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Monday Newspaper Review - Irish Business News and International Stories
By Finfacts Team
Aug 28, 2006, 08:42

The Irish Independent also reports that several of the country's top lawyers have become multi-millionaires from working on the tribunals into political, planning and police corruption.

The Irish Times reports that  the Government and Aer Lingus are set to announce details of the national airline's partial flotation today, ending years of speculation about the State company's future.

Industry and Government sources confirmed to The Irish Times last night that transport minister, Martin Cullen and Aer Lingus chief executive, Dermot Mannion, are set to reveal details of the airline's initial public offering (IPO) this afternoon.

"At this point in time, that is the case, unless something very dramatic happens," one source said last night.

It has also emerged that the carrier will start talks with Boeing and Airbus on an ambitious renewal and expansion of its fleet that is expected to result in new orders for €2 billion worth of aircraft.

The new aircraft orders, which will support the most ambitious growth in the airline's history, will be funded in part by the proceeds of next month's planned initial public offering (IPO), which is expected to value Aer Lingus at between €700 million and €1 billion.

Aer Lingus is owned 85.1 per cent by the State and 14.9 per cent by it workers. It will seek a dual listing in Dublin and London.

The airline will have an initial free float of at least 55 per cent with trading due to begin before the end of next month.

The Government is committed to retaining a stake of at least 25.1 per cent but could initially keep up to 33 per cent.

The build-up to the decision was dogged with controversy, including a row over a shortfall in the company's pension fund and concerns that a sale could result in the airline losing valuable slots in London's Heathrow Airport.

A deal has also been agreed to allow the employee share ownership trust, which holds 12.6 per cent of the company (other worker-owned shares are held individually), to maintain its stake around this level through a profit-sharing scheme.

Aer Lingus itself is aiming to raise more than €500 million in fresh equity through the IPO. This will allow it to press ahead with its expansion, which has previously been thwarted by a shortage of capital and a lack of clarity over its long-term ownership.

The airline is aiming to expand both its long-haul and short-haul networks.

The order for up to 14 long-haul jets will be a contest between the two new generation long-range, medium-capacity aircraft being developed by Boeing and Airbus, respectively the 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 XWB.

According to Mr Mannion the airline's business plan calls for the acquisition of the long-haul aircraft - seven for expansion and the remainder to replace the existing fleet of seven A330s - by 2010-2011.

Earlier this year, he told an Oireachtas committee that the airline needed to raise cash through privatisation in order to pay for the purchase of new craft.

The company will use the €500 million or so that it raises from the sale of shares and borrow the rest to fund its purchases.

However, some of the aircraft could be for later delivery than 201-11. Given the development schedules of both Boeing and Airbus, Aer Lingus is expecting to agree first a deal for "interim lift", until the manufacturers are able to supply the new-generation aircraft.

The Airbus A350 XWB is not scheduled to enter commercial service until 2012. The 787 Dreamliner is planned to enter commercial service four years earlier in 2008, but most production slots have already been filled up to 2011.

The airline's long-haul network comprises almost exclusively routes between Ireland and the US, although it started its firstforay to the east this year with the opening of a route to Dubai.

Mr Mannion believes Aer Lingus will be one of the winners of an eventual deal between the US and the European Union to liberalise transatlantic air services, which will allow it to expand beyond its present four routes to New York's JFK, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

It is considering five to six additional US destinations, led by San Francisco but also including Philadelphia, Washington-Dulles, and Dallas-Forth Worth or Houston.

A US/EU "open skies" deal will also end the present restrictive system, which forces carriers between Ireland and the US to operate as many services through Shannon on the west coast of Ireland as they do through Dublin, effectively hampering the development of more services to the capital.

In addition to more routes to the US, Mr Mannion is also examining the opening of services to Asia, possibly to Shanghai, and to South Africa, led by Cape Town.

The Irish Times also reports that the Taoiseach and the Minister for Education have intervened in a bitter dispute in which UCD president Dr Hugh Brady stands accused of poaching key personnel from other universities.

In a move which has dismayed the six other university presidents, Dr Brady has been reluctant to sign an agreement, drawn up by the group representing all college heads, which specifically prohibits the poaching of key staff.

In recent weeks, both Bertie Ahern and Mary Hanafin have voiced concerns about what they see as UCD's aggressive policy of seeking to poach key staff from other universities including TCD, NUI Maynooth, DCU and NUI Galway. In a statement to The Irish Times last night Minister for Education Ms Hanafin said: "Poaching of staff is not only damaging nationally but has the potential to damage our international rankings."

The agreement or protocol is necessary, she says, to respect all academic institutions in the country who are competing on an international basis for academic staff.

In a pointed reference to UCD, she said: "If an Irish college succeeds in attracting international academics it is unfair of a second Irish institution to poach them when they arrive in the country . . . Rather than competing on the small stage we should be winning on the international stage."

It is understood Mr Ahern has raised his concern about UCD's approach in informal discussions with individual university presidents.

Despite the pressure from Government, Dr Brady has robustly defended his position, arguing that the draft protocol would be anti-competitive and could lead to a cosy cartel among the universities.

In a statement he says the draft agreement "would inappropriately limit career advancement opportunities for Irish academics and restrict the choice of educational opportunities available to Irish students. It could lead to the development of an anti-competitive cosy cartel and jeopardise Ireland's national strategic goal of establishing a world-class highly competitive R&D [Research and Development] sector."

Dr Brady's approach has been criticised in Government circles where it is seen as undermining attempts to build closer collaboration across the third-level sector.

The protocol, drawn up on behalf of the seven university presidents, allows open public recruitment of staff but specifically prohibits poaching of key personnel.

In recent months, UCD has sought to recruit three international scientific researchers from NUI Maynooth who are in receipt of special funding from Science Foundation Ireland. While the researchers eventually agreed to stay with Maynooth, there is resentment among some university presidents that UCD's actions could have damaged the Kildare college.

In June, UCD successfully recruited the leading nutritionist Prof Michael Gibney and his research team from TCD. In recent months, Trinity has unveiled a series of joint research projects with UCC, Maynooth and Galway but sources say it has no plans for collaboration with UCD.

Dr Brady is unapologetic about his approach, part of his strategy to push UCD into the top 30 universities in Europe. At present, the college is ranked outside the top 200 in the world. The agreement was drawn up by the university presidents in response to concerns raised by the Higher Education Authority - which runs the university sector - in June. A renewed effort to build agreement will be made when university presidents meet next month.

The Irish Examiner reports that AIB is reported to be planning to sell its 50% stake in AIB/BNY Securities Services, the joint venture fund administration business it owns with Bank of New York.

The business has around $200 million (€156.8 million) worth of assets. It is based at Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre. AIB is in the middle of an additional capital raising drive in order to fund its growing loan book.

The Financial Times reports that a Hamburg prosecutor, who is investigating more than 100 current and former employees of Philips, has alleged that senior sales staff at the Dutch electronics group offered “gifts” including watches and business suits worth up to €2,500 ($3,188) to secure extra shelf space in stores.

“There is clear evidence of people offering and taking these sorts of bribes,” said Rüdiger Bagger, the Hamburg prosecutor investigating allegations that eight senior Philips sales staff in Germany gave such gifts to purchasing officers from Media Markt, Saturn and other electrical goods shops.

He said the payback for the gifts, which also included garden furniture worth up to €2,200, was extra shelf space for Philips household goods such as food mixers and vacuum cleaners.

Peter von Blomberg of the German branch of Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog, said the allegations – relating to events between 2000 and 2002 – were particularly striking because of the large number of people involved.

There are 118 current and former staff members of Philips and of several retail chains under investigation, following raids on 116 properties in early June, Mr Bagger said.

“All these people have been drawn into the deal, rather than just three or four people being bribed,” Mr von Blomberg said. “It would have been a risk to recruit all these people, and this shows a low awareness among the [retail] staff about corruption. Also, what had the companies involved done to prevent it?”

FT Deutschland, the Financial Times sister newspaper, first reported the corruption allegations last week, which involve bribes worth an estimated €250,000. The bribes were linked to the achievement of specified sales volumes, said Mr Bagger.

Philips, Europe’s largest electronics goods manufacturer with German sales of €4.4bn in 2005, said it was assisting the investigation.

Hans-Joachim Kamp, chief executive of Philips Germany, said the Philips staff accused of wrongdoing had left the company. “The actions being investigated are in complete contradiction to our business principles,” he said.

The Metro group, which owns the Media Markt/Saturn chain, said some staff had been offered the gifts.

Mr von Blomberg said companies should be more aware that bribery is often focused on sales and purchasing departments.

The FT also reports that German customs authorities are poised to make a number of arrests this week after joining forces with British investigators in a crackdown on multi-billion pound “carousel fraud”.

The scam – whereby fraudsters collect value added tax refunds while withholding payments of the tax itself – centres on mobile phones and related goods that are dispatched through complex, pan-European supply chains. The joint investigation – called Operation Sunrise – has tracked mobile phones brought into Germany by air and in vans crossing the German-Swiss border.

The collaboration is a response to escalating carousel fraud, now estimated to account for a tenth of the UK’s exports and likely to cost the public purse several billion pounds this year. Germany is also severely affected, losing an estimated 2 per cent of its VAT revenues to the fraud.

The investigation, which drew on Revenue & Customs’ pioneering use ofscanning equipment to combat fraud, follows the UK’s recent arrests of 22 people in the biggest operation of its kind.

Carousel fraud exploits the principle that, within the European Union, exporters are able to claim VAT refunds from the government while importers are obliged to collect VAT from their customers and pay it to the government. Using a complex pan-European supply chain, carousel criminals steal money every time they import and export the goods.

The checks on vans crossing the German-Swiss border at Weil am Rhein uncovered new evidence about criminals operating in Germany and their methods, including the location of warehouses where they store mobile phones and other goods.

German officials identified suspect imports by comparing phones’ identification numbers with those on a database of mobile phones that had recently been exported from the UK.

It has also provided new evidence of the routes used, which are designed to throw investigators off their track. The thieves appeared to share information about checkpoints, diverting goods that were originally destined to enter Germany over the Swiss border to Frankfurt and other airports.

The investigation identified individuals who brought goods into Germany from Switzerland with the goal of defrauding other EU governments, including the UK and states neighbouring Germany.

The probe focused on the German-Swiss border because of a growing trend for goods to be sent into EU countries through Switzerland – often on a detour that lasts just a few hours. Switzerland’s minimal arrangements for exchanging information with the EU has made it harder for EU officials to track consignments coming from Switzerland. Co-operation is set to increase once the two sides finalise an anti-fraud agreement. This will allow investigators to request information from Switzerland about traders, including details of their banking operations.

One reason for dishonest traders to bring goods across Germany from Switzerland is that a large stream of legal goods crossing the border makes it easier to conceal fraudulent traffic.

The fraud typically uses mobile phones and computer chips, which are valuable and compact enough to be moved by vans and couriers which escape the scrutiny devoted to lorries.

Carole Upshall, detection senior manager at Revenue & Customs said: “Tracking those commodities that are to be used to make fraudulent VAT claims across EU borders is only one element in our anti-MTIC [missing trader] strategy, but it is an excellent example of the kind of international co-operation that will enable us to tackle carousel fraud quickly and effectively.”

ZKA, the German Customs investigations authority, said: “This has been a very important operation. It has already provided valuable information about the fraud.”

The New York Times reports that with the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

Until the last year, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by the rising value of benefits, especially health insurance, which caused overall compensation for most Americans to continue increasing. Since last summer, however, the value of workers’ benefits has also failed to keep pace with inflation, according to government data.

At the very top of the income spectrum, many workers have continued to receive raises that outpace inflation, and the gains have been large enough to keep average income and consumer spending rising.

In a speech on Friday, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, did not specifically discuss wages, but he warned that the unequal distribution of the economy’s spoils could derail the trade liberalization of recent decades. Because recent economic changes “threaten the livelihoods of some workers and the profits of some firms,” Mr. Bernanke said, policy makers must try “to ensure that the benefits of global economic integration are sufficiently widely shared.”

Political analysts are divided over how much the wage trends will help Democrats this fall in their effort to take control of the House and, in a bigger stretch, the Senate. Some see parallels to watershed political years like 1980, 1992 and 1994, when wage growth fell behind inflation, party alignments shifted and dozens of incumbents were thrown out of office.

“It’s a dangerous time for any party to have control of the federal government — the presidency, the Senate and the House,” said Charles Cook, who publishes a nonpartisan political newsletter. “It all feeds into ‘it’s a time for a change’ sentiment. It’s a highly combustible mixture.”

But others say that war in Iraq and terrorism, not the economy, will dominate the campaign and that Democrats have yet to offer an economic vision that appeals to voters.

“National economic policies are more clearly in focus in presidential campaigns,” said Richard T. Curtin, director of the University of Michigan’s consumer surveys. “When you’re electing your local House members, you don’t debate that on those issues as much.”

Moreover, polls show that Americans are less dissatisfied with the economy than they were in the early 1980’s or early 90’s. Rising house and stock values have lifted the net worth of many families over the last few years, and interest rates remain fairly low.

But polls show that Americans disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the economy by wide margins and that anxiety about the future is growing. Earlier this month, the University of Michigan reported that consumer confidence had fallen sharply in recent months, with people’s expectations for the future now as downbeat as they were in 1992 and 1993, when the job market had not yet recovered from a recession.

“Some people who aren’t partisans say, ‘Yes, the economy’s pretty good, so why are people so agitated and anxious?’ ” said Frank Luntz, a Republican campaign consultant. “The answer is they don’t feel it in their weekly paychecks.”

But Mr. Luntz predicted that the economic mood would not do significant damage to Republicans this fall because voters blamed corporate America, not the government, for their problems.

Economists offer various reasons for the stagnation of wages. Although the economy continues to add jobs, global trade, immigration, layoffs and technology — as well as the insecurity caused by them — appear to have eroded workers’ bargaining power.

Trade unions are much weaker than they once were, while the buying power of the minimum wage is at a 50-year low. And health care is far more expensive than it was a decade ago, causing companies to spend more on benefits at the expense of wages.

Together, these forces have caused a growing share of the economy to go to companies instead of workers’ paychecks. In the first quarter of 2006, wages and salaries represented 45 percent of gross domestic product, down from almost 50 percent in the first quarter of 2001 and a record 53.6 percent in the first quarter of 1970, according to the Commerce Department. Each percentage point now equals about $132 billion.

Total employee compensation — wages plus benefits — has fared a little better. Its share was briefly lower than its current level of 56.1 percent in the mid-1990’s and otherwise has not been so low since 1966.

Over the last year, the value of employee benefits has risen only 3.4 percent, while inflation has exceeded 4 percent, according to the Labor Department.

In Europe and Japan, the profit share of economic output is also at or near record levels, noted Larry Hatheway, chief economist for UBS Investment Bank, who said that this highlighted the pressures of globalization on wages. Many Americans, be they apparel workers or software programmers, are facing more comptition from China and India.

In another recent report on the boom in profits, economists at Goldman Sachs wrote, “The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income.” Low interest rates and the moderate cost of capital goods, like computers, have also played a role, though economists note that an economic slowdown could hurt profits in coming months.

For most of the last century, wages and productivity — the key measure of the economy’s efficiency — have risen together, increasing rapidly through the 1950’s and 60’s and far more slowly in the 1970’s and 80’s.

But in recent years, the productivity gains have continued while the pay increases have not kept up. Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent, according to Labor Department statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. Benefits accounted for most of the increase.

“If I had to sum it up,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the institute, “it comes down to bargaining power and the lack of ability of many in the work force to claim their fair share of growth.”

Nominal wages have accelerated in the last year, but the spike in oil costs has eaten up the gains. Now the job market appears to be weakening, after a protracted series of interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve.

Unless these trends reverse, the current expansion may lack even an extended period of modest wage growth like one that occurred in the mid-1980’s.

The most recent recession ended in late 2001. Hourly wages continued to rise in 2002 and peaked in early 2003, largely on the lingering strength of the 1990’s boom.

Average family income, adjusted for inflation, has continued to advance at a good clip, a fact Mr. Bush has cited when speaking about the economy. But these gains are a result mainly of increases at the top of the income spectrum that pull up the overall numbers. Even for workers at the 90th percentile of earners — making about $80,000 a year — inflation has outpaced their pay increases over the last three years, according to the Labor Department.

“There are two economies out there,” Mr. Cook, the political analyst, said. “One has been just white hot, going great guns. Those are the people who have benefited from globalization, technology, greater productivity and higher corporate earnings.

“And then there’s the working stiffs,’’ he added, “who just don’t feel like they’re getting ahead despite the fact that they’re working very hard. And there are a lot more people in that group than the other group.”

In 2004, the top 1 percent of earners — a group that includes many chief executives — received 11.2 percent of all wage income, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier and less than 6 percent three decades ago, according to Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, economists who analyzed the tax data.

With the midterm campaign expected to heat up after Labor Day, Democrats are saying that they will help workers by making health care more affordable and lifting the minimum wage. Democrats have criticized Republicans for passing tax cuts mainly benefiting high-income families at a time when most families are failing to keep up.

Republicans counter that the tax cuts passed during Mr. Bush’s first term helped lifted the economy out of recession. Unless the cuts are extended, a move many Democrats oppose, the economy will suffer, and so will wages, Republicans say.

But in a sign that Republicans may be growing concerned about the public’s mood, the new Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., adopted a somewhat different tone from Mr. Bush in his first major speech, delivered early this month.

“Many aren’t seeing significant increases in their take-home pay,” Mr. Paulson said. “Their increases in wages are being eaten up by high energy prices and rising health care costs, among others.”

At the same time, he said that the Bush administration was not responsible for the situation, pointing out that inequality had been increasing for many years. “It is neither fair nor useful,” Mr. Paulson said, “to blame any political party.”

The NYT also reports that as the Federal Reserve fiercely debates how to reduce inflation within the United States, economists are warning that trends outside the country may soon make the Fed’s job much harder.

In recent years, global integration has made things easier for the Fed in two ways. An explosion in low-cost exports from China and other countries helped keep prices of many products low even as Americans spent heavily and loaded up on debt.

At the same time, China and other relatively poor nations reversed the normal patterns of global investment by becoming net lenders to the United States and Europe. Analysts estimate that this “uphill’’ flow of money from poor nations to rich ones may have reduced long-term interest rates in the United States by 1.5 percentage points in recent years — a big difference when home mortgage rates are about 6 percent.

But as Fed officials held their annual retreat this weekend here in the Grand Tetons, a growing number of economists warned that those benign international trends could abate or even reverse.

For one thing, they said, China’s explosive rise as a low-cost manufacturer does not mean that prices will fall year after year. Indeed, China’s voracious appetite for oil and raw materials has aggravated inflation by driving up global prices for oil and many commodities.

Beyond that, new research presented this weekend suggested that the United States could not count on a continuation of cheap money from poor countries. Those flows could stop as soon as countries find ways to spend their excess savings at home.

“Medium- and long-term interest rates are set outside of the country,’’ said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University and a former director of research at the International Monetary Fund. “It’s very important to think about what to do if the winds of globalization change.’’

The warnings come as the Fed’s new chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, faces widespread skepticism among economists about his forecast for a “soft landing” — a mild slowdown that will tame inflation without costing many jobs.

Inflation is already running above Mr. Bernanke’s unofficial target — 2 percent a year, excluding energy and food prices — and few analysts here say they believe the Fed will raise rates and slow growth enough to bring inflation down to its target anytime soon.

“They are in a box, and they know it,” said John H. Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute and a hedge fund manger. “It’s an awkward position for them to be in.”

Economists presenting papers at the Fed retreat said that the central bank may be hindered as global trends that have kept inflation and interest rates lower than they would otherwise be turn less favorable.

The biggest change could be an increased reluctance by foreign investors to finance the United States’ huge trade gap, now more than $700 billion a year.

“What happens if foreign investors decide they don’t want to accumulate American assets any more?” asked Martin S. Feldstein, economics professor at Harvard and president of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“Something has to change to make the debt more attractive — an increase in interest rates in the U.S. or a decline in the exchange rate of the dollar,’’ he continued. “In the short term, the Fed will face slowing output growth, possible with higher inflation.”

For the moment, bond investors appear to accept the Fed’s view that inflation will remain low. Long-term interest rates have actually edged down slightly since the Fed decided on Aug. 8 not to raise overnight rates.

But economists, including some leading bond investors, predict that inflation will creep higher even if oil prices stop climbing.

“The consensus among people here is that the Fed’s real target is not 2 percent but about 2.5 percent,’’ said David Hale, an economic forecaster in Chicago. Looking ahead 12 months, if Fed members do not make progress bringing inflation down, “it’s going to call into question their credibility,’’ he said.

Members of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, appear torn. In a sign of uncertainty this weekend, Mr. Bernanke and all other senior Fed policymakers were unusually tight-lipped about any of the issues — wage trends, the ability of companies to pass higher costs on to customers, or the plunge in home sales — that are at top of their agenda.

Mr. Bernanke has been arguing that inflation will cool as annual economic growth slows to 2.5 percent, from about 3.5 percent.

But some Fed officials, worried that inflation pressures are becoming more entrenched, want to take tougher action. Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, voted against the pause in rate increases.

Michael H. Moskow, president of the Chicago Fed, strongly suggested last week that he favored higher rates and declared that the risks of higher inflation were greater than the risks of an unexpectedly sharp slowdown. Mr. Moskow is not currently a voting member of the policy committee, which rotates the regional bank presidents, but he participated in the debates.

Ethan S. Harris, chief United States economist at Lehman Brothers, said the Fed’s focus on core inflation understated the challenges posed by international shifts. The focus, he said, includes the price-lowering impact of China’s expansion but excludes the impact of higher oil prices. “They’ve included the part that makes things look better and thrown out the part that makes things look worse,” he said.

Officially, the Federal Reserve does not set explicit targets for inflation. But Mr. Bernanke, a longtime champion of inflation targets, has said that his own definition of price stability is to keep core inflation between 1 percent and 2 percent a year.

The Fed’s job is not made any easier by the upcoming midterm elections, in which Republicans are struggling to keep from losing control of both the House and Senate.

The Fed has two policy meetings, in late September and late October, before the November elections. The central bank often likes to avoid any interest rate changes immediately before an election, for fear that it will be accused of interfering on behalf of one party or another.

Regardless of what Mr. Bernanke does in the next few months, economists at the conference here said that globalization and the United States’ growing foreign debt could make his job more difficult.

Raghuram G. Rajan, the International Monetary Fund’s current head of research, presented new research to explain why many poorer countries are now net lenders to rich countries — and why they might change course. He argued that fast-growing poor countries relied less on foreign capital than many nations, and that they saved much more than they invested.

One example is Chile, the most prosperous country in Latin America. Thanks to soaring copper prices in recent years, Chile has paid off its government debt and is running a budget surplus equal to about 7 percent of its gross domestic product. Chilean leaders are putting the surplus into a long-term stability fund, part of which is invested in foreign securities, that will be used to maintain full government operations if copper prices plummet.

Mr. Rajan said many countries might not have a way to channel their excess savings because their banking systems were too underdeveloped. If so, the savings rates of those countries may decline as people become more accustomed to rising incomes and as banks find ways to rechannel savings into consumer and business loans.

Even though capital is flowing uphill to rich countries like the United States right now, Mr. Rajan said, “it doesn’t mean these flows are optimal, safe or permanent.”