He has but one ball, and it's made of brass

I suspect that is like what you told me about having read in dozens of stories you saw about the USPS being forced to fund retirements for workers who haven't been born.

Please quantify that statement. Because I can't, and I can't see how anyone could.

What were the operating revenues in each of those segments and what were the corresponding expenses? I can only answer half of that question. The USPS breaks out its revenues by business segment every year. But it doesn't attempt to break out expenses that way. So all you can really tell from its finances are that as an entity it has had operating losses in the billions year after year -- to the point that it doesn't say "operating profits" with a negative numberfor each year in the operating history. They just say, "operating losses."

I'm not sure how anyone could break out net or operating profits (or losses) by particular business segments. Remember, revenues are not profits. Profits or losses are revenues minus expenses (and not just the expenses you want to include).

If it has had operating profits in those two business segments, I can see what the revenues were. What were the corresponding expenses?

 

Not even a good try. But I know you are smarter than that, so it must be fun just seeing me respond.

That press release is from last quarter (it isn't for the year), and it doesn't establish profitability in any business segment, the way you said. What you cut and paste are "highlights," from a press release.

According to the press release, overall operating revenues were $16.5 billion. They chose to present a number for operating expenses that doesn't include about $2 billion of expenses that they randomly exluded.

You can do that in a press release, I guess. You can't in a 10Q. Here is the link: http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/financial-conditions-results-reports/fy2014-q3.pdf. Go to page 3. Operating revenue for the quarter was indeed the $16.5 billion they put in the press release ($16.504 to be exact). Operating expenses were $18.421 billion. Their operating loss for the quarter was $1.917 billion. So no, the USPS as an entity isn't "close to break even."

Also, that is a number for just one particular quarter, not the year. And it doesn't establish profits for any particular business segments (for that quarter or otherwise) -- the mail delivery and postage stamps that you told me are profitable.

 

You are right about one thing. I don't think it wasn't random. It was obviously someone's protest over the fact that the USPS is no longer allowed to to treat the accrual of certain liabilities as if they don't exist, in order to create a dishonest picture of its finances that no private business could legally do.

You are very wrong about one thing. They didn't remove "the ridiculous prefunding of health care bennies and worker comp costs." Their income statement has nothing to do with whether they actually PREFUND those liabilities. In fact, they have not been prefunding them -- they began defaulting on that requirement in 2011.

Forget the funding mandate. Prior to that act in 2006, the USPS was allowed to use a government-made accounting standard that did not treat the accrual of those liabilities as a cost, or in their case a debt (since they weren't actually funding their promises).

A private company can't just decide that some of its debts don't belong on the income statement. Someone brought up Gannett. If it has a pension fund, and it isn't funding it, the cost still goes on its income statement as a debt cost. They don't get to hide it, the way the USPS used to and would like to continue to. Since Gannett is a publicly-traded company, the SEC would come down on it if it tried to use that kind of dishonest accounting.

That kind of BS is fine for the Department of Energy let's say, which isn't structured as a self-sustaining, independent agency that operates on a P&L basis, the way the USPS is. If the Department of Energy puts out a bullshit agency budget that doesn't state its expenses honestly (by not including health care retiree costs, for example), the stuff they kept hidden didn't magically disappear. But the net result is that we're all on the hook for whatever their actual costs are, anyhow -- it's a subsidized governmental agency that isn't operating under the pretense that it pays for itself.

In the case of the USPS, it is supposed to be a self-sustaining, independent agency that operates on a P&L basis. In short, it's supposed to operate the way a business does. And businesses don't get to use their own accounting rules to hide their debts.