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DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

cnbc.com

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Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#61

Post by pdonis »

haltingproblem wrote: post #15

There is a notion that Boeing is/was a company with an insanely great engineering culture and their engineers lived in an idyllic culture of building great and safe products. This great culture was all lost as a result of the merger with McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3]. This argument is frequently put forth by ex-Boeing engineers. This is an apologia for Boeing's behavior which killed 346 people and endangered the li…

> Not a single engineer raised issues with the engineering of the aircraft. Not a single engineer wrote a blistering memo calling out its failing or quit in protest.

I don't think this is true. There was an HN thread some time ago on an article describing how one senior production manager, who was an engineer by background and had previously worked at Boeing as an engineer, looked at the design specs, talked to people he knew in engineering, realized there were problems coming, and did exactly what you describe: wrote a blistering memo, found it wasn't going to get listened to, and quit in protest.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#62

Post by pdonis »

haltingproblem wrote: post #44
blendergeek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fully and entirely misunderstand the argument. The argument is that after the McDonnel Douglas merger, the "idyllic culture of building great and safe products" was pillaged and destroyed by greedy corporate overlords. At this point (so goes the argument) all the "good engineers" who would have most certainly spoken up were laid off and were replaced with dime-a-dozen engineers who were overworked, underpaid, and…

Sigh. The mythmaking contines. In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate causality. Every proximate event can plausibly be claimed to be the cause for a subsequent event. As they say for want of a nail the war was lost. We don't say the war was lost because the nail was missing because 20 years ago they changed the way they cataloged the nails in the hardware store which sold the nails…

> In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate causality.

Yes, and you have them backwards. "The engineers failed to raise the issue" is a proximate cause, not an ultimate cause. If engineers in your company are failing to raise obvious technical issues, then either you're hiring incompetent engineers, or your corporate culture discourages engineers from speaking up and punishes those who do. Either way, the ultimate cause is a failure of the organization as a whole, which ultimately means its top management, not a failure of the engineers.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#63

Post by kumarski »

I bought as much as I could on Margin at $150.

Boeing is a national asset and has hundreds of marketing vendors in India.

Gonna boom under spaceforce and India vs. CCP.

Boeing is a national asset and it's gonna be institutionally owned heavily or dismantled and sold off into different units.

Gonna be wild to watch.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#64

Post by wolverine876 »

Per another source, the $2.5 billion mostly goes to other major corporations:

* 243.6 million fine

* $500 million into a fund for the families of passengers who were killed in the crashes

* $1.77 billion in compensation to airlines that were unable to use their Max jets while they were grounded

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/boeing-pay-25-bill...

For the most part, the U.S. Department of Justice saved some Fortune 500 companies from civil litigation costs.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#65

Post by m463 »

blendergeek wrote: post #32
deepsun wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing belongs to the USA, so US citizens will take the punishment then. Am I right?

Boeing is a publicly traded company based in the USA. That is different from being owned by the USA. Amtrak (which provided passenger rail service in the USA) is owned by the US Federal Government. Boeing on the other hand is owned by a multitude of individuals like you and me and probably a good number hedgefunds.

Meanwhile, Airbus... I've always heard the French Government supports it, but it's hard to see exactly how.

and something interesting I just noticed:

"In 2015, Airbus Group said it was establishing an R&D center and venture capital fund in Silicon Valley."

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#67

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

So the fine is about the cost of twenty-five 737 Max planes.

>Boeing had around 450 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft built and awaiting delivery.

>Boeing has unfilled orders for over 4,000 737 MAX jets.

https://simpleflying.com/737-max-deliveries-december/

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#68

Post by seibelj »

chmaynard wrote: post #17

Corporations in the USA have the same legal rights as individuals in matters such as free speech, political lobbying, and so on. But when it comes to criminal liability, the people in charge are not held accountable and can buy their way out of jail with corporate funds. What a great country.

Hypothetically, let's say you had perfect access to all internal communications, emails, etc. And after all of this, you never found a smoking gun - not anyone to blame directly for this. The Max issue was caused by a culture of stupidity, greed, cronyism, etc. etc.

What then? Should we shut Boeing down? Should we arrest the executive team out of principle?

I think a lot of enormous fuckups like this are not directed by individuals, but more likely a miasma of incompetence that cannot be directly associated with any one person. It's more like we should arrest Harvard Business School professors for teaching MBA strategy wrong.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#69

Post by guiriduro »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #67

So the fine is about the cost of twenty-five 737 Max planes. >Boeing had around 450 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft built and awaiting delivery. >Boeing has unfilled orders for over 4,000 737 MAX jets. https://simpleflying.com/737-max-deliveries-december/

You should probably see it in terms of bottom line rather than top line, i.e. the operating margin gained on each sale is about $12M according to wikipedia, so they would need to sell 200 maxes to obtain the net cash they will use to pay the fines.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#70

Post by snovv_crash »

seibelj wrote: post #68
chmaynard wrote: post #17

Corporations in the USA have the same legal rights as individuals in matters such as free speech, political lobbying, and so on. But when it comes to criminal liability, the people in charge are not held accountable and can buy their way out of jail with corporate funds. What a great country.

Hypothetically, let's say you had perfect access to all internal communications, emails, etc. And after all of this, you never found a smoking gun - not anyone to blame directly for this. The Max issue was caused by a culture of stupidity, greed, cronyism, etc. etc. What then? Should we shut Boeing down? Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? I think a lot of enormous fuckups like this are not directed…

Isn't this why we pay the executive team the big bucks?
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