The Canine Connection to UAL Employee Buyout

Allan Sloan’s article, “Sisyphus, Wile E. Coyote and UAL Unions” (Sept. 24), was blunt but accurate.

The employee buyout of United Airlines was and always will be a dog. If the $300-a-share deal had been pulled off, the pilots would be selling dog food right now to pay the enormous interest debt. There is a legitimate reason it did not come to fruition: It barks.

Leveraged buyouts, junk bonds, junkmeister . . . it is difficult for one to decide if these terms are oxymorons, incongruent or descriptions of social diseases. One thing is certain: Whoever coined these terms was right on the money. Just look at what the junk bonds and LBOs of the ‘80s are doing in the ‘90s. As Sloan so aptly put it, “They are littering the landscape.”

A dog does indeed act like a dog.

JOHN BUCH

Manhattan Beach