Pan Am Airlines
MORE...“FLYING WITH THE BANKRUPTCY BUZZARDS”
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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June 30, 2006
WHO IS BANKRUPTING AMERICA?
Felix Rohatyn’s “al-Qaeda” Destroyed American Industry
by EIR Staff
What international investment bank has consulted in the disappearance of every formerly major American steel company?
Felix Rohatyn’s Lazard Freres.
What investment bank set up the infamous United Airlines employee ownership plan of 1994 – which lost each employee’s every dollar of stock – and had “consulted,” altogether, seven major airlines into bankruptcy and/or liquidation?
Lazard Freres.
What investment bank put together the mergers that created, and then advised, the monster Enron?
Lazard.
What investment bank has been the strategic advisor to each of the big auto supply companies with has gone into bankruptcy; has advised both GM/Ford and the UAW on the ongoing shutdowns of auto plants and jobs; and developed the strategic bankruptcy plan for Delphi Corp., the worst industrial outsourcing in U.S. corporate history?
Rohatyn’s Lazard Freres, again.
And, in the case of the Delphi outsourcing plan, the crime was done by Felix Rohatyn personally.
But don’t get the idea that this is a project by one greedy individual. Rohatyn himself is simply the front-man for a tightly-knit network of private financier institutions – investment houses, commercial banks, and their allied law firms and consulting firms – that have systematically moved to shut down the entire industrial base of the United States over the past 30 years, and have now nearly succeeded in wiping it out altogether.
They have implemented globalization-through-fraud, taking advantage of a corrupt rewriting of America’s bankruptcy laws, which, in effect, hands life-or-death decision-making power over to this financial cartel, and a new generation of thieves they’ve created, like Delphi Chief Steve Miller, and “former” Rothschild agent Wilber Ross.
In effect, what has occured is a foreign take-down of the United States, led by an international Synarchist network which has always hated the United States, and set out to destroy the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as soon as his heart stopped beating in 1945....
AIRLINES AND AEROSPACE
Overall results: Aerospace employment in the United States fell from a peak of 900,000 during the late 1980s to 550,000 now, a 40% drop; 60 million square feet of aerospace/defense capacity was shut down from 1990-97 alone, and its machinery sold off at auctions.
The Case of Joshua Gotbaum
During the 198s, there were about 20 prime military contractors, and more than 130,000 scientists and engineers working on aerospace research and development, according to the Aerospace Industries Association. With the end of the Cold War as the pretext, there took place a drastic downsizing of both the high-technology, machine-tool-rich defense/aerospace industry and U.S. military forces, initiated by Dick Cheney, when he was Secretary of Defense from 1989 through January 1993.
Today, there are only five major prime military contractors, and only about 30,000 scientists and engineers working on aerospace R&D.
In the mid-1990s, the downsizing and dismantling of the defense/aerospace sector was led by the little-known Joshua Gotbaum, a protege of Frlix Rohatyn at Lazard Freres, and the son of New York City labor leader Victor Gotbaum, himself a close collaborator with Rohatyn in the razing of New York City public services in the 1970s under “Big MAC” – the bankers’ Municipal Assistance Corporation.
During 1975-82, Rohatyn, with the indispensable cooperation of the senior Gotbaum, brutally cut vital public services – fire, police, hospitals., and transit – by 15% to 40%, driving out much of the city’s poorer population in the process. As a reward for his father’s collaboration, Joshua Gotbaum was made a banker by Lazard Freres in 1981. By 1990 he was a general partner, and was entrusted to serve as the Managing Director of Lazard’s London office from 1989-92.
In 1994, Joshua Gotbaum was suddenly named to a newly created Pentagon position, assistant Secretary of Defense for Economic Security, with a 260-person staff and considerable powers. At a time when defense expenditures were being slashed, Gotbaum applied pressure to shut down aerospace factories. During the 1990s, more that 250,000 aerospace production workers were axed, and more than one-third of the aerospace sector was liquidated in the process of “consolidation.” With it, went much of the industry’s irreplaceable advanced machine-tool capacity....
Gotbaum also pushed to implement Cheney’s 1992-initiated policy of outsourcing and privatizing military functions....
Airlines Shot Out of the Sky
Closely related to the aerospace industry, is the commercial airline sector, whose destruction was also crafted and facilitated by Lazard Freres and Joshua Gotbaum.
Listen to the description in the Jan 7, 2004 Honolulu Star-Bulletin: “Gotbaum was an investment banker with Lazaard Freres & Co., in New York and London, providing advice to airlines on mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, and restructuring. He consulted with Eastern, Braniff, Pan American, British Airways and Air France.”
This is quite a record: Eastern, Braniff, and Pan American each went bankrupt and was eventually liquidated.
In addition, in 2003 Gotbaum was appointed the operating Trustee for Hawaiian Airlines, after it filed for reorganization under Chapter 11. His was an extremely rare position; normally, the existing management continues to operate a company (as “debtor-in-possession”) in a Chapter 11. Hawaiian was not bankrupt; its reason for filing bankruptcy was to force concessions from its employee unions and to renegotiate it aircraft leases with Boeing. The head of the Air Lines Pilots Association correctly called it a “sham bankruptcy.”
The outcome, for which Gotbaum demanded almost $10 million in fees, was that 2) creditors got paid in full (very unusual); 2) shareholders saw their stock actually increase in value, instead of being wiped out, as is normal; 3) employees made concessions and give-backs in wages, benefits, and work-rules; and 4) pilots had their pensions frozen and revamped.
That’s only part of the picture. Overall, there were at least nine airlines to which Lazard and Gotbaum were consultants. Seven of the nine ended up in bankruptcy, most of which included “restructuring” consulting by Lazard....
Read the complete article at: www.kycbs.net/Bankrupting-America.pdf
June 17, 2006
From the Association of Former Pan Am Employees website:
MISSION
Restore lost pension benefits for 23,000 former Pan Am employees who lost 34 percent of their benefits when the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) terminated all Pan Am World Airways pension plans in 1991. AFPAE intends to bring about changes in the ERISA law to guarantee the same rights and benefits to the one million pensioners who have had their plans terminated by the PBGC as those enjoyed by participants in other defined-benefits plans.
We are raising funds for our Legal Defense Fund, having received over $100,000 primarily from our members, $120,000 from the Transport Workers Union, and $20,000 from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
We have initiated two lawsuits against PBGC, one already partially successful and precedent setting, and both ongoing. We intend to raise another $300,000 to continue and prevail in regaining benefits taken from our retirees by PBGC.
REPRESENTING: 45,000 former Pan Am employees and surviving spouses and helping other pensioners, who have also been harmed by PBGC's termination policies, regain their full pension benefits.
CURRENT ISSUES: The PBGC refuses to issue critical IDL documents determining benefits due retirees. The IDL take on average ten years for issuance, with no right of appeal until the documents are issued! In spite of the PBGC's own rules, retirees were charged significant interest on pension payments that the agency itself improperly calculated! The agency deducts 10 percent of pensions monthly for alleged overpayments and does not inform the retiree or stop recoupment once the full amount is repaid.
DUES: $15 yearly and a request for $125 donation to the Legal Defense Fund. WANT TO HELP? Send donations to: AFPAE INC/LDF, 3530-63 Long Beach Road, Oceanside, New York 11572. CONTACT: Phone/Fax 561-357-1065.
www.pensions-r-us.org/member_groups/association_of_former.htm
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MORE TO COME
Meanwhile, you can peruse more bankruptcy buzzard poop by flying to....
A Connecticut Yankee in King Kamehameha’s Court
Conseco: Birds in the Trailer Park
And, for Sidney Skolnick’s excellent series entitled
The Bankruptcy Bordello, see...
www.skolnicksreport.com/bankbord-1.html
www.skolnicksreport.com/bankbord2.html
www.skolnicksreport.com/bankbord.html
www.skolnicksreport.com/bankbord4.html
www.skolnicksreport.com/bankbord5.html
www.skolnicksreport.com/bankbord6.html
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Last Update September 29, 2007, by The Catbird