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Comment by logicslave | Hacker News Reader

Executives looted Boeing by cutting costs on everything, pumping short term profits, pocketing massive bonuses. Zero skin in the game for them, massive cost to their employees, shareholders, and the American public.

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They've already laid off 26,000 people in recent months - after spending almost all of its available cash on stock buybacks over the prior decade.

Src: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/28/investing/boeing-job-cuts...

There's nothing wrong with buybacks, they're tax-friendly dividends. They shouldn't be shamed for returning value to shareholders which it seems you're implying.

What should be shamed is a tax code that differentiates dividends and buybacks.

I mean, they very much should be shamed for that when viewed in context with the rest of their awful management.

In a vacuum, sure, it's not a bad thing to return profits to shareholders, but that's only like 1/10th of the story here.

Alright. Then any company that participates in share buyback obviously shouldn't get any stimulus money, then right? Because if they have that much cash on hand, they should give it to shareholders instead of investing in the company or saving it for lean times.

Correct, the government should generally not hand out stimulus as free money. Forcing the company to issue new stock and sell it to the government at market rate achieves all of the positive effects of stimulus, while also eliminating the perverse incentive to operate with no safety margin in the hopes of a bailout.

Sadly, they aren't the first, and certainly won't be the last.

Silicon Valley isn't immune to the same virus.

> Silicon Valley isn't immune to the same virus.

I am not saying this to be snarky, but is it not the generally held belief that VC stands for Vulture Capital?

I realize not everybody shares this belief, but I think a lot of people do - maybe even most.

> is it not the generally held belief that VC stands for Vulture Capital?

For what it's worth, I've been reading HN for over a decade, and am a co-founder of a now almost decade old startup and have never seen this phrase

But maybe I'm just one of today's lucky 10,000

https://xkcd.com/1053/

I usually see Vulture Capitalism used more in reference to PE, where mature but distressed firms are purchased, with a focus on "cutting costs," and then chopped up and resold after being ravaged. Venture capital, on the other hand, is almost the opposite, as it cares little about costs in the pursuit of growth by any means possible.

There's something more tragic than the shareholder's losses: 346 people have died in two Boeing 737 MAX crashes.

Yeah, but how many of them were Americans?

I can't tell if this is a serious question or satire, but why in the ever-loving fuck does it matter their nationality?

Definitely satire.

Of course it is satire. The top comment is only talking about 'losses' of Americans.

All while ~350 people died. I find it a disgusting comment.

It's a serious satire. That number of citizens killed would definitely warrant jail time.

It just happened that they were non-Americans. Americans could have had the same fate on 737 MAX. It's not like those non-American pilots were stupid or anything. They were simply hidden some information about operating the plane.

Aren't shareholders responsible for this as well? In the end, the buck stops with the owners of the company. We feel bad blaming them, because in most cases "them" is "us"--various institutional investors we've delegated responsibility for handling our capital--but active investors could have defended against this kind of failure.

What was the massive cost to the American public?

Perhaps it's yet-to-be-realized. Boeing is a major defence contractor and "too big to fail."

Ultimately they'd get a government bailout of some sort if push came to shove.

USTR is basically Boeing's private agent, even though that's a USA government office. That has cost USA consumers billions. Also we used to have an FAA we could trust, and now we don't. Also as sibling comment observes they get vast portions of "defense" spending.

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