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Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

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Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#51

Post by lobochrome »

supernova87a wrote: post #25

Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…

Wells Fargo’s balance sheet was also capped which led to massive shareholder losses arguably.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#52

Post by Etheryte »

constantcrying wrote: post #43
coretx wrote: post #20

Plea deals rob victims from the truth they need for closure and recovery. On top of that, plea deals also undermine public trust in the rule of law. I wonder how "happy" the Judge is for being forced to give it credibility...

The criminal justice system doesn't exist to emotionally satisfy the victims.

That depends on how you look at it, it would be pretty straightforward to take the philosophical stance that that's all that it exists for. Mostly it's just a matter of framing.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#53

Post by lordnacho »

constantcrying wrote: post #36
supernova87a wrote: post #25

Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…

The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…

Why can't the government mandate a board replacement? The board can figure out for themselves who is responsible, I would guess the finger would typically point at the CEO.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#54

Post by cycomanic »

constantcrying wrote: post #49
iSnow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to get the leadership by the balls. The CEO isn't going to change a company's culture alone, but she has leverage and connections. If they know they face prison if the company plays foul in a major way, they will put pressure on their deputies to change culture. Also, fines that go up to say 10% of global revenue. That ensures that even activist shareholders take note and do not pressure the CEO to cut corne…

>If they know they face prison if the company plays foul in a major way, they will put pressure on their deputies to change culture. It is completely ridiculous to criminally prosecute leadership for crimes which happened without their knowing/consent/acknowledgment. It would be a perversion of justice to jail someone because many levels down someone else committed a crime. The best corporate culture does not prevent…

Well what are the ridiculously high salaries for if they don't even take responsibility. I mean parents are liable for their children, so why should a CEO not be made responsible for the culture of the corporation underneath them?

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#55

Post by lordnacho »

mulmen wrote: post #45
monero-xmr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks are declared “too big to fail”. Banks! How can a bank be so important, and ostensibly private, that it can’t fail and let its shareholders take their licks? There is no world - none - literally no possible universe - that Boeing cannot sell to the government, or that it fails, or that its planes get grounded indefinitely, or anything even remotely close to this outcome. There are 2 plane makers of appreciable s…

Banks are not declared too big to fail. They are sometimes described that way. But banks fail all the time. It’s why the FDIC exists. Boeing and the US government have a long and intimate relationship but it is mutual. Boeing was fully vertically integrated until it was favorable to encourage competition in the aviation industry and the US government broke the company up. Boeing is not untouchable.

Think he means certain banks. Think JP Morgan, Citi, that kind of bank, rather than banks as a whole.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#56

Post by cycomanic »

uejfiweun wrote: post #11
Animats wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia: "In 2022, Calhoun (Boeing CEO) received $22.5 million from Boeing. Most of his 2022 compensation was in the form of estimated value of stock and option awards. He received the same $1.4 million salary as in 2021. Boeing announced in March 2023 that Calhoun would not receive a $7 million performance-based bonus, which had been tied to getting the new widebody 777X into service by the end of 2023. In Februar…

Was Calhoun really the problem? This company is one of those massive, glacial companies that have enormous inertia. Whatever changes in process led to all these disasters, it was something that started long before Calhoun's reign, I personally blame Jim McNerney.

So you're saying a CEO doesn't really change anything about a corporation, so what is he being paid for?

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#57

Post by kortilla »

jajko wrote: post #19
hdesh wrote: post #4

I wonder if the outcome would have been any different if the 737 MAX crashes had happened on the American soil and involved loss of American lives.

Absolutely 0 doubt about that. Just look how at the beginning they tried to blame it all on incompetent african pilots. Human lives have wildly different values to us based on race, ethnicity, religion, remoteness etc., I don't like it but this is still very much part of human nature. How much do you care if plane with 150 civilians falls down in remote russia or china and everybody burns to charcoal? Now compare it…

It had nothing to do with racism against the victims. It’s quite literally that the level of rigor to be a pilot in Africa is not the same as what the FAA requires.

Airlines very frequently get banned from US airspace because their procedures do not meet the strict safety bar set by the FAA. So it’s very reasonable to assume that what was identified as a training gap on the MCAS operations was due to sloppy regional airline training procedures.

So it’s true that it would have been taken more seriously in the US, but it’s because the FAA and NTSB set the bar for aviation safety and crash investigation rigor world wide.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#58

Post by lupusreal »

constantcrying wrote: post #36
supernova87a wrote: post #25

Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…

The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…

How do you even "change management culture" without punishing people who are innocent of any crime other than being a manager who embodies the sort of management culture you're trying to stamp out? If you limit yourself to firing/prosecuting the specific managers that committed fraud/etc this time nothing will change because those guys only existed in the org and operated that way because of the broader management context. Sweeping layoffs are probably a necessarily prerequisite for fixing Boeing.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#59

Post by davedx »

constantcrying wrote: post #36
supernova87a wrote: post #25

Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…

The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…

> The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard

> What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture

Who is ultimately responsible for management at a company though? The CEO and the other C-level people. This isn't really the daunting difficult problem you make it out to be: the buck stops at the C-suite. Who else could possibly be ultimately responsible??

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#60

Post by davedx »

lordnacho wrote: post #53
constantcrying wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…

Why can't the government mandate a board replacement? The board can figure out for themselves who is responsible, I would guess the finger would typically point at the CEO.

Boards are often toothless though, just look at Tesla's.

Replace the C-suite. This is done frequently in M&A's and other corporate strategies in extremis. Fire the guys at the top and replace them with people with good track records.

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