Should public funds be used to bail out big companies like JAL?

If the public purse is to be used to help JAL, then they should in turn help the public more. Stop the hiking of airfares on holidays. On some routes there is almost a hundred percent added to airfares on holidays. I have experienced a jump from 18,000 yen to 42,000 yen just because of a holiday, sure enough, broken hearted, I had to cancel. I think that more people would travel then, instead of doing everything in their power to avoid those days. Be smart, better small gain than big loss.

mindovermater - what you state is simply untrue. Japan does NOT limit foreign ownership of publicly traded companies like a lot of other countries do. A couple of examples that spring to mind just off the top of my head are Thailand and India, where you have a special foreign board where the stock trades for non-domestic entities. One quick look at the holders list for JAL shows the 11th biggest shareholder as a foreign fund. A lot of other countries opposes foreign ownership of power companies and infrastructure, something that is NOT limited in Japan.

As to the question of whether the J-gov't should allow JAL to fail, why not ask the public? In the end it will be your taxes paying to bail the company out. Another question to ask would be, will it be cheaper in the long run to support JAL? Letting the company fail might have greater implications as a bankrupcy not only affects the company in question, but all other companies, foreign and domestic, affiliated with JAL. Not to mention all the job that are likely to be lost.

Many airlines out there,let JAL aircrafts be leased to them or bought by them.

Personally I always use Korean Air and change planes, avoiding any need to go to Narita Airport ever.

JAL,

Please get out. Let foreigners run the airlines.

You need to have govenment funds and ANA merging as a partner for JAL. Two major airlines in Japan for domestic flight is managable but for international flight, this has to be reduced to one company for survival.

The whole reason for collecting taxes is for funds from the lower and middle classes to be used to save companies when these working class people make mistakes at work. Management jobs must be saved at all costs.

it happens anyway, so the question is moot. Also it will continue to happen as jet fuel is priced out of the ability for a business to operate. Nationalization or bailouts are a normal step in the decline of any industry "too big to fail". Stupid, but true.

I'm seeing a lot of right-wing contradiction over these bailouts. Bush bailed out the banks and that was fine because, hey, it was Bush. Then Obama bailed out GM and suddenly America's gone Soviet? You guys seriously make it hard for anyone else to take you seriously because there's nothing the Republicans can do that you'll criticise and nothing the Democrats can do that you won't.

Lower the airfare prices from the US to Japan...

umm, the american economy is not 100% capitalism. im sorry to say

mindovermatter: When it comes to airlines that's not a Jaqpan only thing. The US wouldn't let Richard Branson operate an airline in the States, he had to have an American partner with a 51% interest

The government will use your money and mine to bail out JAL, because they would never let the airline fail while it's called 'Japan Airlines'. And once JAL receives the bailout money they'll instantly jack up airfares for the upcoming December holiday season citing sudden 'unforeseeable rises in oil costs that will last until January 7th', while cutting maintenance funding and staff.

I don't get it: Japanese do such a great job with their trains. (Well, the Shinkansen anyway.) Why can't they figure out how to plan airports and run profitable airlines?

noborito: Yep exactly.

It's too big to fail. Just like Government Motors.

America easily bankrupts such companies, but Japan not easily bankrupts them because Japan is rather socialism country and it is capitalism as well. America is 100 percent capitalism, like stronger easily kills weaker and poorer

They simply should not let JAL go bankrupt. Huge mistake for Japan's economy.

gogogo, you are so right. And if American Airlines wants to buy it, I am sure 10,000 hurdles will go up on why they can't do it.

America should have let its banks go bankrupt? That would have been interesting.

Public funds should be used if it's in the public interest.

Japan should not make the same mistake as America. Japan's debt is already too big to afford bullshit like this.

I think that taxpayers' money should not be used to bail out JAL. The government used to support lots of money for JAL for many years in the past and also Japan Airline is a symbol of Japan. It seems to be not easy to let JAL bankrupt. If JAL were bankrupted, ANA would raise fares of tickets exclusively, eventually no more competition between JAL and ANA.

this has got to be a joke right

It's time for Japan to join the international community and let foreign investor have a lager than 1 % stake in their domestic companies, just like all the other industrialized nations. Japan wants to bar any foreign control of its domestic companies, no matter what... But they're OK buying out other countries companies... Biggest hypocrites on the planet... You need to make a decision here Japan, either you play fair by the international rules OR you close up all your borders, expel all foreigners and go back to your feudal system, one or the other, but NOT both...

Japan wont let "Japan Airlines" go bankrupt no matter what the cost... they wont want to loose face.