'Crises at Boeing and Intel Are a National Emergency' (msn.com) 151
Intel and Boeing, once exemplars of American manufacturing prowess, now face existential crises. Their market values have plummeted, jeopardizing not just shareholder wealth but national security. The U.S. is losing its edge in manufacturing high-tech products, crucial in its geopolitical contest with China, a story on WSJ argues.
Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps, prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence. Their potential demise threatens America's semiconductor and commercial aircraft industries, with far-reaching consequences for the nation's technological ecosystem. While government intervention is controversial, national security concerns may necessitate support. WSJ adds: So, much as national leaders would like to ignore these companies' woes, they can't. National security dictates the U.S. maintain some know-how in making aircraft and semiconductors.
Certainly other countries feel that way: European governments heavily subsidized Airbus. China is pursuing dominance in key technologies regardless of the cost. Its so-called Big Fund has sunk roughly $100 billion into semiconductors while aid to Comac had reached $72 billion in 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Until Comac succeeds in gaining significant global market share, it will continue to run big losses and be bailed out by the Chinese government," said Atkinson, whose organization gets support from Boeing.
Both political parties have bought into the idea that manufacturing is special and thus deserving of public support. That raises the question: which manufacturing, and what kind of support?
The goal of manufacturing strategy shouldn't be just producing jobs but great, world-beating products. [...]
Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps, prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence. Their potential demise threatens America's semiconductor and commercial aircraft industries, with far-reaching consequences for the nation's technological ecosystem. While government intervention is controversial, national security concerns may necessitate support. WSJ adds: So, much as national leaders would like to ignore these companies' woes, they can't. National security dictates the U.S. maintain some know-how in making aircraft and semiconductors.
Certainly other countries feel that way: European governments heavily subsidized Airbus. China is pursuing dominance in key technologies regardless of the cost. Its so-called Big Fund has sunk roughly $100 billion into semiconductors while aid to Comac had reached $72 billion in 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Until Comac succeeds in gaining significant global market share, it will continue to run big losses and be bailed out by the Chinese government," said Atkinson, whose organization gets support from Boeing.
Both political parties have bought into the idea that manufacturing is special and thus deserving of public support. That raises the question: which manufacturing, and what kind of support?
The goal of manufacturing strategy shouldn't be just producing jobs but great, world-beating products. [...]
Kind of inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kind of inevitable (Score:4, Informative)
"We don't make products, we make money".
Yeah, good luck with the TWA capitalism game. Let's sell the factory to make our quarterly! Shareholders will be happy (this quarter, never again after).
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If they want a taxpayer bailout, then it's time to fire the entire upper management suite. No golden parachutes. Stock options revoked / cancelled. Bonuses clawed back. They can re-apply and re-interview for their jobs and if they aren't completely useless maybe they get hired back at a much lower compensation level. Anyone at VP or above.
You don't get to drive a company into the ground and get paid by taxpayers for the pleasure. You get fired for cause and learn what applying for unemployment insuran
Re:Kind of inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kind of inevitable - it's worse than that. (Score:3)
I think it's honestly worse than that. You are talking about an explicit understood trade off. This is worse. The recent CEOs, by now at least the current one, clearly understand that they have to fix the company and their careers depend on it. They still can't properly admit that they have to listen to the engineers firstly and secondly, they don't actually understand how to listen to the engineers and they don't have anyone that they can lean on that can do it for them.
Boeing is in an existential crisis,
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Clue: Happy customers make shareholders rich (Score:4, Insightful)
no they do not. shareholders want more money. customers want better and more reliable products.
I have a business secret for you. The most reliable way for a company to make money for its shareholders is to provide the customers with the product and services they want and which are high quality and reliable in nature.
Re:Clue: Happy customers make shareholders rich (Score:5, Informative)
That's true, as long as it is not going to come at the cost of my annual bonus! My annual bonus is first and foremost.
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I think you're agreeing with the post you're replying to.
Shareholders and customers are aligned. Management is somewhat aligned with shareholders, but their bonuses make their focus shorter term alignment.
Taking care of customers with quality products that one can profit on is good for customers and shareholders, but quite often it's better for managers to get more profit on lower quality products and enshitify the company.
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Reward only last year you get a one year focus. If you want a longer term focus, say 10 years, then you have to reward that focus. Have executive bonuses be based not on last year's performance but the performance of the next 10 years. Note this will cause an executive's bonuses to be based on the success of successors too. An incentive to hand over a healthy company and to choose
Make bonuses based on next 10 years, not last year (Score:3)
That's true, as long as it is not going to come at the cost of my annual bonus! My annual bonus is first and foremost.
This is where reform is needed. Say that executive bonuses are not a function of the last year, but of the next 10 years. That way current CEOs are incentivized to turn things over to their successors in good order. Rather then engaging in accounting games today whose bill will come due on some successor's watch.
Limit stock buybacks (Score:2)
Another possible reform is putting stronger limits on stock buybacks. Instead of using profits to reinvest in the company or pay dividends to shareholders, CEOs would rather do stock buybacks to temporarily boost the stock price (which is often the metric used to pay bonuses).
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I think if the C-Suite is properly incentivized for the long term then the stock buybacks will be when reasonable for the long term.
Re:Clue: Happy customers make shareholders rich (Score:5, Insightful)
no they do not. shareholders want more money. customers want better and more reliable products.
I have a business secret for you. The most reliable way for a company to make money for its shareholders is to provide the customers with the product and services they want and which are high quality and reliable in nature.
Could you maybe inform the management of nearly every company now? Because none of them seem to understand this basic concept. Instead, they prioritize next quarter's potential profits over *EVERY* potential future, with predictable results. Such as we see with both Intel and Boeing.
Re:Clue: Happy customers make shareholders rich (Score:4, Informative)
no they do not. shareholders want more money. customers want better and more reliable products.
I have a business secret for you. The most reliable way for a company to make money for its shareholders is to provide the customers with the product and services they want and which are high quality and reliable in nature.
Could you maybe inform the management of nearly every company now? Because none of them seem to understand this basic concept. Instead, they prioritize next quarter's potential profits over *EVERY* potential future, with predictable results. Such as we see with both Intel and Boeing.
They won't until their MBAs are coming from an engineering background instead of a financial background. Here's a second clue: The people running a company really do need to understand its underlying products and how to make them. The notion to the contrary was 1950s era academic dipshittery that only seemed to work because the US had little effective competition with the rest of the industrial work still recovering from WW2. Industry and government could embrace all sorts of bad ideas and it wouldn't matter, in the short term.
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So when do we as Americans finally get fed up enough to let these guys fail? Or do we do as these WSJ editor idiots propose and save them for national securty's sake? This is the stuff in politics that enrages me, I'm pretty much done with it all. But hey, maybe we need tariffs to prop up our (shitty?) American manufacturing, so we can pay more, for worse products, so Trump and his rich constituents can make enough money to throw us some scraps like Musk is in Pennsylvania right now. Don't tell the board/management anything, they certainly aren't asking or listening.
While I'm in agreement with you, it's not "we the people" making the decisions that lead to this nonsense. Our political class, which shouldn't exist in a country proclaiming it's run by the people, are completely beholden to Wall Street. Profit above all, and if profit should not even outright fail, but just sorta trickle down for a moment, the political class lose their collective shit and start throwing tax dollars at it. Why? Because it's legal to bribe them to get what you want, and those with the most
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Instead the Air Force pushed for them to infect Boeing with their bad management.
Now pretty soon we won't have either.
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Not for quick-buck shareholders. For long term investors, who happen to be investing via owning shares, yes. But for the, nowadays, vast majority of "investors" whose "investment" happens to be holding to shares for a few minutes before selling them when they increase 0.2% in price and the like, nothing long-term matters. This includes executives who earn in shares, and who need only make sure their shares are valued high enough by the time they leave the company and are able to sell them.
To put it another
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And reform bonuses. Make this year's bonus based on some numbers future year's bonuses. Make sure you are rewarding the beh
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Make sure you are rewarding the behavior/perspective you want.
That's how it used to be. Then the late-1970s / early-1980s happened. With that, Libertarian interpretations of how businesses ought to function went mainstream, including in government, which resulted in extensive market deregulation coupled with extensive defanging of anti-thrust enforcement. End result: financers won, engineers lost.
Undoing 40 years of bad policies plus bad incentives is a tall order, especially when almost half of US voters are utterly convinced those policies and incentives were and co
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It depends on what kind of shareholders you attract.
If you educate your shareholder on a long-term, slow but steady share price increase, you'll attract institutional investors, pension funds, etc.
If you educate them to fast, short-term massive growth, you'll attract predatory investors that will suck you dry and then move on to the next target.
CEOs will always look at lining their pockets first, it's up to the board of directors to make sure this doesn't happen at the cost of productivity and innovation.
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Fundamentally, it's about rewards. CEOs do what they are reward for. Want a long term perspective, reward that. Make this year's C-suite bonuses paid out over the future and based on the performance of those future years. Ex. 2025 bonus will be 20% based on 2025 performance, 20% based on 2026 performance,
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no they do not. shareholders want more money. customers want better and more reliable products.
I have a business secret for you. The most reliable way for a company to make money for its shareholders is to provide the customers with the product and services they want and which are high quality and reliable in nature.
Correction: OVER TIME. Shareholders won't a dividend THIS QUARTER. Also, they want DEI.
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I have a business secret for you. The most reliable way for a company to make money for its shareholders is to provide the customers with the product and services they want and which are high quality and reliable in nature.
That's only true as long as the shareholders are invested in the company long term and want repeat customers. If the CEO is a major shareholder whose investment horizon is only as long as it takes for his golden parachute to vest, then he only cares about making to stock look good enough so he can cash out. This is the problem with incentivizing your c-suite with stock. Your executive team will optimize the business for maximum stock price four years from now, and what happens after that is someone else'
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Just look at the hundreds of billions of dollars corporations have spent buying back their own stock rather than investing that money in their workers and their products.
Re: Kind of inevitable (Score:3)
Is this a joke? (Score:2)
"Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps"
How could they write this? All manufacturing decline in this country is because of internal decisions to outsource labor and cut costs no matter the consequence.
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I was going to say the same, you beat me to it!
One more thing to add. The WSJ is fully responsible in helping to cause this to happen. They like everyone on Wall Street only cares about short term profit growth, to the point if your profits and revenue do not double every year, your company is worthless.
Gone are the days when a company was considered good if they were making a good product, had a decent profit every year.
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"Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps"
How could they write this? All manufacturing decline in this country is because of internal decisions to outsource labor and cut costs no matter the consequence.
Well, you snipped part of TFS. Let's put it back in:
Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps, prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence.
[Emphasis mine.] I can certainly see how "they" could write this. And it's a separate issue from outsourcing. Sending jobs overseas is not the same as messing up products that are made in the USA.
WSJ via Microsoft Start??! (Score:2)
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Would you have preferred a link to the paywalled WSJ article instead?
I don't see the problem here.
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Well, considering that MSN has now taken down the article, a link to the original WSJ article, even if paywalled, would be more useful.
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No, it hasn't - https://www.msn.com/en-us/mone... [msn.com]
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Ah, thanks! (Still, I think the best way to do is post both links, the original story and an accessible copy.)
Foster competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Foster competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed; rewarding failures by bailing them out just begets more failure. If Boeing and Intel can't clean house, bankruptcy and the sale of their assets is a perfectly good fate for them.
Re:Foster competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately I don't have mod points for this thread....But +1 on that. Isn't the "American Way" coming up with better ways to doing things and seizing opportunities to grow small companies? If we keep bailing out the MASSIVE companies, there is no way for small companies who can do better to gain the market share they deserve...We should have never bailed out AIG or GM, if demand for their products still exists, others will take advantage of that situation and grow, it's how the free market is suppose to work. I we just keep bailing out the same monopolistic companies, we might as well nationalize them for all the American taxpayers can get returns on their investments.
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Indeed; rewarding failures by bailing them out just begets more failure. If Boeing and Intel can't clean house, bankruptcy and the sale of their assets is a perfectly good fate for them.
Like we did with the auto industry?
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exactly, just compare tesla valuation vs total of ford gm and whatever chrysler has become
and if you don't buy into the valuation scam, just compare how vw is doing to asian manufacturers
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Re:Foster competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed; rewarding failures by bailing them out just begets more failure. If Boeing and Intel can't clean house, bankruptcy and the sale of their assets is a perfectly good fate for them.
And when their assets are split between the Chinese government, an assortment of Russian oligarchs, and a handful of middle eastern sovereign wealth funds, who are we going to get to build our next joint strike fighter? How about maintain our existing fleet? What about all their subs and suppliers who will go under?
I honestly don't care that much personally, being of the opinion that our military industrial complex is way over funded, but we've built a major portion of our economy on its back. Nobody in this country wants to do socialism or a second WPA, so what would we replace the giant hole in the economy with, assuming you didn't care about the national security implications? That's why no politician will ever be able to pull the trigger on Boeing or companies like it, not without replacing it in all but name with something that functions exactly the same.
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Bailing out these companies that are too big to fail would be one way to go
If it has to be said that something is "too big to fail", then to me it means "too big has failed".
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Perhaps "too big to fail" is a synonym for "monopoly".
I think 'monopoly' can apply in a lot of cases of specific niche companies, but 'too big to fail' seems prevalent in the case of fewer but large industries: financial (just look back at 2008), some tech (as here), etc.
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Bailing out these companies that are too big to fail would be one way to go, but a more "American" alternative is promoting competition. 10 years ago I would have said these hugely capital-intensive businesses are irreplaceable, but now here we are with a new fairly major automaker (Tesla) and the stodgy space launch incumbents being absolutely clobbered by an upstart competitor (Space-X). (I am sorry that both examples are associated with one guy I don't personally like but here we are).
In the short term, looking backwards, if we threw money at Boeing with caveats beyond, "Feel free to use all of this for stock buy-backs and executive bonuses," maybe the initial bailouts would have done some good for the long-term viability of the companies. Right now it's just tossing money at the C-Suite and the shareholders. And frankly, if a for-profit business fails so hard it needs the government/people to save it? The government/people should get shares of the company to the point they can weigh in
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You are correct. There's a lot of innovative aerospace companies .. .. just google new space companies. Companies making supersonic jets, companies making eVTOLs, fully and rapidly reusable rockets (such as Stoke Space, and of course SpaceX) etc. It's total BS to claim Boeing is irreplaceable. If anything it needs replacing ASAP. Same with Intel, there's a bunch of "better than intel" chip makers being suffocated by Intel's posturing. Yes a new chip plant costs billions of dollars, but there are a lot of l
Boeing is just one of several (Score:2)
Re:Boeing is just one of several (Score:5, Informative)
What, Textron? Don't make me laugh.
https://txtav.com/ [txtav.com]
https://simpleflying.com/textr... [simpleflying.com]
Here are all the aircraft brands that Textron owns and builds. Notice that none of them are commercial air transport jet size.
Cessna.
Beechcraft.
Lockheed Martin has Sikorsky and commercial variants of their military transport aircraft:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com... [lockheedmartin.com]
Again, nothing in the commercial jet liner category.
Northrop Grumman, to the best of my knowledge, does not have any civilian commercial offerings.
https://www.northropgrumman.co... [northropgrumman.com]
General Dynamics and General Atomics, again, as far as I know, only serve government and military markets.
The closest manufacturers aside from Airbus (which is not in the US) would be Bombardier (which is Canadian) and Embraer (which is Brazillian), and possibly Honda (which of course is Japanese.) But frankly, they're all still really in the small passenger/large private jet category.
https://www.aerotime.aero/arti... [aerotime.aero]
For civil litigation reasons, being an aircraft manufacturer in the US has traditionally been pretty bad. Prior to the "General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994", lawsuits for ancient GA aircraft were bankrupting domestic aircraft manufacturers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Bombardiers passenger aircraft business (not corporate or business jet business) is owned by Airbus.
Cute story there...
Bombardier launched the C-Series, and Boeing decided to try and go into partnership with Embraer - to that end, they tried to curtail Bombardiers C-Series sales in the US by claiming they were unfair imports. Boeing lost that in the courts, but in the process Bombardier sold off the C-Series to Airbus in a fire sale, and Boeing pulled out of their partnership with Embraer, leaving Boeing w
Happens when you put career MBAs in charge (Score:2)
No such thing as a career MBA (Score:3)
Should have let engineers keep running those companies instead of moving to career C-suite MBAs (who don't know an airfoil from tinfoil, or a memory chip from an potato chip), who many times refuse to be even in the same city as they rest of the company.
The engineers that did a fine job running the company had MBAs. The MBA is not understood by most, it is not some sort of accountant indoctrination into decision by spreadsheet. An MBA is nothing more that a survey of the many different parts of an organization. It is not like the Master's degrees that are a deep dive into a field. The point of the MBA and its survey of all the parts is so that a manager can understand the big picture and more importantly translate the concerns of their occupational special
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Like the guy in charge during that whole MAX thing! Oh, wait....
Parker Brothers is the sole supplier! (Score:2)
I wonder about Nvidia taking out Intel (Score:3)
The Apple unified architecture is so good, basically you have GPU and Neural core, and the memory for them is the memory of the machine itself. The whole machine is a GPU. This allows really low power use compared to machine with separate GPU, but comparable performance when needed. My question is, what is keeping NVidia from putting out a similar computer, with GPU by NVidia, and standard processors by NVidia? I could see that as a real killer to the standard CPU companies.
NVIDIA could partner with Intel, ARM or go RISC-V (Score:2)
The Apple unified architecture is so good, basically you have GPU and Neural core, and the memory for them is the memory of the machine itself. The whole machine is a GPU. This allows really low power use compared to machine with separate GPU, but comparable performance when needed. My question is, what is keeping NVidia from putting out a similar computer, with GPU by NVidia, and standard processors by NVidia? I could see that as a real killer to the standard CPU companies.
Nothing except an agreement with the owner of the CPU technology. However, then there is RISC-V.
Raspberry Pi provides are really interesting example. They have been providing single board computers (Linux) and microcontrollers based on ARM for a while now. They just released a 2nd generation of their microcontroller, the Pico 2. The Pico 2 has the option to use 2 ARM cores or 2 RISC-V cores. They added RISC-V for next to nothing since it is open source.
Failing to get a good deal from Intel, ARM, etc .
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Nvidia makes a CPU-GPU combo:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/d... [nvidia.com]
Pretty much every cell phone has the same thing. Apple just took the idea, put it on steroids and decided to use it as the main processor in their computers. Intel and AMD are both doing it now, to some extent.
Why isn't it more common in PCs? Don't know. Try searching Slashdot for "soldered memory." Might provide a clue.
US rhetoric still a source of comedy (Score:4, Informative)
The rhetoric that is constantly spewed out regarding how Boeing et al have to face the "evil subsidised Airbus and Comac" while pinching pennies and scrabbling around under the sofa cushions is an ongoing source of comedy, since Boeing receives a massive amount of subsidy in terms of tax breaks, awarded contracts to known flawed aircraft(the new refueling aircraft for example), and sweeping Boeing bribery etc under the carpet. The hypocrisy never fails to amuse.
Anyway, I think the problem is that Boeing needs to be forcibly split away from the current ownership and management, because currently it's just rotten through and through. Split off the civilian and military departments from each other, and vet the management of the buyers. Designating them both as national objects of strategic importance is fine to prevent them from being bought out by foreign interests, but it'd still be better than the current stumbling along.
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without knowing any nuance on what a split would look like for the 3 boeing branches, civil, mil and global services, generally makes sense to me.
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Yup, my first though on reading that part of the summary was “thats funny, considering the WTO found Boeing to be as subsidised as Airbus”.
And thats without taking the Japanese subsidies into account for the 787 wing design and manufacturing.
Also, when people talk about Airbus subsidies, they never mention the royalty payments that Airbus makes back to the European countries that funded it - the A320 program for example has a substantial royalty payment attached to every delivery, and considerin
Put the damned engineers back in charge (Score:2)
Both of those companies share a common problem, Boeing more so than Intel - they aim for "shareholder value" much more than great products.
The moment you put the financial "engineers" in charge, they make short-sighted decisions on quality and safety, with predictable results.
It's popular to dump on capitalism as producing this result inevitably, but there are counterexamples - Apple springs to mind.
Tim Cook is fundamentally a logistics guy, which tethers him to real-world issues. He may not have Steve Job
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It's not capitalism per se, but rather capitalism operating in a particular legal environment. I suspect that if the financial consequences hit the C-suite for the decisions that they made the results would be a lot different. (Yeah, that's a difficult problem what with the various lags in the system, but it's what needs to be addressed. This would also entail REQUIRING comprehensive financial and technical records be kept. And if the records are missing or in error, an automatic decision against the co
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What nonsense (Score:2)
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This is how the free market works. Stupid people ruined their own business. All the smart people will...go elsewhere and do the same work. The engineers and scientists won't just vanish into smoke. You REALLY want to help secure the future? Incentivize those intelligent people to start their own competing companies so that the failure of any single one doesn't cause you to panic. That is, you know, how it's actually supposed to work.
In point of fact, that's exactly how Intel got its start! The so-called Traitorous Eight [wikipedia.org] leaving Shockley Semiconductor was arguably the prime mover for the US tech sector's massive growth and long dominance.
Too many public companies (Score:2)
Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps, prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence
So my view on this will admittedly be overly simplistic, but I feel the general cause of these types of 'crises' are born from the public companies' primary goals of existence to be to serve investor interests, as opposed to their client's actual needs (the clients merely become just another tool for companies to increase the value of investors' investments). Maybe if there weren't so many "public companies" there'd be more proper managing of the actual business than just the pursuit of the next quarter's o
Financial Performance and Engineering Excellence (Score:2)
Intel - NVIDIA/Quallcom ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel is not losing marketshare to overseas competitors. It is losing marketshare to NVIDIA and Qualcomm. Both are American companies.
I fail to understand why this constitutes a "national emergency".
Now, Boeing on the other hand, is a more interesting thing to look at. If anything, this shows the perils of too much market consolidation.
Its really ARM, not Qualcomm (Score:2)
Intel is not losing marketshare to overseas competitors. It is losing marketshare to NVIDIA and Qualcomm.
In a sense Qualcomm's success/threat is based on ARM technology. ARM is what makes Qualcomm a CPU company rather than a model company. ARM underlies Apple Silicon which garners so many comparisons to Intel and is what Qualcomm is hoping the emulate in its CPU partnership with Microsoft and bring about Windows PCs based on ARM. It is really ARM that is beating Intel in numerous categories. ARM is British, which is really not a problem.
Re: Its really ARM, not Qualcomm (Score:2)
It's the combination of both.
The chip in all high end smartphones (outside Apple) is a Qualcomm Snapdragon based on ARM. The non-Qualcomm ARM chips are really inferior.
Anyway the main point is China is way behind and there's not really much to be concerned about unless you're an Intel investor. The real question is, why is the Fedetal government dumping so much money into Intel.
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ARM is British, which is really not a problem.
Except ARM is currently owned by SoftBank, which is Japanese. Not currently an problem but, IIRC, they tried a while ago to sell it and might try again, so who knows?
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Predicted (Score:5, Interesting)
Andy Grove (past Intel CEO) predicted the state of US advanced manufacturing today. He'd been preaching it for years before he died: when you outsource the manufacturing part, the design part follows.
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Intel is failing because Andy Grove was dead wrong.
The companies that outsourced the manufacturing are doing well.
Examples: Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Broadcom, etc.
Or... (Score:2)
Might this be a tactic to get the government to supplement these companies' incomes?
I mean, presumably the people making the decisions are not morons, and they must realize that prioritizing short term profitability over long term development will cause issues at some point. So either they really screwed the pooch and the execs are jumping out with their golden parachutes, or they expect the government to step up. Making it a national emergency argues towards this being a tactic.
Just keep handing the MBAs money. (Score:2)
Our philosophy on such matters right now is, "Just keep handing the MBA run business, that have become completely useless due to MBA mentality, more and more money. That'll fix it!" I'm sorry, but the CHiPs act isn't going to fix Intel. And if we throw yet more money at Boeing, it's not going to fix the engineering woes they are suffering from. What it's going to take is a complete overhaul of not just those two once good engineering companies, but our entire philosophy on what business is and what it shoul
For National security cap some stuff and remove bo (Score:2)
For National security cap some stuff and remove bonus based on shareholder value
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For National security cap some stuff and remove bonus based on shareholder value
In a just world, if the company needs government money to continue to function, there should be no executive bonus for a period commiserate with the amount of time it takes to turn a profit without government funding + one year. It should not be a direct funnel from taxpayer to executive. That shit rankles, especially when the company itself continues to flounder.
Let them go bankrupt. (Score:5, Interesting)
Break them up, sell off the promising assets, claw back compensation from the executives who steered these companies off the cliff, and then bar the board members to chaperoned these companies into the current situation from ever holding a board position in these industries again.
Let all US companies be on notice. There is no too big to fail. And there will be severe penalties for trying to milk companies responsible for national security priorities.
Boeing at least is now making the hard decisions under Ortberg (selling off divisions to raise cash and narrow focus back on their core products). He even relocated to Seattle. Too bad they couldn't have done this years ago, but at least they're cognizant that this shit can't go on.
Boeing has one major advantage over Intel. Their customers actually want their products (really). I expect they'll be able to work out a deal with customers for a credit line and stay afloat without US govt. intervention.
I'm not so sure about Intel... aside from their non-Taiwan fab capacity, I'm not sure what Intel has in the pipeline that is really driving interest from customers... and that's a major problem for them. I would expect more layoffs in addition to spinoff/sales of some of the company. Their fab assets may end up nationalized, like the US Army owned ammunition plants, whose operation is contracted out. The one thing that can save Intel is if China attacks Taiwan in the very near future, but that would fuck everybody else over.
C Suite Scumbags (Score:4, Interesting)
At both companies MBA's in charge extracted as much value out of the company for their own personal wealth as they could. Both of these companies were ran by scumbags who looked at nothing other than the short term stock price.
There was no innovation at Intel. They abandoned profitable and consistent revenue sources due to 'opportunity cost' bs arguments. They openly laughed at NVidia when they created CUDA, but who is laughing now?
There was no innovation at Boeing. Instead of building a 797 to compete with Airbus, they placed new engines on the 737 and ended up killing a bunch of people.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Imprison our oligarchs and their minions? Tyranny! This is a free country! No wealthy person should be held personally accountable for the tides and whims of business. No, we lay the blame on the backs of the workers, and let them bear the costs. Hey, work harder and management wouldn't be in this situation!
You might get grilled at a Congressional hearing, but you'll walk away with $62 million and head up a new venture somewhere else. Unless you're a rampant sexual harasser or commit actual fraud like the E
Tie bailouts to oversight with penalties (Score:2)
Put the executive personally on the line, demand a detailed business plan like they're first time entrepreneurs going to their bank for a loan. The collateral can be a potential jail sentence for criminal incompetence undermining national security.
Otherwise you're just giving them free money.
No bailouts (Score:2)
Gubbermint intervention... (Score:2)
[ROTFL]
Government needs a hand, not just profiteers... (Score:2)
China is doing one thing right... the bottom line motive is not the be-all and end-all for their companies, because their government has a say of what happens in a company. Maybe this could be considered in the US, as a means of steering companies out of the whirlpool that they would otherwise gravitate to and be destroyed if mindless shareholders (not stakeholders... HFT shareholders who will jump at an instance and don't care about anything) have their way.
In this modern economy with equity groups ruling
Hit & Run Bean Counters (Score:2)
If you pray to the ROI God for complex products, you end up with neither.
Sack the C-suite. (Score:2)
Until the accountants and marketers are subordinate to the engineers in the org chart, nothing will change in either company.
Like tree rotting from the inside out (Score:3)
Lack of American manufacturing capability will catch up to us in due time.
All it will take is a large scale conventional war to demonstrate how weak american manufacturing capability really is.
America has been controlled by the MBA's for too long now. If this problem isn't fixed soon, they might have opened us up to being conquered by China and its allies.
Ironic source (Score:2)
It's ironic that this is from the WSJ - the newspaper with an entire (mis-labeled) section entitled "Money". (It's mis-labeled because if you read the articles, they are almost all about gambling with other people's money, not really about money per se.)
Where were the WSJ articles bemoaning bean-counting over engineering, back when it was starting at Intel and Boeing?
Re: (Score:2)
No. Monopoly is NOT the answer.
Re:The Government instigated the Boeing catastroph (Score:4, Insightful)
The Government instigated Boeing's catastrophe when they insisted they marry that old bag Douglas, instead of letting Douglas die.
More proof the government interference is bad for business.
Good lord, not this again.
Government didn't "insist" on anything. Boeing bought McDonell-Douglas because they sucked at winning defense contracts (they hadn't won a major airplane contract since the E-3 in the 60's), and MD excelled at making military airplanes, dominating the market with the F-15, F-18, and Harrier II. And they'd just started producing C-17's as well. So Boeing made MD shareholders an offer they couldn't refuse. With Airbus' increasing market presence, there was a shrinking space for major airframe makers in the airline space, so Boeing bought MD, shut down the MD civilian line, and kept making MD military craft under the Boeing brand. All of Boeing's fuckups have come under Boeing's own decisions. It's not like they were being held hostage or something. This like blaming Chrysler's problems for buying AMC. Both of these buyouts happened long ago, and have jack squat to do with the current company problems.
Re: (Score:2)
We have airplanes nose diving into the ground because Boeing talked the FAA into self auditing. So yes, please give me more government intervention. https://aviation.stackexchange... [stackexchange.com]
And of course the orange turd also had a hand in things. https://nffe.org/nffe_news/tru... [nffe.org]