[TheRealVille]

Businesses don't operate that way. If coal companies are profitable, then they are operating. They will even operate at a loss for awhile to avoid losing their best employees. If they can't make money, then they idle mines. Obama has not changed the way that businesses make decisions. What he has done is lower expectations of coal company owners of future profits. They have been and will continue to be very pessimistic about future prospects for good reason.

Extremely warm last Winter, record low gas prices, coal selling prices cheap, coal mining prices high, and western coal selling at 6-8 dollars a ton. My buddy that knows some of the top people at Alpha said they told him that Alpha was sitting on huge amounts of coal, millions and millions of tons, refusing to mine it. It memory serves, it was 150 million tons.