Boeing Sued For Defrauding Shareholders After Fatal Crashes

Boeing shareholders who lost money selling their stock after the Ethiopian Airlines crash are suing the company for concealing unflattering material information from the public, defrauding shareholders in the process, Reuters reports. The class-action lawsuit, filed in Chicago, is seeking damages after the March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 wiped $34 billion off Boeing's market cap within two weeks. But if true, the crux of the lawsuit might have broader repercussions for the company as it tries to convince regulators to lift a grounding order that has kept the Boeing 737 MAX 8 grounded since mid-March.

In essence, the suit alleges that the company concealed safety concerns about the 737 MAX and its anti-stall software following the Lion Air crash in October that killed 189 people, but did nothing to alert the public or correct the issue.

Boeing "effectively put profitability and growth ahead of airplane safety and honesty" by rushing the 737 MAX to market without "extra" or “optional” safety features - a practice that has outraged the company's critics - as it feared ceding market share to Airbus SE. Moreover, Boeing failed to disclose a conflict of interest surrounding its 'regulatory capture' of the FAA, which was revealed to have outsourced much of the approval process for the 737 MAX to Boeing itself.

Lead plaintiff Richard Seeks bought 300 Boeing shares in early March and sold them at a loss after the shares dumped more than 12% in the weeks after the second crash, which would have left him with a loss between $15,000 and $20,000. The lawsuit seeks damages for Boeing investors who bought the company's shares from Jan. 8 to March 21. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and CFO Gregory Smith have also been named as defendants. Of course, this shareholder lawsuit is only the tip of the legal iceberg for Boeing. The company will likely face a blizzard of lawsuits filed by family members of those killed during the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, the first of which has already been filed. Though its shares have recovered from their post-grounding lows, they have hit another bout of turbulence this week after the company announced that it would slash production of the 737 MAX by 20%, before announcing that its aircraft orders in Q1 fell to 95 from 180 a year earlier.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-10/boeing-sued-allegedly-defrauding-shareholders-after-fatal-crashes

Netanyahu Considers Allowing Elon Musk To Bore Tunnels Under Israel

Elon Musk is reportedly in talks with the Israeli government to build tunnels across (or is that below) the country, according to statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a campaign event this week. The Boring Company could help "much needed infrastructure development" in Israel, according to Bloomberg, although it was unclear who would have priority if a Tesla tunnel merges with one dug by Hezbollah. The reason: Israel suffers from poor traffic infrastructure and has the worst traffic in the developed world. Netanyahu said at a campaign event: "I met a man that they call Elon Musk – have you heard of him? A real genius. Right now we’re in conversation with him to see if we can tunnel the State of Israel."

Musk and Netanyahu had breakfast at the Prime Minister's residence, where Musk talked about his tunneling "technology". Netanyahu is in the midst of a re-election battle that'll culminate on April 9 against the Blue & White bloc, which has suggested tapping the country's sovereign wealth fund to upgrade its infrastructure. Israel’s public transportation system is notoriously inefficient and could cost the economy 25 billion shekels ($6.9 billion) a year by 2030 if changes aren’t made, the state comptroller found. And that's without letting Musk have a crack at it.

Netanyahu apparently hasn't been turned off by the fact that Musk's tunneling idea was recently laughed out of Virginia by bureaucrats as being "a lot of show" and not "substantive". “I think there’s a lot of show going on here. I don’t mean to suggest that they don’t have a serious plan in mind, but I don’t consider the steps they’ve taken to date to be substantive," Virginia bureaucrats recently said of Musk's tunneling idea.

"There's no revolution here. Let's be honest here: he's driving a car through a sewer pipe," Ph.D. chemist and video blogger Phil Mason said in a late December he posted to YouTube, destroying Musk's tunnel idea. We reported on his critique of the idea in a late December post here.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-09/netanyahu-considers-allowing-elon-musk-bore-tunnels-under-israel

"There Is No Revolution Here": PhD Pseudoscience-Buster Destroys Musk's Boring Company Tunnel Idea

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-26/there-no-revolution-here-phd-pseudoscience-buster-destroys-musks-boring-company