The Administrations anti-trust circus seems to be gearing up in the Transportation Sector. In an MSNBC srticle from the pages of the New York Times; byStephen Labaton, sun July 26,2009.
Titled:
“Antitrust chief hits resistance in crackdown;Some in administration standing in way of efforts to reign in major firms”
Basicly seems to be referencing the problems of the new head of the Anti-Trust Division of the Dept. of Justice’s new chief enforcer Christine Varney; as she moves to go after corporate entities in the Transportation Sector, primarily, airlines, communications and last but not least the railroads. Once again the issue here seems to be dis-affected shippers vs. railroads.
Maybe this is one of the issues that’s making RWM work so hard on weekends?[:-^]
As far as the railway portion of the article is concerned, I thought the reporter was not well informed about railway issues, and thus I didn’t think the article meant much, as far as railways are concerned. I got the impression that the reporter was aggregating every known on-going regulatory discussion in Washington into one article to try and prove his central claim, that the Administration was on the one hand trying to increase regulation of business and on the other trying to not increase it. The mention of railways in the article was appended like an extra exclamation point at the end of a sentence. Frankly, the entire article struck me as a stretch – much ado about maybe nothing. There are articles that provide insight, and articles that don’t, and this one I put into the latter category. Who knows, maybe there’s a story here, but the article was too inarticulate and too naive to tell it.
As far as the Administration staking out a position on the proper level of regulation of the rail industry – ANY position – the article didn’t demonstrate it one way or the other. The only conclusion I am drawing from the article is that I wasted my time reading it.
As someone in the industry, and with your experience; I appreciate your opinion.
I guess the position I took was from someone with a passing interest in what is taking place within, and without of Washington,D.C.
MS. Varney seems to take a somewhat adversarial role in her agenda of Anti-Trust enforcement. Apparently a D.C. insider and appointee in the area of enforcement of legislative agendas. I was taking the inferance that she might be looking for “scalps” , and when she was done with communications and airlines; she might go hunting for another score in the RR industry. Especially, since recently there have been a
I can’t tell if that “adversarial approach” is reality, or something cooked up by the reporter to make it sound like he really had a story. The facts the reporter adduced to make his argument are really thin.
There’s a major discussion in Congress this session on regulation, anti-trust exemption, etc., of railroads, but I am not going to speculate on how it will all come out. Everything in Washington is always on the table, and the negotiations on high-speed rail, Amtrak access terms and conditions, economic regulation, safety regulation, highway weight limits, labor law, etc., are always in flux. This year strikes me more “active” than the last few years, but that’s to be expected given what’s going on with the economy, etc.
Have to agree with your estimation of the current politics in Washington. It seems that the entire legislative process is up for grabs this season. Although AMTRAK has received a higher level of funding than ever, in recent history; I wonder if it will receive the maximum amount of funding.
The high speed rail corridors projects as well; one has to wonder if they will in fact receive the total amounts mentioned for their projected development. As you stated with the economy is in an apparent down cycle, and with the massive amounts of money already slated for spending, there have got to be cuts; eventually, the money must run out, or inflation will stifle any growth left in the economic system.
In this area the overall traffic seems to be off, and the BNSF seems to be using this slow cycle to accomplish numerous maintenance projects on this area of the Transcon. It would seem to be a smart business strategy for them, and a worthy use of a slow time period in the business cycle.
I would wonder if the government was back into the ol