Bye, bye, Miss American Pie. More and more, MORONS are in charge here. Sad.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/...5665744946.html

A year ago @Porter_and_Co published a dire warning about a mega-cap American stock. This was the only mega cap stock we told investors to avoid. And it is no ordinary business. It is America's most strategically important company. We said it would soon "collapse."

Our January 27th 2023 headline "COMING SOON: THE BOEING COLLAPSE." How did we know? For the last 20 years there hasn't been a company in America that's embraced more bad ideas - from financial engineering to ESG - than Boeing.

In 1997, Boeing merged with fellow aerospace manufacturer McDonnell Douglas in a $13 billion stock swap. It was a match made in hell. Boeing was known for quality, and McDonnell was known for financial engineering - with a focus on cost cutting and the company's share price.

Although the Boeing name survived, it was the McDonnell Douglas attitude that prevailed. McDonnell CEO Harry Stonecipher, who took over day-to-day operations at Boeing, immediately took a carving knife to Boeing's highly-paid engineering staff.

And in May 2001, Boeing management made a physical break with its engineers: manufacturing headquarters stayed in Seattle, while corporate moved to downtown Chicago, 1,700 miles away. That split symbolized the growing distance between builders and bosses.

To say that the company's engineers were disenfranchised doesn't describe it: Boeing's entire culture was erased.

CEO Stonecipher even bragged about what he'd destroyed: "When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that's run like a business rather than a great engineering firm."

Today both Boeing's CFO Brian West and CEO David Calhoun are formerly senior GE finance people. And they?ve done to Boeing what they did to GE: Destroy the balance sheet.

From 2010 to 2019 Boeing spent $44 billion (!) on buying back its own shares, while adding $50 billion in debt. This reduced the share count by 23% and sent the stock price up 200%. But the underlying business...?

Bean counters can't build airplanes. And Boeing's planes started falling out of the sky. As a result, free cash flow plunged to negative $4.3 billion annually by 2019.

Today bankruptcy grows more certain. Cumulative net income over the last three years is negative $20 billion. And the company has $52 billion in total debt. Interest expense is currently $2.5 billion a year, but will move much higher as Boeing's debt will be downgraded to junk.

But -- never fear! Investors have nothing to worry about with one of America's greatest and most important companies spiraling towards bankruptcy (like their planes spiraling towards the ground) because Stephanie Pope will save the day!

Stephanie Pope is the chief operating officer of Boeing. She holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from Southwest Missouri State University. And an MBA from another intellectual powerhouse, Lindenwood University. She has zero engineering background.

Why would someone with this kind of background be placed in charge of operations of the world's leading aerospace engineering firm? Maybe because she is the executive sponsor of Boeing's Women Inspiring Leadership, a group dedicated to "increasing gender diversity awareness."

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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

Well, that explains a lot...
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Boeing, Boeing, Bon?

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-Wolfram v. Kiparski
NAR 28643 - TRA 15520
MTMA Section #606 President

BoZOeing.
Mega-mergers almost always have disastrous results that destroy product, employees, or both.

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

That was a very disturbing article. But not surprising. This country?s powerhouses are being destroyed right before our eyes. We are glad to be retired, and not have to experience this corporate crap personally. But we worry about the future for our kids and grandkids.

__________________
Lee Reep
NAR 55948

Projects: Semroc Saturn 1B, Ken Foss Designs Mini Satellite Interceptor
In the Paint Shop: Nothing! Too cold!
Launch-Ready: Farside-X, Maxi Honest John, Super Scamp

Boeing management was reluctant to give up control, but the feds forced them to accept McDonnell-Douglas. An article I read several years ago said the McDonnell-Douglas was approaching bankruptcy and used the Clinton admin to get their hands on the large cash reserve Boeing had.

If that isn't a blatant political post that does not belong here per forum rules I don't know what is.

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

It looks like Scott fixed it. Thanks, Scott!

Having lived through that whole mess as part of "heritage Boeing" I certainly see that as the beginning of the downward slide, even though I gained some great colleagues who came north from Douglas in Long Beach. I also found it ironic that I had my biggest of five offers for my newly minted BSME in 1978 from Douglas in Long Beach. But I didn't want to go to southern California....

__________________
Bernard Cawley
NAR 89040 L1 - Life Member
SAM 0061
AMA 42160
KG7AIE

From the UK:

The box-tickers shall inherit the Earth
06 January 2024

https://archive.is/drwYB#selection-1377.0-1393.15

In every organisation, whether in the public or private sector, a great inversion has taken place where the people who do actual, useful work (from surgeons to call-centre staff) find themselves working at the behest of a vast army of box-tickers and pen-pushers who demand that they must conform to a host of metrics and proxy targets so their contribution can fit into a cell on a spreadsheet. Although this caste often uses capitalist language, its principal achievement is a kind of Sovietisation of the modern organisation.

As in the Soviet system, the people who report, quantify and measure things end up with all the power and none of the scrutiny. Rather than fostering motivated teams and trusting them to make decisions, every job is reduced to an algorithm, with the participants treated as wholly interchangeable components. Although beadily focused on the output of productive staff, the administrative caste effectively marks its own homework when it comes to its own activities.

And this is my explanation for the "productivity crisis". It isn't that there has been no improvement in productivity. It's just that genuinely productive people now form a minority in any organisation. Not only do they feel powerless, they have spotted that any monetary gains from performance improvements will never translate into better pay or working conditions for them. Instead, they will be dressed up as "cost-savings" and presented as such to investors by the finance director and the chief executive (who used to be the finance director before he got promoted) since the chief preoccupation of the modern organisation is the collation of numbers. Any money left over will be used to hire even more people in bogus administrative roles, largely as a reputational firebreak for the executive team, who are much more motivated by fear of scandal than by satisfying customers. According to Mattie Brignal in the Telegraph, HR salaries alone stand at 25 billion pounds, up from 15 billion in 2017. Why? Executive paranoia seems the most plausible explanation.

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Below is an ancient graph, but it gets the point across. There are other graphs I've seen showing the same for school teachers vs administrators and college profs vs administrators, but I can't find them right now:

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

Note that this was filed BEFORE the door plug incident.

A recent lawsuit alleges 'excessive' defects at Boeing parts supplier in Kansas
13 Jan 2024

https://www.kcur.org/news/2024-01-1...-parts-supplier

The lawsuit adds to the scrutiny of Spirit AeroSystems, a manufacturer based in Wichita, Kansas, which also made the fuselage and the door plug that blew out of the side of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 during a flight last week.

A quality-control inspector working at a key supplier for Boeing's 737 Max plane reported finding an "excessive amount of defects" at a plant in Kansas, according to documents filed in federal court last month.

The allegations add to the scrutiny of Spirit AeroSystems, which made the fuselage and the door plug that blew out of the side of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 during a flight last Friday with 171 passengers and six crew members aboard. No serious injuries were reported.

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The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan