened up their “big room full of Internet connected PCs” business (AWS).
A recent west coast road trip showed trucking to be Amazon and a lot of gray-ish, nondescript 18-wheelers.
Aside: That road trip also showed the highways filled with identical hatch-backs galore, Teslas, and a notable smattering of antiseptically clean, white pickups. My, my, how the US vehicle mix changes over time.
If there’s demand fur trucking, someone else will fill in.
Bankruptcy is never more than just some technicality/business arrangement. The silly belief that it is some sort of baaaad/mean thing, is nothing more than fearmongering by people with asymmetric access to promote their own private concerns.
Trucking companies come and go, and there are massive business cycles within the trucking world that most of us never hear about. Do an internet search “trucking company bankruptcy 2010” and you’ll find stories of countless trucking companies going bankrupt. Ask yourself: did this effect your life at all when it happened 13 years ago? I’ve learned not to get too excited about financial windfalls or bloodbaths from the trucking sector.
There are terrible paying trucking jobs and great-paying trucking jobs. Wal Mart over-the-road drivers make over $100k/yr, but need 3 yrs experience and squeaky-clean driving records. DartX regional drivers make mid-$80k/yr. with little experience needed, and sleep at home every night. Most gasoline tanker drivers make well over $75k/yr. These are non-Union jobs with affordable benefits packages.
Instead of blaming the union, how about the readers of the Yellow Freight bankruptcy published by Mish also factor in the following link.
link to nytimes.com
Yellow’s troubles predate the pandemic. This is just old fashion bad management and malfeasance at the top. The chickens have come home to roost.
“Yellow CEO alone makes $1.27m a year. There’s clearly money to go around to the right people.”
Divide 1 million by 22,000 and you get a pay raise of $45. Yes, the chickens have come home to roost, finally. Just like they did at GM. I suspect Ford will be next.
That said, I am sure both sides are to blame, and also Yellow is a poorly run company. Union demands were the kiss of death.
Workers are waking up to the scam of corporate CEOs wanting to cut pay and benefits to workers while lavishing themselves with pay raises. Yellow CEO alone makes $1.27m a year. There’s clearly money to go around to the right people.
In my business (film and TV) Warner Bros CEO David Zaslov has paid himself half a billion dollars over the past 5 years, Bob Iger of Disney just gave himself a raise to $31m a year – and yet they want to destroy the actor and writer’s (and below the line, and teamsters….) unions and ability to make a living in a very expensive city. A hobby for us, the fruits of our labor enjoyed by the very top. No wonder people are striking. No wonder people are fed up.
“Yellow CEO alone makes $1.27m a year. There’s clearly money to go around to the right people.”
Divide 1 million by 22,000 and you get a pay raise of $45. Yes, the chickens have come home to roost, finally. Just like they did at GM. I suspect Ford will be next.
That said, I am sure both sides are to blame, and also Yellow is a poorly run company. Union demands were the kiss of death.
I don’t understand why the shareholders of these companies don’t push back on those outrageous compensation packages. I believe most Japanese companies scale their pay so the CEO makes a certain multiple of their lowest paid workers. I also think the European exec pay scale is more restrained than whats going on here. Your eg of $1.2 million for yellow ceo is not an eg of outrageous pay disparity however.
Only $1.3m per year?
That is not a lot for this sized role. I certainly would not sign up to be CEO for this amount.
I have over 30 years experience in and with unionized interstate trucking companies. The extra costs a motor carrier incurs if in a collective bargaining agreement is almost prohibitive. Shippers have too many other options available. I am surprised Yellow made it as long as they did.
I worked as a young man for a few months loading trucks for Saia Motor Freight. We were non-union and paid a little less than our unionized counterparts. The trade-off was that it was easy to get hired. I showed up, asked for a job, got hired and started the next day. The unionized jobs had waiting lists.
Yellow should have converted from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan years ago. Pensions are very expensive and risky.
Except for CEOs pension, those are very, very expensive and risky only if the CEO didn’t screw the workers sufficiently to please “the market”.
That’s nonsense. Some CEOs may be overpaid, but that hardly causes a company to fail.
Best to shift that expense and risk onto the retiree, eh?
He’ll never become a retiree if he has no job.
I watched a similar fight with Caterpillar in PA. Caterpillar ended up moving to TX. They thought Caterpillar was bluffing. They were not. Devastated that town in PA when they left.
Seems like Yellow Truck could have just moved operations or started another company to break from the union. As for UPS, they always work something out. I’ve seen several strikes with them spanning decades. It was even mocked on that show King of Queens with Doug striking.
The real and nominal retail sales are down, but SPX should reach 4,600 first,
before this race is over. The banks and other sectors were disqualified in the middle. They bonk, they didn’t have a chance to reach the final stage.
Globalization is down : Jevic Transport, Saia, Yellow Freight, Yellow Global and
Yellow AI RIP. The winners ==> Werner and Heatland Express
Why will Heartland Express and Werner’s be winners in this?
I recently had a console delivered by a free agent. The manufacturer insisted the guy was reputable. The console showed up, was installed in my house by a single guy with a glorified toy trailer but it was fine. He goes back and forth, on his own schedule and has everyone’s phone number to arrange final mile. I am thinking more of an Uber set up for the immediate term and then of course robots drive freight from then on. If anyone can actually afford to buy anything
Great! We need many more bankruptcies this year. Keep them coming. Would love to see GM and Ford layoff tons of workers. Something needs to tip us into a recession. Housing prices have to drop. There will be no 2% core PCE inflation without a recession. It’s that simple.
To sum it up, workers must shut up and accept sub-living wages because that is the capitalist way to do things. But no limits on golden parachutes for CEOs the last destroy companies.
Their wages are hardly sub-living, and the capitalist way is to pay a worker his or her marginal productivity.
Hard to keep up with the twist and turns of this industry. Weren’t we lamenting the lack of drivers 18 months ago. Now too many. Feel like I am reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears and not sure ‘What is just right?’ In the meantime I am sure any delay will be the result of ‘supply chain problems’.
LTL truckers are a canary in a coal mine. When they have issues, it means fewer products are shipping over a designated period of time while their operational costs are the same. Maybe they save a little on diesel if the payload weighs less. Other truckers will simply have fewer runs, so their operational costs are lower.
Another example of what the government tells about the economy not aligning with reality. I think we’re in a recession now regardless of how much the gov’t tries to adjust it away.
Cass is floating around pre-pandemic numbers/same boring range as usual and has been all year. Not sure the Yellow issue is indicative of anything in particular, other than a company and a union fighting over scraps when the business is probably toast.
But since this is where people come to freak out, sure, it’s a canary in a coal mine.
All the best investors are dead, y’all.
It axiomatic that the smaller the degree of price competition in a market and the greater the degree of private unregulated monopoly power over prices and output, then the higher the amount of unit prices, the greater the tendency for restricted output and employment and the smaller the degree of downward price flexibility.
Under these conditions, unless money expands at least at the rate prices are being pushed up, output cannot be sold and hence the workforce will be cut back.
The actual or “administered” prices (oligopoly, monopsony, and monopoly elements) would not be the “asked” prices, were they not “validated” by M*Vt (money Xs velocity), i.e., “validated” by the world’s Central Banks.
I watched this same scenario (union holding fast against dying industry) play out 20 yrs ago with a southern steel mill complex. The mill clearly instructed the USW that the doors would be locked forever if the threatened strike took place, and poof(!) that’s exactly what took place. 1,800 well-paying union jobs in a locale with very few decent employment alternatives vaporized in an instant. Labor always seems to learn the hard way or not at all.
That’s all right, Eastern Airlines learned the hard way too. Welcome to the class struggle.
My projection for the top in equities is 7/21/23, the 5th seasonal inflection point.
That sounds about right..Friday is just around the corner.
14:37 EDT exactly.
I have mixed emotions regarding these developments. On one hand labor’s share of GDP has been on a long term decline and on the other hand when unions get the upper hand it can be a long term disaster for an industry (as it was for the auto industry in the ’70s). Where there is plenty of competition in our economy (as in the trucking industry) a strike or a bankruptcy is not a problem. Someone else will just take all of Yellow’s previous business. Maybe that is the bigger problem than unions, our oligopoly/monopoly system instead of a competitive system. Management needs to hold the line on unions when it comes to operational issues. Give the workers good pay but retain the right to make all operational changes.
“On one hand labor’s share of GDP has been on a long term decline and on the other hand when unions get the upper hand it can be a long term disaster for an industry (as it was for the auto industry in the ’70s).”
The above quote is more propaganda without knowing the facts. It reminds me of utterances from the Chamber of Commerce, the American Banker’s Association, The Executive Roundtable, The CEO Roundtable, The Business Roundtable (How many King Arthur like roundtables does business require to get their slanted story out?) and a host of other industrialist, logistics, retail and some professional business organizations that have been spouting this canard since I was a child.
I worked in the auto industry in the 70s. The entire supply chain of GM was in the toilet. The quality of the merchandise, the quality of the work, but most importantly the quality of management was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Whose fault was this? It wasn’t labor because they never set the standards. It was solely upper management and their lackeys that set design, purchasing, production, quality and subcontract standards. They also set the tone and bargained with the UAW to negotiate the collective bargaining agreements. No one put a gun to their head at the Detroit headquarters to sign the agreements.
I also worked at Ford. It was much better run overall particularly their assembly division but their distribution arm was also in need of improvement. They suffered from the same malaise as GM. If I could point to the number one cause, it was apathy.
The simple fact is the Japanese during the 70s oil shock ate the Big 3s lunch because the latter initially refused to make a quality small car due to greed and when they finally had to due to market pressure their answer was the following: Ford had the Pinto, Chevy had the Vega, Chrysler had the Colt.
The workers at GM and Ford took their clues from the plant management or logistics management at their respective sites. Those managers got their direction from the director, VP and CEOs.
The quality of output of any organization is a direct reflection of how management treats them.
This is why free trade is a net benefit. We would be still driving the crap the big 3 produced without competition from Japan.
I worked at the defunct Lordstown GM plant back in 1967. The line ran so fast I couldn’t do a decent job but management didn’t care. It was hard work 10 hours every night with no options for refusing ovetime.
Last year we toured the Dearborn 150 plant. What a difference, employees had a lot of goosing and time doing nothing. Each worker had more than enough time to do his job and the heavy work was done by robots.
Consumers deserve better than the trash we were producing and Toyota and Honda filled that need. I would never buy American period.
Once Upon A Time In America many who are truck drivers today would be working in factories manufacturing the stuff that Americans buy.
The money would go from the store of purchase and filter back to the factory towns and cities in Upstate NY, Indiana, Michigan, and so many other places. The money would then be used to pay the workers’ salaries, which were then taxed, as well as the factory’s taxes.
That tax money would then be used to fund schools and roads and police and fire services.
But now that money filters back to China and is used to fund things there instead of here. So to make up for that lost income we borrow the money (some of it borrowed back from China) so our debt goes up and up and up.
Now our young ppl have no choice but to go to college b/c the many of the factory jobs are gone, and our govt and Academia are all too eager to help them do that in exchange for even more debt into the system. Many cant make a living, with or without college, and currently reside in some tent in an urban area and using drugs.
When the cause of death is listed for America it will be Outsourcing.
Outsourcing and open borders
Here we go with open borders.
Satanism can’t be far behind.
Yes
Outsourcing, open borders, and government handouts like Universal Basic Income. And yes, open borders and Government programs like H1-B serve to depress wages for existing American workers. Open borders reduces wages in low-skill, lower-paying jobs, while the H1-B program is abused by companies to import cheaper foreign workers for high-skill, higher-paying jobs. Government handouts also reduce the incentive for American workers to take relatively low-paying jobs.
The death of America is by a 1000 cuts. Removing the 30s era safety measures from banking system by both parties allowed for financial system to go haywire.
Also allowing USGov to hide bookkeeping from public .
The constant appropriation of FED agencies by corporations.
Stupid public unions
And of course us, for voting poorly every year
I think the days of exchanging debt for products may be coming to an end. The gov’t now pays over a trillion/year in interest. Now, the biggest budget item. We’ve hit the point where piling annual deficits on the debt is going to cause an acceleration of what we owe. It’s going to soon become clear we can no longer finance wars and run big trade deficits. People think it won’t happen because look at Japan. Almost all Japanese gov’t is held internally, so they can finance it with little fear of investors looking elsewhere. And their currency is doing terribly. I would give Japan maybe 5 more years, before they suffer a great depression.
Don’t forget the Japense fed pays no interest on the JGB’s they buy. Our fed is now technically insolvent based on the value of their holdings versus cash on hand.
They chose not to fight inflation and their currency took a beating. We’re in the same boat.
I agree.
Once upon a time, nearly every American had their own gig economy. However, due to the state schooling people into submission, they then ran to the factories and begged the evil overlords to make them their serfs. We call those people Boomers. They built up the great corporate empire, which has destroyed small businesses all over the globe and even paid governments to force you to buy their junk. Great job.
Shortages of skilled tradesman all over. The cause of death will be because snowflakes are fing lazy entitiled morons. No work ethic no family valules. More interesed in being woke. If they let in more skilled immigrants who have a work ethic and want to contribute it may fix the problem. Outsourcing low skilled low value added jobs to foreign countries and upgrading our labor force and production will make our economy stronger. Creative destruction .
Robots steal your medicine again?
Those hard working skilled laborers raised those unskilled lazy bums. Or rather, they were too lazy to raise them, so they let the state raise them. And now? Just whine about the fruits of their (non) labor.
Skilled Trades is an inter-generational phenomenon that is broken. Many a skilled tradesman saw everything fall apart by Wall Street, and Central Bank Machinations. Many Masters never got a chance to teach their craft to younger aspiring builders because Real Estate Cycles got in the way. Who growing up watching his father go through this would want to follow in Dads footsteps. The carpenters who taught me really knew their stuff. They were well educated, well read, well traveled types, with sound business principals. This was 40 years ago, and they taught me the craft in a fairly prosperous area. Even then when I asked about their children’s interest in building they responded by saying their kids were too smart to get in the business. It wasn’t that they weren’t interested in building, it was they weren’t interested in the ruthless building business.
Every once in a while, and temporarily in some locals, tradesmen are in the cat bird seat. When the economic season turns it is a different story. If you are a family man you cannot always follow the work.
The worst is when some Anglo paper pusher gets over on throwing an illegal Mexican or Caribbean Islander at the job and disrupting the industries workforce equilibrium. This allows them to call hardworking people “low skilled workers”, and if a worker has any sort of dignity they don’t work for those kind of people. They are then in turn called “A Lazy Millennial ” who doesn’t want to work.
Many people who disparage hard workers do not have the skill set to do the job themselves. It is easier to call it low skilled than it is to admit they can’t do it themselves. Also they want others to work for a price that they would be unwilling to work for that rate themselves.
There are other ways to generate wealth, but manufacturing and invention comes hand-to-hand. America’s leaders thought they were too smart while all others was too dumb to replicate.
Also, making a quick buck is all that matters to them, so now printing bucks is the only thing left.
“When the cause of death is listed for America it will be Outsourcing.”
“Outsourcing” of ice making from Western Sahara to Greenland harms noone.
Instead, the ultimate cause, is the ability to run trade deficits unimpeded, without running out of money to buy imports with. IOW, it’s money printing. Started prior to The Fed’s founding, kicked up a big notch by the idiot in the White House during the “depression” (more like healthy reconciliation). Then finally made all encompassing by the even greater idiot Nixon. All the while cheered on by armies upon armies of idiots even dumber than that…..
“Outsourcing” is just one of the symptoms. Just as excessikve legal costs. Excessive rents. Excessive health care costs…. etc., etc…. All of which makes it impossible for American workforces to compete. All of which are simple, entirely predictable by anyone literate, unavoidable consequences of allowing a clique of connecteds to print purchasing power. Instead of having to earn it.
No society will ever NOT end up a feudal slave state in free-falling decay, with everything “owned” by utterly mediocre idiots (hence everything “ran” and decided by ditto), once it starts allowing purchasing power/money to be printed. That can’t happen. Not even in alternate universes.
What’s silly is running around desperately looking for every silly “explanation” for why things are done and over with; except the one simple one which is staring one in the face.
The cause of death will be listed as the Congress.