ROCKMAN wrote:ralfy - The difference, of course, is that in the Titanic analogy survivors generally found themselves in safe places where it was business as usual." Did you not see all the examples I gave of companies that once they cleared Chapter 11 "found themselves in safe places where it was business as usual."? In particular where the creditors ended up owning the company. Again consider Halcon: got rid of $billions in debt, got a $600 million line is asset based credit and is using that capex to drill big wells in the Permian Basin. IOW thanks to the federal bankruptcy law it is now a financially sound operation "carrying on business as usual."
Halcon creditors not only made it onto the lifeboats but got first class seating. LOL. Of course, the original shareholders were left on deck as the ship slipped beneath the waves.
Again folks should study the federal bankruptcy laws. Especially Cheaper 11: it is specifically designed to allow company in very bad financial condition to reorganize into companies that end up "in safe places where it was business as usual".
IOW the law is SPECIFICALLY written to allow severely damaged companies to prospers at the expense of the creditors or original owners. Essentially designed to allow those companies to not only survive but have the potential to prosper.
As explained in other threads, the oil industry has up to $3 trillion in debt, has to make payments on $500 billion of that during the next few years, and is making those payments by eating up more of its cash flows, selling off assets, laying off thousands of employees, and letting go of around $1 trillion in investments, all with the hope that oil prices will go up significantly so that they don't have to keep doing these things. Meanwhile, the more credit created the deeper the debt hole of the global economy, and higher oil prices have a negative effect on the same economy.