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Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by lowdose on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:12AM (#22616836)
The least we can demand for these bailouts is that executive bonus of last years will be returned. These companies don't deserve bailouts and should all go into chapter 11.

We got all severely fucked last time. Boeing bought for $52 billion shares back and now they want $60?

I hope Donald Trump is going to push his Tough guy act now. If he says no to all the bailouts he is going to be remembered as the best president ever.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by skrtskrt on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:42AM (#22617147)
All the industries they are looking at bailing out already are huge political donors: airlines, oil & gas, etc.

These industries have already priced in that they can do whatever the hell they want, completely fall apart and they will get bailed out.

They know that:

1. They are needed, or seen as needed by politicians

2. The appetite for true nationalization of industries is extremely low in the US, so they will get bailed out instead of taken over by govt.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by kazagistar on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:06PM (#22618148)
The oligarchic control over power is something that can change very very fast.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by gentleman11 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:20PM (#22618288)
If it can change very fast, it’s not real power
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by Tobani on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:59AM (#22617350)
Why don't they just sell stock?

They were playing a speculative game and bought high, now they have to sell low.

OOPS

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by awinder on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:02AM (#22617382)
Realistically it’s because they’re not going to sell low, but they may just fire a ton of people, max profits, and then sell. There’s a balance of funding to dissuade making that decision, especially when there’s a natural disaster occurring that does have some expiration date.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by berryjerry on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @05:19PM (#22621360)
Because their not going to is not a reason. They should in fact issue more shares, diluting the current ownership. No one wants to buy them because no one has money and so they have to sell extra low.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by quickthrowman on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:43AM (#22617172)
Boeing unfortunately has to be bailed out, if we as a world want airplane as a method of transportation. It’s only Boeing and Airbus, there are no others.

Management should be punished excessively as a warning to others, though I do not expect them to be punished at all.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by thaumasiotes on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:51AM (#22617259)
> Boeing unfortunately has to be bailed out, if we as a world want airplane as a method of transportation. It’s only Boeing and Airbus, there are no others.

Somehow I suspect that if the earth swallowed every employee of Boeing and Airbus, and every plane ever produced by either, there would be more airplanes and more airplane manufacturers soon enough.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by drKarl on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:05AM (#22617427)
Maybe Elon Musk would just create a branch off Space X and manufacture airplanes...
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by sdenton4 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:52AM (#22617988)
Ahh yes... The "switch editor" button in Kerbal space program to the rescue.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by andbberger on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @03:20PM (#22620238)
you mean the guy who is trying to get his factory workers to come in and build luxury cars during the greatest pandemic facing mankind in generations.

he seems trustworthy.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by llcoolv on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @09:45PM (#22623538)
Luxury cars largely co-financed by the government :D
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by tomatotomato37 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:14AM (#22617513)
Soon enough will still be around a decade - the development/tooling development for your average sedan is already 5+ years, and that's building off of previous experience and technology. I can't imagine what it would be for creating a vehicle bigger than a doublewide that has to be hefted in the air by 100k lbf engines from scratch
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by ageofwant on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:40PM (#22618519)
That's just silly. Bankrupting Boeing does not destroy 140 years of aviation technology or make aeronautic engineers forget their training. Neither does it erase the thousands of aircraft flying today. All those assets that Boeing has inefficiently hoarded now becomes available for other, more competent organisations and businesses.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by thaumasiotes on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:39AM (#22617801)
Sure, that's fair, but a Boeing bankruptcy is unlikely to actually kill every employee and destroy every existing plane, so recovery might be faster than that.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by swiley on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:26PM (#22618369)
Hobbiests construct air plains from off the shelf components fairly often. Large passenger planes are difficult but not impossible. It’s not like all the engineers working on these just disappear either, they’ll want a job doing what they’re good at.

Bailing these things out only protects executives and shareholders, I hope you’re not arguing that those have been doing a good thing for the world recently.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by Zenst on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:00AM (#22617358)
Sure, eventually and corners will be cut to expedite that long development and testing window.

May even be better in the end, though let's say the USSR and NASA stopped space launch vechiles - how long would it take to make an alternative. Longer than we appreciate.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by ourmandave on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:08AM (#22617459)
Sure, eventually and corners will be cut to expedite that long development and testing window.

So, still Boeing.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by NopeNotToday on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:01AM (#22617371)
If a company is too big to let fail, it's too big. We should have blocked any mergers or acquisitions that made Boeing larger.

For now, give them a loan, as much as they need, interest free for 10 years. No more bonuses nor stock buybacks until the loan has been repaid.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by kazagistar on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:09PM (#22618176)
Why free money? Give them a loan in exchange for controlling stake and future profit, like any other investor.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by frenchyatwork on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:45PM (#22619904)
The problem with this is then the state is now responsible for this thing, which wasn't able to keep itself afloat financially. This works in a some cases, where the state is actually more efficient at managing than a private corp, but in many cases you just have the taxpayers supporting zombie corporations.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by chairmanwow1 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:24PM (#22619020)
And we seem to have stumbled upon the Chinese economic system
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by 1001101 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:20PM (#22619660)
Well, at least on the downside. The gains are privatized, the losses socialized - a private good when times are good, a public good when they are not.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by gen3 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:17PM (#22619634)
Except the US has already kind of done that before. Ex the treasury stake in GM.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by driverdan on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:17PM (#22618946)
> Boeing unfortunately has to be bailed out

No one has to be bailed out. They can take out loans, issue new shares, or file for bankruptcy. The government should not be bailing anyone out.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by BurningFrog on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:24AM (#22617631)
If you let the corporation go bankrupt, the shares become worthless. But the assets remain, and can be taken over by new owners, who can keep producing airplanes etc.

At least that's the bankruptcy theory. Real world bankruptcy may well have a lot more friction.

Feel free to educate me on how the real world works here!

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by nosianu on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:54AM (#22617288)
You can let the purely virtual "company" frame go bust (and the top management - would that really be a problem in such a case, and not the main purpose of such an action?) - and immediately use the assets and people to build new ones with minimal disruption. The factories don't have to be stopped for a single minute.

Not to mention that maybe letting them get so big was a mistake in the first place? Based on petty power games of "leaders" (in politics, finance and business) and not on technical necessities.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by dylan604 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:13AM (#22617506)
The problem is all of the employees of said companies. It's not their fault the company makes the decisions it did/does, yet it is their work that generates the money for the executives to do what they do. So my suggestion is for the bail out to go through, the entire executive level (however deep that needs to go) must be replaced. Keep the actual working employees.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by yourapostasy on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:28PM (#22619064)
> ... the entire executive level (however deep that needs to go) must be replaced.

Determining how deep that goes is tough. Replacing the executive level is admitting the company must replace with a radically different culture. Those take time to cultivate, and the US incentives are aligned such that without great effort, standard American business culture is to evolve to what we see from Boeing. The tragedy isn't that Boeing is exceptional in its systemic broken culture, the tragedy is that this is par for the entire American business edifice without assiduous work by company leadership (many examples of that working away without recognition, but business journalism shares blame in lionizing on KPIs that don't measure for the brokenness); Boeing is simply different by scale of acute fatalities flowing straight from the business culture.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by gpderetta on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:47PM (#22618623)
the new company could just rehire all non exec-employees.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by dustingetz on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:52AM (#22617268)
Nationalize them and let them slowly rot away - what's the argument against that?
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by Zenst on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:57AM (#22617329)
Buy it out and nationalise it if it is that important to the country. Anything else is lining shareholders and no assurance staff of these entities still won't feel the brunt.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by plughs on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:32PM (#22618436)
> Management should be punished excessively as a warning to others, though I do not expect them to be punished at all.

"Management" is a group of ordinary people who are doing their jobs - trying to maximize profits for their employers. I'm not going to sit here and say my job is any different. I'm writing code so my employer will make money, not anyone else.

What specifically are you going to punish management for?

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by jgust on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:48PM (#22619947)
> trying to maximize profits for their employers

> What specifically are you going to punish management for?

Maybe punish them for their myopic view on "maximizing profits"? What's worth more: $100 in profit in Q1, or $25 in profit for the next 8 quarters? It would better for everyone if we had a return to sustainability in the private sector.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by nitwit005 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @03:01PM (#22620089)
That they get propped up is a major reason no competitors appear. No one thinks it's wise to try to invest a huge sum, when their competitors are entities backed by governments.

It wouldn't be that long for new companies to pop up if the only two players collapsed. People can just buy the existing facilities for making parts and assembly.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by Vysero on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:55AM (#22618028)
"if we as a world want airplane as a method of transportation"~

Maybe we ought to rethink the extent of our wants versus our needs.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by scalingerror on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:04PM (#22618811)
(Just Quoting) 'But a culture of contribution doesn’t succeed in a vacuum.'

'Why what we’ve been doing stopped working and why you don’t have to assume it: So, there was a chaotic system and an organizational structure on top of that system that could not react to disruption and the wheels ground to a halt. (...)'

Asked just one Topic away, 'Is the status quo scaling?' P-:

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by ghouse on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:29PM (#22618396)
But only because we allowed them to purchase all of their competition -- letting them become too big to fail.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by lowdose on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:04AM (#22617407)
Sick companies have to die in order for capitalism to survive. In the long term people will lose trust in this system because every new bailout puts pressure on everybody in the system for generations. No bailouts of companies over 250 people ever again.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by ng7j5d9 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:54AM (#22617301)
Embraer obviously isn't quite a Boeing or Airbus but their E-Jets seem like viable narrow-body jets. Now if the argument is that the USA isn't ok with all of the big jet manufacturers being foreign, then yeah, they have to bail Boeing out.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by boudewijnrempt on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:51AM (#22617969)
There's Comac, with pretty much unlimited money behind it.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by linuxftw on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:16PM (#22619621)
There is no commercial Boeing. They've outsourced. Let them go bust, someone that has a clue can buy the company and run it.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by gentleman11 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:20PM (#22618301)
Someone else will buy the assets and restart manufacturing, maybe with less safety issues even
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by jimbob45 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:58AM (#22617340)
Obama's biggest fault was that he didn't sell the American people on the inarguably excellent deal he got on the bailouts. The American people did profit off of those and most people don't know that because he didn't make a big deal about it.

Conversely, Trump, if he knows nothing else, knows how to focus doggedly on what's going to excite his base. If he can sell his base on the idea of loan-sharking Boeing (which is a legitimate strategy), then he'll come out looking like a winner, despite the fact that he'll have done the exact same thing as Obama.

Remember, never let your accomplishments go unrecognized by those you serve. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/02/13/the-iceberg-secret...

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by LanceH on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:11AM (#22617487)
According to "The Balance" - https://www.thebalance.com/auto-industry-bailout-gm-ford-chr...

Taxpayers lost $10.2 billion. Are those the bailouts you're talking about.

There was a brief period where loans were paid back profitably but everyone crowing about profits was ignoring that the rest of the loans were booked against stock which was heavily underwater and later liquidated at substantial losses.

I don't know who The Balance is but these numbers seem consistent from other sources I just looked at.

Please correct me if I have this wrong (not being snarky) -- what I think I know is comprised of varied articles spread across years.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by NickM on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:04PM (#22618813)
The auto industry bailout was a loss, but that was smaller than many of the other bailouts, and most of the bailouts were profitable. In net, taxpayers came out substantially ahead in the end.

Not that making a direct profit was even the goal of the bailouts, but it sure is nice that we made money off of them on top of saving the economy.

https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/finan...

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by mrlala on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:05AM (#22617425)
I get what you are saying but I disagree with 100% of what you wrote.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by darksaints on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:32AM (#22617034)
The only tough guy act that Trump will play is for election support. He'll gladly bail out any company that supports his reelection, and play tough guy to any company that doesn't.

And there are no possible circumstances where he'll be remembered as the best president ever. He's fighting for 44th place.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by aguyfromnb on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:10AM (#22617469)
>He'll gladly bail out any company that supports his reelection, and play tough guy to any company that doesn't.

A more generous reading of this strategy is that Trump will do what the people want. I fail to see how that's any worse than someone in Washington saying they know what's best, or tat we need to "tighten our belts".

>He's fighting for 44th place.

In a survey of Californians maybe. You're sorely mistaken if you don't think Trump is popular, and might be surprised (again) in November. Will the Democrats blame the Russians again?

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by vsareto on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:36AM (#22617084)
Trump will bail out any company that has a large blue collar workforce. I really doubt they will be tough on the bailout terms, either. The onus of the failure will be put onto Covid-19 rather than any kind of mismanagement or misconduct or buy backs.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by frandroid on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:41AM (#22617140)
1) Hoping Trump will have a backbone when facing corporate cronies 2) Hoping that executives will skip bonuses, after seeing what happened to Wall Street in 2008

In the old language of my ancestors, rotfl.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by newen on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:34AM (#22617070)
Trump is stuck between Wall Street and his base, I think. He is going to be crucified by his base if he bails out large companies like Obama did.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by frandroid on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:42AM (#22617161)
If he's not crucified by his base for letting the disease go rampant, he won't get crucified for anything else. In any rational country his approval ratings would be in the teens, not the forties, right now.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by ses1984 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @04:17PM (#22620806)
But being crucified for letting the disease go rampant would be totally reasonable and his base isn't that.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by aguyfromnb on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:16AM (#22617530)
>If he's not crucified by his base for letting the disease go rampant

For his small part in this, it was mismanaged, certainly. But if you think that the reason Covid-19 is spreading is because "Trump let it happen", you have an interesting view of how the institutions work.

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by sdenton4 on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:56AM (#22618045)
Firing the pandemic department certainly doesn't help... For starters.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by frandroid on Thursday March 19, 2020 @10:14AM (#22627656)
He's been in denial for weeks, event calling it a Democratic Party hoax to try to take him down, instead of starting to take early measures.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by lotsofpulp on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:47AM (#22617202)
His base will be more worried about their 401k/IRA/pension benefits. Everyone talks the talk about bailouts, but once it hits their accounts they are all for it.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by silverreads on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @11:17AM (#22617541)
Don't most corporate bailouts negatively impact their employee retirement prospects? I'm thinking of GM and Hostess in particular at the moment. The only winners seem to be the investors.
Re:For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earne... by lotsofpulp on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @03:15PM (#22620200)
I’m referring to everyone being invested in index funds, even via their defined benefit pensions. If SP500 goes up, then everyone’s net “worth” goes up.