America’s wealthiest have never been richer, thanks to 9 years of Federal Reserve "wealth creation" which has favored the top 1%, leading to an imbalance in wealth accumulation that has resulted in a record split between the haves and have nots. In fact, as the Fed admitted two weeks ago, the top 1% of Americans are 70% wealthier than the bottom 90%.
America’s wealthiest individuals are thriving thanks to an imbalance in wealth accumulation that favors the already asset-rich. But even though the number of millionaires and billionaires living in the US has been climbing, and is on track to increase by nearly 700,000 a year between now and 2021 – so long as the market avoids another crash – an influx of new potential buyers has done little to alleviate a supply glut that has been weighing on used jet prices for years.
The datapoints that suggest the market for new airplanes is underoing a severe repricing shock kept coming overnight, when just two days after Iran announced it had negotiated the "$16.6 billion" purchase of 50 737 planes and 30 777 aircraft at half the sticker price, and one year after we revealed that a used Boeing 777 can be purchased for as much as 97% off, overnight Delta Air Lines said that it would scrap an order for 18 787 Dreamliner aircraft, valued at more than $4 billion at list prices, which the company assumed as a part of its merger with Northwest Airlines.
One year ago, the airplane market was spooked by reports of "market tests" for Boeing 777 plane prices, when according to the CEO of Delta the company had acquired a used 777s for a paltry $8 million, a 97% discount from new Boeing 777-ER prices!
Prior to this report, in October, Delta CEO Dennis Muilenburg raised more eyebrows when he said there was a “huge bubble” in used widebody aircraft, and that as a result the market was “ripe” for Delta to buy used 777s, as he subsequently did for an unprecedented 97% price reduction.
Over 30 years after a botched test at the Soviet nuclear plant sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, the world's largest land-based moving structure has been slid over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site to prevent deadly radiation spewing from the stricken reactor for the next 100 years.
Rising 360 feet into the air with a span of 850 feet and length of 540 feet, the shield is tall enough to cover the Statue of Liberty and longer than two Boeing 777 jets placed end to end.