One of the most important things to understand about companies and countries both is the difference between sustainable prosperity and burning down the house.
You’re probably aware that Boeing has serious problems. Those problems have been obviously “on the way” for a long time. When Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle (where it makes most of its planes) to Chicago, the writing was on the wall.
BUT it was also a good time to buy Boeing stock:
The move to Chicago meant that Boeing’s executives had moved away from the manufacturing floor. It was the sign that Boeing’s culture was no longer “Engineering from top to bottom” but finance driven. And that emphasis on finance, on juicing profits, increasing executive salaries and driving up stock prices (those stock options don’t pay otherwise) had an effect. You can see it in the chart above.
Here’s a more recent chart:
Ouch.
What had happened is that Boeing was forced by the Clinton administration to merge with its competitor McDonnell Douglas in 1997. McDonnell Douglas was an “MBA” firm. Boeing was an engineering firm. The takeover changed Boeing’s culture and leadership, engineering became secondary and for over 20 years, it was good to be a stockholder.
But Boeing’s ability to make and design planes took a huge hit, there were massive quality problems and employees below the executive rank were angry and demoralized. Boeing planes started falling out of the sky. They were unable to make reliable rockets any more and eventually spending all their time on juicing profits blew up in the face.
This is a general law. The same thing happened at General Electric. If you’re old enough you remember GE as an American industrial giant, making everything from turbines to washing machines. It was a technological pioneer. Then Jack Welch took over, started firing 10% of employees every year (the “lowest performers”, supposedly) and turned GE into a finance company. After all, profits from finance are much higher than profits from manufacturing.
Unfortunately, as with American car companies, GE wasn’t really a bank. Its financial profits were still dependent on being a major industrial company, but Welch didn’t believe in manufacturing. And now GE is a shadow of itself. Jack Welch? Well he got rich, he was lionized as one of the great CEOs of the era, and he retired before GE went completely to hell.
GE will never recover, and with it went a big chunk of America’s industrial and technological might.
And it’s unlikely Boeing will really recover. If it wasn’t for China, it would be possible. But China’s building its own civilian airliners now. They’re not caught up yet: they can’t make the jet engines, but they will be able to soon. (They make excellent jet fighters, probably better than the equivalent American planes, as performance in the recent India/Pakistan border incident showed.)
So China’s likely five years out from producing cheaper more reliable planes than Boeing, which is to say, cheaper and more reliable than American jets. The European market is going to turn hard away from Boeing due to Trump’s games and their having Airbus jets as an alternative. So what’s left for Boeing? Geopolitical risk is too high for anyone but Americans to buy their planes, and Chinese jets will cost less. If you don’t want Chinese, buy European.
They screwed up the rocket they were building for NASA, giving the market to SpaceX by default (and perhaps soon other new companies.) American fighter jets are worse than Chinese jets, and even if they’re better than some other alternatives, the market is crashing on them, because with modern software, you can’t use them if the US decides to stop you. They effectively have a kill switch. Given the US has recently threatened both Europe (Greenland) and Canada, who the Hell wants to buy an American jet, when America is the danger?
Buy Russian. Buy Chinese. Buy European. But American? You’d have to be a moron.
Now let’s look at the US economy overall:
The entire US economy is being burned down. Those high profits aren’t a sign of health, they are a sign that excess profits are being taken at the expense of reinvestment in production and tech; of too high cost structures that make producing in America too expensive (because those profits indicate higher prices); of non-competitive markets, and, generally speaking, of burning down companies or the economy, or both, to make unsustainable profits.
The problem is simple enough. China’s now ahead in 89% of techs. Prices for its goods are much lower. Who the Hell is going to buy American goods? Two years ago there was an answer. American allies would, even at higher costs, because they were scared of China and wanted to stay on America’s good side. But now? After America has proved more dangerous than China to Europe and Canada and after Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs and other insane trade moves?
China’s looking mighty good, and America is the threat.
Oh people will still “invest” in the US, if you want to call it that. If America’s in its final stages of burning down the house to generate high profits, why not? But I suspect that even that is going to drop significantly because the geopolitical and exchange rate risk is just too high. As America declines, the US dollar will as well, and when you adjust for drops in the dollar, those returns aren’t going to look so great to non Americans.
The “Burning Down the House To Generate Heat” metaphor is one for our age. Not just for Boeing or America and its economy, but for humanity and ecosphere.
Welcome to the end of American Empire.
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Eric Anderson
This might seem off topic, but what the heck went wrong with the boomers? This has all occurred in my lifetime. As a kid, I watched Reagan begin burning it all down and everyone cheering on the Milken greed is good crowd. Watched the drown the government in a bath tub grover grifter. Watched the Clinton democrats embrace neoliberal economics. Watched hopey changey fraud Obama double down on it. All boomers.
The “me” generation getting in and getting out while the getting was good. “F’ them all … I’ll be dead.”
This is the “bezzle” JK Galbraith identified and warned about playing out for all to see. The bezzle was his term for a long-term pattern of bad faith in which the mark does not realize at the time that they have been a victim, and may even feel that they have gained in the short term, until being disillusioned later on. All these marks … but who really pays the price?
Later generations — their futures embezzeled by disgusting give me something for nothing greed.
For shit sake, you can’t even tell whether Mark Knopfler was being sarcastic in THE BOOMER ANTHEM. You tell me:
Now look at them yo-yos, that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free
Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya, them guys ain’t dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries
We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color TVs
See the little faggot with the earring and the make up
Yeah, buddy, that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot, he’s a millionaire
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries
We got to move these refrigerators, we gotta move these color TVs
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries
We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color TVs
Looky here, look out
I shoulda learned to play the guitar
I shoulda learned to play them drums
Look at that mama, she got it stickin’ in the camera man
We could have some
And he’s up there, what’s that?
Hawaiian noises?
Bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Get your money for nothin’, get your chicks for free
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries
We got to move these refrigerators, we gotta move these color TVs
Listen here
Now that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free
Money for nothin’, chicks for free
Get your money for nothin’ and your chicks for free
Ooh, money for nothin’, chicks for free
Money for nothin’, chicks for free (money, money, money)
Money for nothin’, chicks for free
Get your money for nothin’, get your chicks for free
Get your money for nothin’ and the chicks for free
Get your money for nothin’ and the chicks for free
Look at that, look at that
Get your money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my)
Chicks for free (I want my MTV)
Money for nothin’, chicks for free (I want my, I want my, I want my MTV)
Get your money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my)
And the chicks for free (I want my MTV)
Get your money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my)
And the chicks for free (I want my MTV)
Easy, easy money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my)
Easy, easy chicks for free (I want my MTV)
Easy, easy money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my)
Chicks for free (I want my MTV)
That ain’t workin’
Money for nothing, chicks for free
Money for nothing, chicks for free
Nothing is free. Somebody always pays the piper.
What a sickening horrible joke …
Ian Welsh
Wrote a long comment, so long that it turned into an article, I’ll post it tomorrow as an answer to your question Eric.
mago
That’s right/the party’s over/burning down the house.
From David Byrne and The Talking Heads
Ha ha. I could say more. Ian is topical with accurate assessments. Circling the drain is a popular pastime. It’s good to talk about it even if it’s just the choir listening.
Boeing falls out of the sky.
Indonesia and India and Iran Iraq and Istanbul not to mention Israel are burning down.
I’m just screwing around using “I” words, but there’s truth to it.
What other crises and hot spots beyond the environment, wars and gulags-coming-soon-to a theater near you are there? Lots of course.
Glad to know that there are some like minded others here and there. Makes it just little bit easier.
And the greedy gropers will reap just what they sow. Happens to the best of us.
Enough.
Eric Anderson
Almost makes me wonder what Ayn Rand would have to say if she were alive to see the logical end to her wet capitalist dream.
Money is power. And when the people, the republic, allow individuals to amass too much money/power, those unrestrained individuals will ALWAYS lay the world before them to waste to make it in their own image.
That’s what it MEANS to be human. To have the instinct and foresight to understand what the “res” in republic means. It’s the “thing” that allows the “public” to exist. If you can answer what the “thing” is, then you’re smarter than the average bear. But if you understand andBELIEVE in the “thing,” in the “res,” then congratulations! You’re a human! You understand that the thing that binds the public is the duty to all play an equal part in ensuring the public is viably maintained in perpetuity. YOU get the privilege of living in a res public, rather than a dystopian animal kingdom where those with the most power get to rule red in tooth and claw. Where THEY get to make the world in their own psychopathic images — where we are today.
Because?
Because a couple of generations wanted to party? Because they forgot their history as soon as televisions were invented and called 24/7/365 billionaire propaganda “entertainment.” Because “entertainment” became more important than the DUTY to ensure they were smart enough to keep their knee on the sociopaths necks?
Well?
Are you ENTERTAINED!!!
There is no “free” time.
We don’t “earn” a right to shut our brains off and be entertained.
We wake up in the morning, and work all day providing for each other. Not because we love one another. But, because we love the “thing” that lets us all get along and share this beautiful miracle of planet we’ve been bestowed. We get done with work, go home, eat, and then we go do our DUTY — which is being a part of the “res” that must be constantly vigilant enough to keep the wolves at bay. Then, we go to sleep and do it all over again.
Because?
Because we love the “thing” that ensures future generations get the privilege of doing the same — instead of suffering under the boot of the moneyful, the powerful, the sociopathic always want to be “better than you” elite.
Nothing is free. Freedom is vigilance.
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So China’s likely five years out from producing cheaper more reliable planes than Boeing, which is to say, cheaper and more reliable than American jets.
It would be foolhardy to invest in such a thing at this juncture. We are well past peak jet travel for the masses. It’s a dwindling market now despite the dead cat bounces. A better investment would be teleportation for the global elite if only so-called “lefties” could jettison their camel through the eye of a needle pensions. Scotty can instantly beam them to another locale when the hordes of unwashed storm the gates.
This is not to discount your post. You have done an excellent job recounting what transpired at Boeing. It validates my research on Boeing and as you say, Boeing is the microcosm mirroring the macrocosm that is/was the financialization of the Western economies.
Perhaps the following could be a addendum post related to this topic because it goes hand in hand with your point even though it’s all water under the bridge now. Deregulation ruined air travel. I never knew this but as it turns out, the American government considered air travel so important to the welfare of the American economy that it designated it a public utility and thus regulated it — for a time until the financializers absconded with American governance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xh3rCPWZ9Q
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As a kid, I watched Reagan begin burning it all down and everyone cheering on the Milken greed is good crowd.
Jan made a great comment to another post. He mentioned that this was transpiring in America before Reagan and the 1980s. He asked why no one cared to notice at that time. Great question.
I love the algos. They truly are intelligent. No sooner did Jan produce his comment then, inexplicably, the YouTube algo submits the following documentary for my review. On my family room smart tv no less. I guess that’s why it’s called a smart tv, no?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7tzuZQ24TE
That documentary was bemoaning all of this even then and then was the early 70s. The doc implies that the transformation began during the decade of the 60s and of course as we now know, it continued unabated through the 70s and the 80s and 90s and it continues to this day albeit the mission is pretty much accomplished.
The doc validates Jan’s comment. In answer to Jan’s question, people noticed but no one did anything about it. This doc was a challenge to American manufactures to step up and compete. American manufacturers didn’t answer that challenge. Their greed allowed them to be usurped by Wall Street and, well, the rest is history as Ian has aptly underscored here in a myriad of posts.
Reagan was certainly a shot of steroids, but it was all in the works prior to his ascension.
First they decimated the blue collar jobs and now 60 years later they are decimating the white collar jobs via AI. Silicon Valley will soon enough be Youngstown, Ohio and soon enough we will all be, effectively, Palestinians slated for extinction.
Mark Level
Yes, monetize everything and make the stupid proles pay dear for utter crap. That’s the model, it’s not even hidden. And now the new feature is you’re “subscribed” and the predators can raid your bank account monthly for life (probably when you’re dead also.)
Our jolly Overlord Jeff Bezos just gutted the WaPo (which was a shit propaganda Wurlitzer for the Overlord and Zionist classes but occasionally a real bit of journalism slipped by all the guardrails) and the day after he announces $200 billion spending over the next year for— AI & Robotics!! Both designed to take away human jobs. Former George Soros servant boy Scott Besant announced this is the future of work under the Trump regime, even if all those brown and black and Native American Undesirables can be forcibly deported (they’re going slower than Sleepy Joe Biden, because they try to break laws doing so, some people can fight back) there will be no jobs for the “aggrieved White Working Class” in the Midwest and other abandoned hellscapes of USA. Heckuva job, Brownie!!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/05/amazon-ai-robotics-bezos-washington-post?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
Oh, speaking of ethnic cleansing, it’s been reported that Dr. Mehmet Oz has directed ICE to go after Armenians not fully naturalized. The Armenian genocide (which Israel denies) by Turkey was Hitler’s model for the Reich, maybe the Trump Clowns are too shambolic to pull off a full domestic genocide but 5 Stars to Oz for aspiration.
Replying to posters–
To Eric Anderson– I am a boomer myself, would be the LAST person to defend them, this is what I’ll say. I’m from a far later cohort than the likes of Trump, Bill and Hill. I believe (check my math though) that Bush Jr., Bill and the Donald were all born in 1946. A significant year, obviously, the first full year after WW II, American taking away the Imperial prize from the battling duo of Germany and previous champ UK. Kind of beyond symbolic that this crew burned it all down. Are they reincarnated Nazis or Great Game players? Not impossible.
Now I was in high school in the mid- to late-70s and here’s what I’ll say. “My generation”, later than Pete Townsend’s, babies when all the hippie/ New Left “liberation” was happening, were about evenly split between future Yuppie Scum and disillusioned types, future punks (me included) who opted out of the bullshit, hated the Vietnam War, Nixon, Kissinger, Agnew and that ilk. I think the best take on the Boomers from the 21st Century is that of Russell Dobular (not a Boomer, a decade or more younger than me): Many of the poor Boomers died from medical neglect, drugs, deaths of despair, etc. by now. The ones that survived were economically viable, or had generational wealth from parents, etc. (I’m sure 2 of my haters will attack me for still being alive. My only response is a raspberry. I was never a goddamn striver or Yuppie; teaching high school for over 3 decades one could earn a decent pension over time, but a lot of dues were paid.)
Now as to Mark Knopfler’s MTV “tribute”– a real beauty, I favored it at the time, he’s a jazz-man (but cooler even than Steely Dan) pissing on the fake cock-rock posers. We had the likes of Journey, Foreigner, and lots of others that thankfully I have forgotten broadcasting aural boy-spam all over MOR radio. Luckily, I hated that shit and I was liberated my Freshman year of college when I heard Richard Hell & the Voidoids “Blank Generation” (a week or so before the Sex Pistols broke “Anarchy in the UK”) on my college radio station. My 3rd Eye opened, I joined the Punk, Nothing to Lose contingent, never looked back.
“Money for Nothing/ I Want My MTV” is pretty good satire despite the “little faggot” casual homophobia not aging so well, but it is far from the best. For that I give you “Industrial Disease” (which is actually about Post-Industrialism looming):
“Industrial Disease”
“Now, warning lights are flashing down at Quality Control
Somebody threw a spanner, and they threw him in the hole
There’s rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down
There’s a meeting in the boardroom
They’re trying to trace the smell
There’s a leaking in the washroom, there’s a sneak in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors, someone was heard to sneeze
Goodness me, could this be industrial disease?
The caretaker was crucified for sleeping at his post
They’re refusing to be pacified, it’s him they blame the most
The watchdog’s got rabies, the foreman’s got the fleas
Everyone’s concerned about industrial disease
There’s panic on the switchboard, tongues in knots
Some come out in sympathy, some come out in spots
Some blame the management, some the employees
And everybody knows it’s the industrial disease
Yeah, now the work force is disgusted, downs tools, walks
Innocence is injured, experience just talks
Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees
That these are “classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze”
On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
Philosophy is useless, theology is worse
History boils over, there’s an economics freeze
Sociologists invent words that mean “industrial disease”
Doctor Parkinson declared “I’m not surprised to see you here
You’ve got smoker’s cough from smoking
Brewer’s droop from drinking beer
I don’t know how you came to get the Betty Davis’ knees
But, worst of all young man you’ve got industrial disease”
He wrote me a prescription he said “You are depressed
I’m glad you came to see me to get this off your chest
Come back and see me later, next patient please
Send in another victim of industrial disease, ha-ha
Ha, splendid!”
And I go down to Speaker’s Corner I’m-a thunderstruck
They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong
There’s a protest singer, he’s singing a protest song, he says
“They wanna have a war to keep their factories
They wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to stop us buying Japanese
They wanna have a war to stop Industrial Disease
They’re pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy, incarcerate your mind
Give you Rule Brittania, gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in España and Sunday striptease”
Meanwhile the first Jesus says “I’d cure it soon
Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons”
The other one’s out on hunger strike, he’s dying by degrees
How come Jesus gets industrial disease?
Oh no… I’m sick!”
Cannot add a word to that brilliance. mago’s also correct, David Byrne saw it coming with Burning Down the House, but earlier did the brilliant “Life During Wartime.”
https://genius.com/Talking-heads-life-during-wartime-lyrics
He knew that the likes of Mud Club and CBGB’s were just youth playpens, and shit would get real at some point. And here it comes. Gravesites out by the highway? Phone tapped? (Hell, Bob Dylan warned of this a generation prior, some Control never changes.)
What would Ayn Rand say if she were here? She’d be delighted actually (though the nominal Christianity of the MAGA CHUDs would likely disgust her, to her credit.)
Put the Worst People in the World in power (okay, actually these people are just the puppets of the actual Worst People, you get the point) and you get what we got. As Ian says, King of Shit Island (he literally cleared a room of reporters recently, it’s on film).
Keats was right, “the Poets are the unacknowledged Legislators of the World”, especially those who tear down the ugly, lying mask of Authority. See also Public Image Limited’s 1984 The Order of Death (This is what you want, This is what you get). I think John Lydon was a CHUD during the first Trump admin, don’t know even if he’s still alive, it doesn’t matter. History is full of ironies and remains “a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
spud
Eric Anderson:
the boomers did not put clinton into the white house twice. clinton was a minority president twice. boomers did not put obama in twice, and boomers did not put biden in.
spud
what boeing did was to try to increase profits more than the company could naturally produce, and to increase those un-natural profits every year going forward.
this of course is what every free market crank try’s to attain. we saw that with united health.
here is one of the best take downs of bill clintons free market disasters. you have to give the author credit, he said what i have said for years, it started under carter and ray-gun, but it was almost 100% bill clinton.
and because clinton so ingrained this crank ideology so deep into the U.S., it cannot be reversed under what our government is today.
https://dissentmagazine.org/article/the-legacy-of-the-clinton-bubble/
“Chickens Come Home to Roost
History should deal harshly with Bill Clinton. Throughout his terms, real wages stagnated, manufacturing and service jobs moved overseas in large numbers, and the middle class was squeezed. With the federal government asleep at the wheel, there was a significant rise in predatory lending practices by banks and mortgage companies.
By Clinton’s final years in office, all of these trends had contributed to an ominous rise in delinquencies and foreclosures on subprime mortgage loans. This was particularly pronounced in urban America. In Chicago, for instance, foreclosures on subprime mortgages rose from 131 in 1993 to more than 5,000 in 1999.”
“The war in Iraq, along with the erosion of trust in U.S. financial institutions, will likely continue to undermine the dollar’s role as the world’s transactional currency, reserve currency, store of value, and safe investment haven. As the dollar continues to fall, higher inflation will be imported into the United States, and the Federal Reserve may find itself unable to reduce interest rates aggressively enough because of fears of inflation and the need to defend the dollar. It will likely seek new ways to push liquidity into the banking system, but as in Iraq itself, this is unfamiliar and uncertain territory.”
“During the Clinton years, mortgage debt grew by nearly two-thirds, from $4.1 trillion to $6.8 trillion. Under Bush, mortgage debt then doubled to $13 trillion in 2006. Likewise, under Clinton, consumer debt doubled from $856 billion to $1.7 trillion. Under Bush, it grew by another one-third to $2.3 trillion in 2006.
Much of this debt was borrowed from foreigners flush with dollars, a result of our huge trade deficits. This was the underside of the Clinton bubble economy, and it set the course for the Bush years. U.S. trade deficits also translated into increased foreign ownership of corporate America. Foreign ownership of U.S. corporate stocks and bonds rose nearly 50 percent in Clinton’s final three years, from $1.9 trillion to $2.8 trillion, and then another 53 percent under Bush to $4.3 trillion.”
—————-
china will get russian engines, and of course copy them. as russian and chinese passenger jets appear all over asia, they will bury free market capitalist U.S. garbage into a dung heap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-fgBJhbn5E
How Russia Built the PD-14 Jet Engine for the MC-21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCCnk3D10QQ
Despite Sanctions, Russia Unveils Fully Domestic MC-21 Passenger Jet to Replace Airbus and Boeing
Feral Finster
The insiders are laughing all the way to the bank.
StewartM
Ian,
The company I used to work for (let’s say scientific/industrial) is following the same path as Boeing. We got lectured on “peer companies performance” and how we should strive to keep up, with only ONE METRIC used: the stock price, and moreover only over short periods (say, a three-year window). Hell, smoking cigarettes may yield a positive effect after only three years! Like GE, like Boeing, the finance capitalist (and really, is there any other kind of capitalist?) takeover of industrial-tech companies is akin to smoking, or drinking heavily, or taking drugs–maybe a short-lived rush of euphoria, followed by inevitable decline and rot.
The leadership is delusional, a result of a deliberate divorce between what passes as financial “smarts” and technical knowledge (or at least, technical awareness). When I hired in after college, all the leadership back then had engineering degrees; like Boeing’s and thus they knew there were cost-control knobs you dared not touch; you could at the least harm the company long-term and at worst, blow the place up and kill people (and in fact, that actually happened in the company’s history). But the changes started in the late 80s and early 90s.
First it was the ending of true R&D (by which I mean R&D focused to create entire new platforms for the company, instead of marginal improvements to existing products or substitutes). This was done by dissolving the R&D organization and farming out its individual parts to business organizations (whose focus was of course, short-term marginal improvements). Over the next decade or two, there was a loss of capabilities in terms of both hardware and know-how; instruments were scrapped and not replaced, the experts who knew how to use them were let go or retired, and relentless downsizing. In my area of expertise, c. 35 years ago we had almost 30 people working in that field; by the time I retired, there were only 9. There is simply no way that 9 people can have the degree of specialization and deep knowledge of particular facets of that field that 30 did. Our management told itself that we still retained the same degree of institutional knowledge when we didn’t.
A key way that this decline was managed was by replacing middle and lower management. To all these changes, the old managers, despite their many warts, often pushed back against decrees from on top. That’s because their training and career paths involved them first working for 10-12 years being a scientist, an engineer, a physicist, or some other technical field before they could take the first step on the management ladder. Ergo, these knew the value of what the financial wizards on high were in effect destroying, they knew technical excellence when they saw it and were determined to preserve it as much as possible. So these were replaced by fast-tracked hires who might be hired in as scientists/engineers or whatnot, but who after a mere 2-3 years would be made managers. These new hires didn’t complain about destroying institutional knowledge because their brief tenures as practicing scientists/engineers didn’t give them much idea of its depth. Moreover, this fast-tracking almost meant that they (unlike their predecessors) couldn’t recognize truly excellent technical work against work that was not-so-good. Upper management wanted yes-men to their decrees from high, and they eventually got them.
As a result, my company just recently fell out of the Fortune 500. One of the reasons is that it’s being crushed by Trump’s tariffs, despite being a major manufacturer. What makes this ironic is that during much of the last 20 years, all the company TVs had Fox News on 24/7/365 (they pretended that this was just “listening to the workforce” but hell, the Network News Channel would have been much more balanced and was all that was really needed). Fools!
Jorge
Boeing had a dual structure, commercial and military. If you worked in military contracting, you were assumed to be morally corrupted and could not transfer over to commercial, but commercial people could transfer to military.
In the 90s, Boeing was merged with a military contractor (Lockheed) who cheerfully dynamited this structure and made everyone military. This was the beginning of the end.
spud
StewartM;
the parasites, and leeches you described were fully unleashed in 1993-2001.
they will gut your company, then walk away fat and happy, and say isn’t capitalism a wonderful thing.
get rid of the stock market, get rid on one company owning another, turn everything into co-ops, and that includes trailer parks and apartment building etc.
Jan Wiklund
My friend the retired Boeing engineer tells a partly different story. The merger was not ordered by Clinton, it was hotly sought for by the parties themselves. And Boeing auto-destroyed, its CEO Harry Stonecipher was a true disciple of Jack Welch: grinding as much profit as possible in as short time as possible., leaving an empty shelf behind.
Of course, he reflected the desires of the owners. I don’t know who owned Boeing and I didn’t remember to ask my friend. I suppose it’s the usual equity funds that are not interested in the future because it’s going to sell the shares within the next 20 seconds to another equity fund that thinks likewise.
And that is the true force behind the decline. Nobody in power is interested in what happens ten years ahead. Equity funds think in seconds, politicians in next term of office.
Jan Wiklund
Shell, not shelf, please.
StewartM
Spud,
It actually started with Reagan. Everything that Clinton did that was bad, Reagan had already in the works and would have done. If Clinton had not won at all in 1993 there would be no change (unless someone like Jessie Jackson had been elected, with a friendly Congress, and there was no chance of that).
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Jan, Clinton may not have forced it per se between Boeing and MD, but he certainly wanted it and pushed for it going so far as to coerce the fledgling EU to approve the merger when initially it looked like the EU would not.
https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/mjil/article/1543/&path_info=22_2_359_boeing.pdf
Early in the merger approval process in Boeing, European Union Commissioner Karl Van Miert publicly stated that the proposed transaction exhibited a “community dimension” and violated the European Community’s Merger Regulation. Yet paradoxically, the European Commission, despite determining that the merger was anti-competitive in the commercial aircraft sector, decided to extract various concessions from the Boeing Company (hereinafter, Boeing) instead of blocking the
merger. The Commission’s retreat from Van Miert’s earlier position was largely a reaction to President Clinton’s admonition that an anti-Boeing/McDonnell Douglas merger decision could lead the United States to bring the matter to the World Trade Organization or to pursue “some options ourselves.” Nonetheless, in Boeing, the European Commission strayed significantly from the dictates of its earlier de Haviland decision. In de Haviland, discussed infra, the Commission blocked a proposed
merger and expounded upon the standards of the Merger Regulation by establishing the threshold evaluative criteria for analyzing and blocking proposed transactions.
This is a perfect example of America’s soft power in play — a soft power Trump is destroying if he hasn’t destroyed it already. Of course, this is an example of America using that soft power for what would ultimately be a highly negative outcome in every conceivable way, so, so much for soft power, right?
Clinton put his foot down and the EU Commission snapped to. Could Trump do the same thing today, all things considered? I would say, no way.
One wonders, had the EU refused to approve it, what would have transpired?
StewartM
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Could Trump do the same thing today, all things considered? I would say, no way.
Absolutely Trump could and would. Look how the corps bowed their heads to him from Day One.
The only resistance to Trump is popular resistance, the little people, and not the Big Corp Boys.
Jan Wiklund
My friend the retired Boeing engineer confirmed my suspicion. Boeing is owned by
“1. The Vanguard Group, Inc. – This investment management firm is consistently reported as the largest institutional shareholder of Boeing with roughly around 8–9% of outstanding shares held. (Simply Wall St)
2. BlackRock, Inc. – around ~6–7% of shares. (Simply Wall St)
3. Capital Research and Management Company – ~5–6%. (Simply Wall St)
4. FMR LLC (Fidelity) – ~4–5%. (Simply Wall St)
5. State Street Global Advisors – ~4–5%. (Simply Wall St)”
Equity funds never bother about long term growth or even survival, only about extremely short term profit.