this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Economics

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Cash-starved Boeing, contending with massive financial losses from a crippling strike and years of operational and safety problems, is turning to major banks and Wall Street to raise tens of billions of dollars in cash.

In a regulatory filing early Tuesday, the company announced plans to borrow $10 billion from a consortium of banks. It also separately announced plans to raise $25 billion by selling stock and debt.

The company’s debt surged in the last six years as Boeing reported core operating losses of more than $33 billion. Its commercial airplane production has ground to a near halt by a month-long strike by 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists.

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[–] reddig33 64 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yet another reason why you don’t let corporations merge until there’s only one left. Because when this one fails, your domestic industry for this product is gone.

[–] Dubiousx99 47 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Hmmm, it almost seems like poor leadership shouldn’t have spent 43 billion on stock buybacks over the last 10 years. Or, you know, resolve the strike and get your cash flow moving again.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

This is a MUCH better Business Plan then Paying your Workers to LITERALLY make your Products!

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

People who run this shit stain Into the ground must face criminal prosecution

This is situation of a s pathetic... Didn't they even killed at least one whistle blower?

Like at what point will daddy Sam do that coercive power of the state against these parasites?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's so many things that went wrong at Boeing, not the least of which is a lack of technical competency in upper management. However, this is how capitalism is supposed to work: Old companies make mistakes or become too big/inefficient and die while new ones rise up to replace them.

The regulations surrounding aircraft should be all that's necessary to ensure their safety... If Boeing dies that will mean loads of opportunities for new competitors to spring up and replace them.

You can't rely on a market with only two players for long; let Boeing die and break up Airbus if they abuse their resulting monopoly. If necessary, subsidize competition and treat the existing monopoly as a hostile player until there's real competition.

You may think, "but airlines are too big to fail" and to that I say, "bullshit!" There's a million ways to make safe airplanes and just as many ways to improve how Boeing was doing things. The short term will likely suck but the long term will leave us better off.

[–] NotBillMurray 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Except building the technical and logistical capability to build planes on the scale of Boeing takes decades of effort and billions in investments. And in that time, one of the major logistical lynchpins for the entire US economy is just fucking gone. That's not just going to suck in the short term, that's going to cripple us as a country for fucking decades.

But yeah, free market, weee!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

There's smaller companies like Boom which would probably love to get so much space and opportunity for cash flow just producing parts while they develop their own planes. Lockheed Martin while mostly military nowadays used to be in the consumer space and could also probably be talked into taking some of the load.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

"Now it's being ALLOWED to borrow gems of billions of dollars"

Headlines be acting like everyone's powerless to stop these corporations. Banks are complicit. Politicians are complicit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Let em get sold for parts, that company is dead in the water.

[–] SomeGuy69 3 points 1 month ago

Whatever they borrow from is going to be a bubble.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

We're watching a huge company collapse in real-time.