Postal Service Logs Loss in Billions

JENNIFER LEVITZ
The Wall Street Journal
November 16, 2011

The U.S. Postal Service said it ended another fiscal year with billions of dollars in losses, an expected announcement that continued to illustrate the agency’s shaky financial picture.

The Postal Service said it lost $5.1 billion through Sept. 30 and that the loss would have hit $10.6 billion without recent legislation allowing it to delay a required annual $5.5 billion payment into a fund for future retiree health benefits. But the payment postponed by Congress is now due by Nov. 18, and the agency repeated that it could run out of cash by the end of fiscal 2012 without congressional action.

The Postal Service is an independent government agency whose operating budget isn’t funded by taxpayers, other than a subsidy to serve overseas voters and the disabled.

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This article was posted: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 12:00 pm

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