Results tagged “oilcrisis”

Oil prices hit a new high, at close to $143/barrel today (but ended over $140/barrel), and the Dow fell 106 points to close at 11,346.41.

The Dow plummeted 358 points to end at 11,453, after bad news about brokerages and the ever increasing price of oil. Bloomberg News summed it up this way:

U.S. stocks tumbled, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst June since the Great Depression, as record oil prices, credit-market writedowns and a slowing economy threatened to extend a yearlong profit slump.

An analyst told USA Today, "Now we've got oil touching $140. We still have a credit crunch. We still have banks trying to deleverage. Consumers aren't getting credit. There's no reason for things to go higher and lots of reasons for them to go down."

American Airlines is cutting five American and 37 American Eagle flights from LaGuardia airport starting in September, as part of the airline's attempt to control costs in the wake of rising fuel prices. American will also be cutting dozens of American and American Eagle flights at its hubs in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth. Among the cutbacks is the termination of American Eagle operations in Albany, prompting Governor David Paterson to ask the airline to "take into account more than profit when they evaluate routes. For many, these airlines are a critical lifeline to family and business obligations."

The NY Times columnist Clyde Haberman is annoyed about shops that keep their air-conditioned stores' doors wide open and found other New Yorkers who share that gripe. One downtown resident was told by a Soho clothing store that the open door was "company policy," so the outraged resident called the store's main office, where someone "said they had a ‘green team’ forming."

Yesterday, American Airlines started charging customers $15 for the first checked bag, a controversial but necessary move given rising oil prices (American, like many other airline carriers, also charges $25 for the second checked bag). Though full fare, gold/platinum frequent fliers, first and business class customers, are exempt from the fee, American expects 25% of its customers to be affected by the charge. And those fliers were not happy.