US prosecutors recommend Justice Department criminally charge Boeing

Expropriate the company, at least 51%, take control and let public officials (knowing the US way, it will be some army general) set up checks and controls where necessary, then sell the shares (maybe keep an 'oversight' part, like 10% to keep a state official on the board).

Current stock owners will loose half their value (which is a good enough punishment for this lack of oversight), the state will have access to privileged company information which will allow the prosecution of human responsibles, top executives will be sacked (and their comp reduced by half since their comp is in stocks) and maybe the company will start on good base again.

The problem for Boeing is that this wasn't a one time thing. Two weeks ago it came out that they were using counterfeit titanium, then a few days later the CEO testifies that they had in fact retaliated against whistleblowers, then a few days later it comes out that they actually hid faulty parts from FAA regulators and then lost them. Every apple that gets pulled from the bushel is rotten and there are a lot of apples left.

Good but I have a feeling this is yet one more of those maneuvers where everyone says their line in the movie but in the end nothing is actually done other than some slap on the wrist for show. Too many powerful people and interests for Justice to work.

And no, unfortunately this is not a tinfoil hat view. There is a long history of Boeing getting away with murder already.

CEOs often justify their large pay packets by the massive responsibility they shoulder. I wonder if this would extend to going to prison.

I don’t want to company charged. I want the actual humans responsible charged. Can’t put a company in jail.

I wish there were more details. Does anyone know of any reporting that gives more information? That is, the article says this:

> Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports.

So, if they want to prosecute, I'm assuming it's because Boeing didn't adequately overhaul its compliance practices or that it didn't submit regular (or truthful) reports. But what are the specifics of how they failed?

I also get frustrated reading these comments here, which are basically "Boeing bad, they only care about execs and shareholders, they ruined their engineering culture." I agree with all of that , but when the government wants to criminally charge someone or a company, they need some specifics (i.e. fraud). It's not enough to just say they had a lax culture or valued profits over safety. Again, to emphasize, not saying that's the case here, I just don't understand how folks can form an opinion on criminal prosecution without even knowing what specific charges are being proposed.

I’d feel better if they start by grounding everything with a Boeing logo first, and then went through whatever years-long legal process this will certainly be.

I must admit I have very little faith in US gov executing on this.

Keep in mind the whole “certify your own stuff” that contributed towards the Boeing mess is a US gov plan

If corporations are people we should be able to give them the death penalty.

Okay, sure, prosecute the company. Better yet, zero out the investors and nationalize it. But more importantly, prosecute the executives who made these decisions.

"Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the results." - Charlie Munger

It used to be that companies existed to transfer value to shareholders by doing something. In the case of Boeing it was making airplanes. They build you an airplane, you pay them for it, they had a list of rules to play by in order to reduce the costs of making that plane in order to make a profit.

Boeing's incentives are to transfer as much value as humanly possible to its shareholders. They've made sure that large parts of their C-Suite, managers, executives, etc. are in on this by giving them shares.

Those people have decided they don't want to play by the rules anymore. There's little incentive for them not to. If the Biden administration gets voted out in November, most of these regulatory and law enforcement pushes you've seen here of late (Adobe, TicketMaster, etc.) are going to go away because the people in charge at companies like Boeing have participated in regulatory capture. Thus, there are no more rules.

You have to start throwing those people in prison (or worse) for the rest of their lives and make compensation in unrealized gains illegal if you want this to stop.

Criminal Neglicence Tax - CNT must be paid

Boeing is the worlds leading supplier of bombs to states that use them to annihilate innocent people. For decades. Every twenty minutes.

There is more to the rot in this company than just domestic customers falling out of the sky.

I would wager that there is a great deal of actual, very real misanthropy throughout the executive structure.

If you are on a stranded Boeing spaceship right now, this is not news that will bring you comfort.

Watch the bond rating. They're at the very verge of junk right now, and if they slip into BB territory that might trigger a whole bunch of stuff to happen very quickly.

what do you even do at this point?

so much of US flight infrastructure is based around boeing and they're literally falling apart in the sky

nasa wanted competition with spacex so badly that they've pushed boeing to strand two of their astronauts in space

companies that fail due to inherent internal structural and corruption issues need to be broken down and sold off, but we can't even do that because the US is somehow reliant on it

why must we write out our own downfall through corruption with failing companies? i bet there's thousands of upstarts that would take 1/1000th the funding given to boeing for a lot of their important projects that would come up with genuinely innovative solutions to problems we never knew we had if there were actual competition in aerospace

Honestly, we should be at least considering nationalizing Boeing. There's a strategic need for us to build planes, and the corporate leadership continues to show they will not emphasize engineering and safety.

The US military needs to absorb the military side of the business as a state owned enterprise

"In May, officials determined the company breached a 2021 agreement that had shielded Boeing from a criminal charge of conspiracy to commit fraud arising from two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving the 737 MAX jet.

Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle the investigation"

The 2.5 billion sound like a bribe to me, to avoid criminal charges. And Boeing thought that was enough, but it seems they did not assume that the FAA was also serious, that they still need to "overhaul its compliance practices and submitted regular reports".

edit: we are talking about potential manslaughter in hundreds of cases here, because this is what a criminal investigation could lead to, not a fine for violating arbitary regulations

The real info in this thread is in the flagged and dead comments that were removed by moderation "for your safety". To see those you need to be both logged in and have showdead set to "yes" in your settings.

This is a huge self-own. Would this ever happen to a Chinese manufacturer?