 | | Game in Washington | | DESPITE all the bluster about an impending default on the government's debt, most observers in Washington and on Wall Street still believe the two parties will reach a crisis-averting agreement.
That's because the practice of American politics assumes that all players will negotiate according to predictable patterns _ that they will realise they can get more from compromise than by demanding everything and winning nothing.
Under that assumption, President Obama is right to keep pressing for a compromise, because eventually the Republicans will fall in line. But as two wildly different fields _ game theory and the study of elephant mating patterns _ show, there are limits to the usual assumptions: Sometimes players simply refuse to play the game, and when that happens, the best advice for their opponents is to do the same.
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|  |  | | CAN'T THE US DO THIS RIGHT? | | THERE is only one thing worse than Republicans and Democrats failing to agree to lift the debt ceiling, and that is lifting the debt ceiling without a well-thought-out plan and with hasty cuts totalling trillions of dollars over a decade. What business do you know _ that is still in business _ that would operate this way: making massive longterm cuts, negotiated by exhausted executives, without any strategic plan? It certainly wouldn't be a business you'd expect to thrive.
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BAA looking to challenge order to sell airports
REUTERS
LONDON AIRPORT operator BAA is looking to challenge an order to sell two of its airports with an application to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).
The company, which was last week told by the Competition Commission (CC) that it must begin selling off London Stansted airport and one of its Scottish hubs, said it was still considering its legal options regarding the decision.
“The natural place for us to appeal (against) the ruling would be at the CAT and we have until September 19 to do that,” BAA’s Chief Executive Colin Matthews told Reuters on Wednesday.
“We won’t wait until the last minute but we have some more work to do to scrutinise the report in more detail but as soon as we’re done we’ll get on with it.” Matthews also refused to rule out taking the matter to the Court of Human Rights if a judicial review fails.
The company, majority owned by Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial is considering a judicial review which could delay the sale process until at least 2012 even if it is unsuccessful.
Appealing to the Court of Human Rights would likely hold up the sales further.
“I can’t say yes or no for all time on that point,” Matthews said.
The CC’s decision, which it said was final, followed a two-year battle between BAA and the CC after the CC ruled in 2009 that BAA exerted a dominant hold on British airports and told it to sell Gatwick and Stansted airports and one of its Scottish airports.
Gatwick has already been sold but Matthews believes being forced to sell the other airports is unfair because the prevailing economic conditions means they will not fetch a fair price.
Analysts expect BAA will only be able to sell Stansted at a big discount to its 1.32 billion pound regulated value.
Earlier on Wednesday BAA reported an adjusted pretax loss of 116.9 million pounds in the first six months of the year, down from a loss of 167.4 million pounds in the same period of 2010.
The owner of London Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, said revenues rose 12.1 percent to 1.07 billion pounds on passenger traffic up 7.1 percent at 41.1 million, helped by favourable comparisons with the same period last year when air traffic was disrupted by the eruption of volcanic ash in Iceland and by industrial action by British Airways cabin crew at Heathrow.
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