Category: Politics, Religion & Money

“The safety culture at Boeing fell apart. It was corrupted from the top down by pressures from Wall Street, plain and simple.”

That quote is from Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., in the Netflix documentary, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. DeFazio led the Congressional investigation into the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes.

The tragedy of the MCAS-induced crashes began with the competition between Boeing and Airbus. Although Airbus receives EU government loans, that’s no excuse for the problems at Boeing. Those began when the corporate culture changed after the takeover of McDonnell Douglas.

As with the Wall Street crash of 2008, the failure of government regulators played a part in the tragedies. The FAA didn’t do its job, and DeFazio wants to know why.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/lawmakers-demand-fresh-investigation-into-faa-decision-not-to-penalize-boeing-for-max-failures/

For Biden’s part, he was behind an agreement that was made last year, intended to ease competitive tensions between Boeing and Airbus.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57484209

For fifteen years I spent half of my time traveling on business, flying on planes. How well I remember Flight 66, a redeye non-stop from San Francisco to Boston, aboard a Lockheed L-1011, a big plane that I really liked. When my role changed at work, the times I flew became mercifully few and far between.

After I retired in 2017, many of the flights I took between Boston and Phoenix were aboard the brand-new MAX. The first time I saw one, I was surprised by how large the engines were, so I knew it wasn’t the same 737 I was familiar with from my years of business travel. Only one month after returning from Phoenix for the 20th and final time, the Lion Air 737 MAX crashed shortly after takeoff.

If you don’t have Netflix, Frontline has this documentary.

The Fed has been fueling stock market inflation for a long time. Steven Liesman comments on the Fed finally taking action against consumer inflation.

Liesman asks, can inflation be self-correcting? By putting downward pressure on demand, could inflation ease on its own, without intervention from the Fed? If that were the case it would have happened by now.

Back on July 18 I said, “I don’t see inflation becoming a chronic problem unless income inequality is addressed. Perhaps we’re getting a taste of that, with more people demanding a higher minimum wage.” I’m thinking we are indeed getting a taste of that, resulting from the rise in wages.

It’s an uncomfortable possibility that income inequality is a factor in helping to keep inflation under control. The implication is there has been a benefit to the decline in good paying union jobs. Some smart economist should write a book about this, if there isn’t one already.