> it's not like owning 10 billion dollars of Treasury bonds would have prevented a door plug blowout

I doubt today's announcement is any kind of endorsement by the company about its past foolishness.

I think the assumption here is that, in the past, more money should have been dedicated to ensuring high airplane reliability instead of company profits. And if that had been done, the door plug blowout wouldn't have happened.

P.S.: I'll call it how I see it: it wasn't merely foolishness, it was evil. They prioritized their own profits over the public safety with which they were entrusted.

It's not an emotional reaction to Boeing, it's a logical reaction to the fact that stock buybacks are a blatant form of market manipulation that were illegal for most of the 20th century. Nobody should be doing them, it's nothing to do with Boeing specifically. Buybacks are almost always bad for employees, customers, and if you're a big enough corporation, the world.

You're not supposed to use the $10B to buy treasury bonds.. you're supposed to use it on R&D, manufacturing, QC, etc...