Great article about the phony USPS crisis: Twisted government accounting behind Postal Service woes

[joeybee12]

You might have heard that the United States Postal Service is in trouble: that it's losing billions, that it will have to end Saturday service and close branches — and most inflammatory, that it might need a government bailout. Perhaps you heard that the Postal Service couldn't pay $5.5 billion bill that came due Sept. 30 and that only an emergency postponement saved it from the government's equivalent of default.

In fact, it's the Postal Service that’s currently bailing out the U.S. government. Politicians have been raiding Postal Service revenues for years, using them to make the federal deficit appear smaller than it really is. The fiscal gyrations are so twisted that the Postal Service is right now forced to pre-pay health care benefits for employees the agency hasn't even hired yet — in fact, for many future employees who haven't even been born yet — all to artificially shrink the federal deficit.

It's these crushing accounting tricks, not the cost of delivering mail, that has pushed this 200-year-old institution to the brink.

Welcome to the wacky world of Washington, D.C., accounting.

There's a long and a short story to the tragic tale of Postal Service financial trouble. I'll start with the short one. Right now, the Postal Service is being forced to pre-pay health benefits for the next 75 years during a 10-year stretch. In the past four years, those prepayments have totaled $21 billion. The agency's deficit during that time is about $20 billion. Remove these crazy pre-payments — a requirement that no other government agency endures and no private industry would even consider — and the Postal Service would be in the black.

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/07/8191425-twisted-government-accounting-behind-postal-service-woes

[Cool Logic]

1. "Welcome to the wacky world of Washington, D.C., accounting."

Indeed...like the Enron style accounting practices employed by the SSTF.

Even so, it may be time to retire the USPS. During the US's early years, the USPS provided an essential service. However, these days they do little more than stuff mailboxes with pizza coupons and other corporate junk.

[joeybee12]

2. Not yet...you're never going to find a for-profit company to deliver to the small

areas the USPS has to.