Who Says that Irony is Dead?

White House Memo Justifying CFPB Takeover Was Written By Payday Lender Attorney

Seriously. We live in Bizarro World.

What a Pathetic Whiny Loser

I am referring, of course, to Anthony Scaramucci, who has threatened a college student with a defamation suit for a nasty editorial.

Oh, you poor delicate snowflake:

Tufts University postponed a Monday event featuring Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump White House spokesman, after he threatened to sue a student and the school newspaper for defamation following the publication of an op-ed column criticizing him.

Scaramucci, a Tufts graduate, has served on an advisory board at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy since 2016.

An attorney representing Scaramucci demanded in a letter that graduate student Camilo A. Caballero and The Tufts Daily newspaper retract “false and defamatory allegations of fact” about his client and issue an apology.

In an e-mail to Caballero, Scaramucci said the student had “suggested publicly” that Scaramucci had engaged in unethical behavior.

“So either back it up or you will hear from my lawyer,” Scaramucci wrote on Nov. 16. “You may have a difference of opinion from me politically which I respect but you can’t make spurious claims about my reputation and integrity.”

The ACLU has already offered to represent Caballero, and your alma mater has told you to get the f%$# out.

Cut ……… Your ……… Losses.

Well, Good Luck with That

It turns out that refusing to do a postmortem of last year's electoral catastrophe, remaining arm in arm with the incompetent political consultant class, and stacking the process to favor the failed establishment has resulted in the people not wanting to donate to the Democratic National Committee (DNC):

The Democratic National Committee's fundraising woes continued last month, when the party posted its lowest total for the month of October in at least 15 years.

The DNC raised $3.9 million in October -- far short of the $9.2 million raised during the month by the Republican National Committee. 

The RNC has now raised $113.2 million over the 2017 calendar year and has $42.5 million in the bank and no debt. The DNC, meanwhile, has raised $55 million this year. It has $5 million cash on hand and owes $3.2 million in debts.

t was the worst October for Democrats dating back to 2003 -- the first year the national parties were required to file monthly finance reports. The low totals reflect the difficulty the DNC has had raising money since former President Barack Obama left office.

This is not a surprise.

While many donors, particularly the big money donors, don't have a problem with the corporate tool DNC, they do object to a process which preserves the jobs, authority, and privilege of a cadre of party officials who are venal, self-serving, and incompetent.

Hackitude

Of course, it's Ezra Klein who is the very modern model of cognitive dissonance.

He suggests that the Democratic establishment, of which the DNC is a part, tried to determine the outcome, and that somehow this is not an attempt to "rig" the primaries, because ……… Sparkle ponies.

It's kind of like how he suggests that the DNC debate schedule, which foreclosed meaningful exposure to candidates not named "Clinton", and the rules prohibiting other debates, weren't an attempt to fix things because, "Debates are arguably her best medium," despite the fact that Sanders more than held his own, and O'Malley excelled, while he lasted.

The concluding paragraph of the article summarizes this incoherent world salad:

The 2016 Democratic primary wasn’t rigged by the DNC, and it certainly wasn’t rigged against Sanders. But Democratic elites did try to make Clinton’s nomination as inevitable, as preordained, as possible. And the party is still managing the resentment that engendered in voters. “Once somebody doesn’t trust you,” sighs Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic chair, “it’s very hard to get that trust back.”

Jeebus.  I wish that there were a cure for Michael Kinsley Disease. (Mindless contrarianism)

Clueless Motherf$#er of the Day, Halloween Edition

Jeet Heer.

The title of today's intellectual super-fund site, "Hillary Clinton Shouldn’t Go Away. She Should Embrace Her Role as Trump’s Nemesis."

She is pretty much the only political figure in the United States less popular than Donald Trump, including Richard Bruce Cheney, who generally polls lower than hemorrhoids.

Donald Trump tries to get into tussles with Hillary, because he knows that it makes him look good.

The DERP is strong in this one.

This Dick Waving Is Going to Get Us All Killed

We now have reports that, for the first time since 1991, the United States Air Force will be putting nuclear bombers back on round-the clock nuclear alert:

The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.

That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice. 

“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”

I am NOT feeling any safer right now.

This Is the Stupidest Thing I've Read All Day, including Twitter

There is a happy ending though, because the author of this post on Reddit has finally realized that you don't have to pay to take books out of the library.

How do people not know this?

Admittedly, I live just outside Baltimore City, where the local library is known as the "Enoch Pratt Free Library," which is a bit of a tell, but I am still stunned.

The Very Definition of Concern Trolling

Douglas Schoen, former Clinton pollster and current Fox News "Democrat", has advice for the Democratic Party, "Genuflect to Wall Street:

Many of the most prominent voices in the Democratic Party, led by Bernie Sanders, are advocating wealth redistribution through higher taxes and Medicare for all, and demonizing banks and Wall Street.

Memories in politics are short, but those policies are vastly different from the program of the party’s traditional center-left coalition. Under Bill Clinton, that coalition balanced the budget, acknowledged the limits of government and protected the essential programs that make up the social safety net.

Mass incarceration, particularly of people of color, destroying welfare, NAFTA, etc.

Yeah, good times, good times.

Go Cheney yourself.

Jumping C. Megaladon*

Seriously, this sh%$ has jumped the shark

Seriously, this Russian meddling with the election crap has taken a left turn into the Twilight Zone.

We now have claims that the Russian government used Pokemon Go to influence the election.

I have no doubt that there are Russian trolls out there, and I am even more certain that there elements in the Russian internet community who generate a living through click bait, but the idea that the Russian state security apparatus would use Pokemon f%$#ing Go to subvert our election is simply insane.

This, "A noun, a verb, and Vladimir Putin," mishugas needs to stop.

It's not just Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Even Pokemon Go, the mega-popular smartphone game that became a phenomenon last year, was the target of Russian agents trying to meddle with the 2016 US election, according to a report Thursday by CNN.

The effort was allegedly centered on a campaign called "Don't Shoot Us," an apparent reference "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," a mantra in widespread use after the shooting of Michael Brown.

The campaign is said to be tied to agents in Russia, and it reportedly used social media services like Facebook and Twitter to try to exploit racial tensions in the US. But there was one surprise target: Pokemon Go.

In playing Pokemon Go, people go to real-world locations to find and train digital monsters, which appear on their phone screens against the landscape picked up by the phones' cameras.According to the CNN report, the Don't Shoot Us campaign announced a contest on its Tumblr page in July 2016 for Pokemon Go players. The contest encouraged them to visit locations where alleged cases of police brutality took place. Players were also asked to give their Pokemon critters the names of people shot by police, including Eric Garner. The campaign offered players Amazon gift cards as rewards.

Just shoot me.

^*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). So in jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

Adding to the List of They Who Must Not Be Named

Former football coach and tight end Mike Ditka, who just said that, "there has been no oppression in the United States in the past 100 years:

Even before this NFL season, which has featured team owners linking arms with players as shows of solidarity amid sharply critical comments from President Trump, some players were noting that the original message of protests during the national anthem had been largely lost. To them, the cause of bringing attention to racial injustice, in particular police brutality against black men, had been overshadowed by a heated national discussion over the merits of taking a knee during the national anthem.

To former NFL coach and ESPN analyst Mike Ditka, however, that cause made no sense to begin with. In a pregame interview before a radio broadcast of Monday night’s game between the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings, he said, “There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of.”

The Germans have a term for this, Fachidiot, (Google Translate) which refers to an expert who is a complete moron outside of his limited area of expertise.

Thus, I add Michael Keller Ditka to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named, unless he decides to do something like running for office, (please God no) you will here nothing about him from me

Of course, I haven't posted about him before, so carry on.

When Big Money Is All in, It's the Status Quo, Not a Revolution

Previously I have suggested that if "The Resistance" ever was anything, it was being co-opted by the incompetent Democratic establishment to deflect from any meaningful accountability for their failures.

Now the New York Times, drops an article talking about how "The Resistance" is upending liberal politics.

Their evidence is that big donors are aggressively contributing to the "Grass Roots Movement".

This is not is actually evidence of the opposite:

It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump, but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.

………

Entrenched Democratic groups are facing growing questions about the return on the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent over the years. Groups affiliated with Mrs. Clinton “spent so much money based on a bad strategy in this last cycle that they should step aside and let others lead in this moment,” said Quentin James, a founder of a political committee called the Collective PAC that supports African-American candidates.

Mr. James’s committee is among more than three dozen outfits that have started or reconfigured themselves since the election to try to harness the surge in anti-Trump activism. In addition to political committees, grass-roots mobilization nonprofits and legal watchdog groups, there are for-profit companies providing technological help to the new groups — essentially forming a new liberal ecosystem outside the confines of the Democratic Party.

………

“We’re in a disruptive period, and when we get through it, the progressive infrastructure landscape may look different,” said Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy liberals who donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups. “There may be groups that have been around that don’t rise to the challenge, and there may be some new groups that do rise to the challenge, while others fade away.”

The Democracy Alliance has helped shape the institutional left, steering more than $600 million since its inception in 2005 to a portfolio of carefully selected groups, including pillars of the Clinton-aligned establishment like the think tank Center for American Progress and the media watchdog Media Matters.

This is not, "An insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions," this is a rebranding this is more of the same.

The big donors, the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, want gay marriage, but they don't want unions or effective progressive taxation, or or fair trade deals, or cheaper drugs, or sensible limits to IP, since that would require real sacrifices on their part.

This is more of the same.

Lord of the Flies, Uber Edition

It appears that Travis Kalanick has gotten to the breaking sh%$ of grief, specifically, he just appointed two board members without consulting with the board of Uber's new President:

The phone calls began late Friday among Uber’s new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, and the ride-hailing company’s executives, as well as board members and a raft of lawyers. They were facing an emergency.

The problem was that Travis Kalanick, Uber’s former chief executive and a board member, had appointed two new directors — Ursula Burns, the former chief executive of Xerox, and John Thain, the former chief of Merrill Lynch — to the privately held company without informing them. The moves, which pushed the nine-member board to 11 people, gave Mr. Kalanick new potential allies on major decisions at Uber.

Mr. Kalanick’s actions were “disappointing,” Mr. Khosrowshahi wrote on Friday in a letter to employees that was obtained by The New York Times. “Anyone would tell you that this is highly unusual.”

The trigger for Mr. Kalanick’s move — one made possible by a board vote last year giving him control of three seats — was a proposal that Mr. Khosrowshahi and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, an Uber shareholder, brought to the board on Thursday. The proposal, which is set to be discussed by directors on Tuesday, includes measures that would shift the power on Uber’s board by reducing Mr. Kalanick’s voting clout, expanding Mr. Khosrowshahi’s powers and imposing a 2019 deadline on the company to go public, according to three people with knowledge of the proposal who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Parts of the proposal were also read to The Times.

Let me translate this into English, the investors realize that Kalanick has become toxic, and as a result is facing increased regulatory and media scrutiny.

In particular, people are beginning to notice that, "Uber has no conceivable path to profitability," because once they rise prices to reach profitability, entrants re-enter the market, and suddenly they are not particularly special and unicornish any more.

The big investors want to go public before it is too late, and that means rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and then getting into a lifeboat before the rush starts.

Fail, Madrid Edition

The Catalan independence referendum has faced an unbelievably heavy handed response from the central government in Madrid, with the obvious result, supporters of secession have flocked to the polls, while opponents are unwilling to get a baton to the crotch, so early results show overwhelming support for Catalonia leaving Spain:

Catalan officials have claimed that preliminary results of its referendum have shown 90% in favour of independence in the vote vehemently opposed by Spain.

Jordi Turull, the Catalan regional government spokesman, told reporters early on Monday morning that 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who voted Sunday chose yes. He said nearly 8% of voters rejected independence and the rest of the ballots were blank or void. He said 15,000 votes were still being counted.The region has 5.3 million registered voters.

Turull said the number of ballots did not include those confiscated by Spanish police during violent raids which resulted in hundreds of people being injured. At least 844 people and 33 police were reported to have been hurt, including at least two people who were thought to have been seriously injured.

………

Puigdemont had pressed ahead with the referendum despite opposition from the Spanish state, which declared the poll to be illegal, and the region’s own high court. He told crowds earlier in the day that the “police brutality will shame the Spanish state for ever”.

The Spanish government defended its response after hundreds of people were hurt when riot police stormed polling stations in a last-minute effort to stop the vote on Sunday.

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy, and his People's Party, has been running against Catalonia, and against Catalonian independence for years, and this has served to galvanize the secessionists movement.

First, they rushed to overturn existing agreements, and now they have sent national and other police forces into Catalonia as an occupying force with a license to abuse, and the results are ugly: senior citizens bloodied, voters dragged out of polling areas by their hair, and condemnations from Human Rights Watch.

I don't think that we are headed for another Spanish Civil War, but if someone doesn't put a leash on Rajoy, things are going to get a lot worse.

Oh Dear Lord!

The vaguely legal form of gambling known as Synthetic CDOs are back, but don't worry, Citigroup is telling us that it's different this time.

"It's different this time," is the most terrifying phrase in finance:

By now, the whole Lucy-and-the-football thing has become a political cliché, which is the worst kind of cliché to be. However, while considering the history and practice of the Wall Street casino, it is the most accurate metaphor and it’s likely to be until the day of glory and sunshine when the tumbrels begin to roll. From Bloomberg:

The 35-year-old Citigroup Inc. director has spent the past two years meeting clients, speaking at industry panels and becoming the face of a resurgent market for synthetic CDOs -- complex derivatives that let buyers make big, leveraged bets on the health of corporate America. Along the way, she’s helped establish Citigroup as its dominant player. It’s an astonishing comeback for the roughly $70 billion market for synthetic CDOs, which rose to infamy during the crisis and then faded into obscurity after nearly destroying the financial system. But perhaps the most surprising twist is Citigroup itself. Less than a decade ago, the bank was forced into a taxpayer bailout after suffering huge losses on similar types of securities tied to mortgages. Now, many in the industry say Citigroup is responsible for over half the deals that come to market, though precise numbers are hard to come by.

I’ll bet they are.

This time, Citigroup says, it’s doing things differently. The deals are tailored in a way that insulates it from any losses, while giving yield-starved buyers a chance to reap returns of 20 percent or more. The market today is also just a fraction of its size before the crisis, and few see corporate defaults surging any time soon. But as years of rock-bottom interest rates have pushed investors toward riskier products, the revival of synthetic CDOs may be one of the clearest signs yet of froth in the credit markets.

Why in the everloving fck would we trust these clowns again? And, even if we all got really stoned and decided to do that, why would we trust them with the same goddamn hand grenades that blew up everything the last time? There’s recividism and there’s recidivism and then there’s a genetic predisposition to stick your hands in everyone’s pockets and steal every last lint-covered penny that’s in there.

This is unbelievably f%$#ed up and sh%$.

Now Which Pathological Liar Are We to Believe?*

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has claimed that Donald Trump apologized for forcing Turkish security forces to attack unarmed protesters, while the White House has denied this:

The White House on Wednesday denied Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s claim that President Donald Trump called him to apologize for an incident in May where Turkish security agents allegedly attacked protesters in Washington.

A White House spokesman told the Hill late Tuesday that Trump and Erdogan “discussed a wide range of issues but there was no apology.”

“It’s not true,” White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters said, according to BuzzFeed News reporter John Hudson.

………

Washington, D.C. police in June issued arrest warrants for nine Turkish security guards and three Turkish police officers accused of attacking protesters who gathered outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence. A grand jury in August issued indictments for three more Turkish security officials charged with attacking protesters.

This is seriously f%$#ed up.

^*Not my line. It's from the comments thread of the post.

Spain is Going Nuts

There are elements of the population of the Spanish province of Catalonia who want to secede from Spain.

They are pushing for a referendum, and the central government in Madrid has responded by sending federal police into to seize government buildings and arrest politicians:

Spanish national police have stormed ministries and buildings belonging to Catalonia's regional government to put a stop to the region's independence referendum.

The Guardia Civil, which acts with the authority of Madrid's interior ministry, is searching for evidence regarding the planned 1 October referendum on Catalan independence, which Spain's Constitutional Court has declared illegal.

In the early hours of the morning armed officers arrived at various Catalan ministries, including the economy department, foreign affairs department, and social affairs department, Spanish media reports.

At least twelve Catalan officials are said to have been arrested, including the chief aide to Catalonia's deputy prime minister, Josep Maria Jové. The arrests come as the mayors of Catalan towns who back the referendum were yesterday questioned by state prosecutors.

Pro-independence crowds have formed outside the regional ministries in support of the provincial government and in protest against the raids and searches.

It should be noted that the Spanish Constitutional Court ruled the referendum illegal, so some sort of action to stop the election is justified, but what is going on now seems guaranteed to inflame tensions and make a peaceful solution less likely.

So, in Europe, we are seeing, the rise of the racist right wing, and now we are seeing a conflict in Spain that has the very real possibility of going violent.

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Cowards

In the past week, the hypocrites at Harvard University have denied entry to their PhD program to a world renowned candidate^* in history and the Harvard Kennedy School denied has denied visiting fellow status to Chelsea Manning.

As near as I can ascertain, this is because they are worried that right wing talk show host will say nasty things about them:

Yesterday, we discussed Harvard overriding a decision to admit Michelle Jones to the History Ph.D program, based at lest in part of the well-known sacred moral principle What Would Tucker Carlson Say? Well, capitulating to criticism from vocal reactionaries (pre-emptive or otherwise) is now becoming a hot trend:

Facing harsh criticism, a Harvard dean said early Friday morning that he was revoking his invitation to Chelsea Manning, a former United States soldier convicted of leaking classified information, to be a visiting fellow at the university.

The sudden turnabout by the Harvard Kennedy School came after a day of intense backlash over the university’s announcement on Wednesday that Ms. Manning would become a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics this school year. Douglas W. Elmendorf, the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, said that while the university encourages a diversity of opinions and does not shy from controversy, naming Ms. Manning a fellow was a mistake for which he accepted responsibility.

It should be noted that the Harvard Kennedy School granted visiting fellow status to serial liar Sean Spicer and failed Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

The deal is, you give a talk, hang around for questions, and you become a "Visiting Fellow."

Only the torturers and the torturer apologists in the US state security apparatus has major butt-hurt over this, so they folded.

The case of Michelle Jones is even more egregious, though the reason for potential outrage, a horrific crime for which she served her time, is marginally more understandable, though the two professors who went jihad against her admission to the history program were crystal clear as to their motivations, they were motivated by cowardice:

“We didn’t have some preconceived idea about crucifying Michelle,” said John Stauffer, one of the two American studies professors. “But frankly, we knew that anyone could just punch her crime into Google, and Fox News would probably say that P.C. liberal Harvard gave 200 grand of funding to a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority. I mean, c’mon.”

I believe that these two professors pictures appear in the dictionary next to the definition of "Limousine Liberals."

This is amazing.  The current administration at Harvard is making me long for the days of Lawrence Summers as University President.

On the bright side, the current President of Harvard, the incredibly aptly named Dr. Faust, is leaving in about a 10 months.

^*She did groundbreaking original research that found that prostitutes were not sent to prison in Indiana, but rather they were sent to forced labor laundries operated by the Catholic Church (see Magdalene Laundries) as opposed to being sent to prison around the turn of the 19^th century.

Clueless Protesters

Some fans in the Monster Seats hung a banner over the wall that said, “Racism Is As American As Baseball.” Security removed them. pic.twitter.com/tVSai9XocY

— Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) September 14, 2017

Given Boston's history of racism, I'm inclined to think that protesting racism at Fenway Park during a Red Sox game is a good thing.

Boston is NOT a "woke" place, and getting in the face of the town in what is arguably the most Boston place in Boston is a good thing.

That being said, if you do protest, run it by an editor to make sure that your actual words are unambiguous:

Fans draped a sign reading “Racism is as American as baseball” over the Green Monster at Fenway Park during the Red Sox-Athletics game Wednesday night.

Red Sox spokeswoman Zineb Curran replied with the following statement via email when asked about the incident:
“During the 4th inning of tonight’s game, four fans unfurled a banner over the left field wall in violation of the club’s policy prohibiting signs of any kind to be hung or affixed to the ballpark. The individuals involved were escorted out of Fenway Park.”

According to The Boston Globe, the sign was visible for about two minutes and no arrests were made in connection to the incident.

………

One member of the group spoke to CSNNE anonymously Wednesday night, telling the network they expected to be kicked out of Fenway but were surprised by some people’s interpretation that their message wasn’t clear.

“I guess we should have seen that coming, but we also didn’t think of it as an ambiguous message,” the group member said. “It’s kind of telling that it is being interpreted as one.”

When I first heard about this, I thought that it was a group of white supremacists endorsing racism.

For F%$#'s sake, you need to run you slogans by an someone who wasn't involved in drafting the slogan, and maybe a trained copy editor.

To quote a an internet meme, "Get a brain, morans."

Schadenfreude Alert

Martin Shkreli just had his bail revoked, because he was posting to Facebook offering money for a lock of Hillary Clinton's hair.

The judge was unamused:

Martin Shkreli got slammed into jail Wednesday when a federal judge delivered a poetic punch line to the Pharma Bro’s Hillary Clinton jokes.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Kiyo Matsumoto revoked Shkreli’s $5 million bail Wednesday evening, saying his $5,000 bounty on Clinton’s hair was the final straw.

She said his recent Facebook post calling for someone to pluck the ex-presidential candidate’s locks during her recent book tour could “cause a reasonable person to have concern.”

And even if Shkreli wasn’t being violent himself, no one knows what his online devotees were capable of doing, the judge said.

Am a bad person because his pain amuses me so much?

Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ………

When Boeing rolled out is 777, it decided that the best way to maximize profits was to recruit potential competitors to be risk sharing partners to minimize its upfront costs.

The net result was significant delays and a loss of technical know-how, and now, both Boeing and Airbus are looking to bring these capabilities, because it turns out that they outsourced their profits as well:

The world’s largest plane makers are testing a seemingly simple formula to smooth production, cut costs and fatten profits: Make more of the parts that go into their jets themselves.

In the wake of United Technologies Corp.’s proposed $23 billion deal to buy Rockwell Collins Inc., that push is taking on more urgency. The deal is the latest in a round of consolidation among the world’s biggest suppliers of aviation parts—something Boeing Co. and European rival Airbus SE have eyed warily.

Earlier this week, Boeing said it might cancel some of its parts contracts if the deal undermines competition further in the aerospace supply chain. Airbus had previously expressed its skepticism over it.

Worried about getting squeezed by the consolidation, Boeing and Airbus have moved to protect themselves by building more of their parts in-house. This month, Boeing will start construction of a new production facility in Sheffield, England, that will make some of its own actuation equipment—motors that help move a wing’s flaps. Airbus, meanwhile, is planning to build some of its own nacelles, the metal casings that house a plane’s engines. United Technologies is one of the world’s largest nacelle suppliers.

………


Boeing decided two years ago to make some of its own nacelles after years of buying them. In July, the company also said it is planning to develop and build some aircraft electronics, a market dominated by companies such as Rockwell Collins and Honeywell International Inc.

The wings for a revamped version of Boeing’s new 777 jetliner also will be built at a new plant near Seattle rather bought from a supplier. Boeing bought the wings from a supplier for its last big project, the 787 Dreamliner.


………


Bringing production in-house helps level the playing field.

Those parts makers have also traditionally been able to suck out more profit for their components than plane makers like Boeing and Airbus can extract for selling whole aircraft. Profit margins for plane and engine makers have averaged 9% over the past two years, compared with 14% for so-called “tier one” suppliers such as United Technologies and Rockwell Collins, which make finished parts directly for plane makers. Margins come in at 17% for tier 2 suppliers, which provide smaller components for those parts, according to Boston Consulting Group.

This is not a surprise.

The idea that drove the outsourcing of critical technologies for the 787 was that Boeing could be more profitable and efficient by doing and knowing as little as is possible about the underlying business.

This is classic MBA/High Finance type thinking, and MBA/High Finance type thinking unmoored from the underlying business has ALWAYS been a recipe for dismal failure.