Boeing's biggest blunder? Financial engineering.

By Wailin Wong,

Darian Woods, Angel Carreras, Kate Concannon

Published December 3, 2024 at 9:10 AM EST

(Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)

Boeing continues to struggle. Safety concerns, a door blowing off mid-flight, a labor strike, impending layoffs ... and that's just the past year.

What's gone wrong at Boeing? For many observers, the mistake was shifting focus from engineering to financial engineering.

Today on the show we explain what financial engineering is and why this cultural change at Boeing may have led to the company's current problems.

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Wailin Wong

Wailin Wong is a long-time business and economics journalist who's reported from a Chilean mountaintop, an embalming fluid factory and lots of places in between. She is a host of The Indicator from Planet Money. Previously, she launched and co-hosted two branded podcasts for a software company and covered tech and startups for the Chicago Tribune. Wailin started her career as a correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires in Buenos Aires. In her spare time, she plays violin in one of the oldest community orchestras in the U.S.

Darian Woods

Darian Woods is a reporter and producer for The Indicator from Planet Money. He blends economics, journalism, and an ear for audio to tell stories that explain the global economy. He's reported on the time the world got together and solved a climate crisis, vaccine intellectual property explained through cake baking, and how Kit Kat bars reveal hidden economic forces.

See stories by Darian Woods

Angel Carreras

Angel Carreras is an assistant producer for The Indicator from Planet Money. He is a Bakersfield-raised, Cal State Long Beach graduate. He previously worked at KCRW, the NPR member station in Los Angeles. He has produced award-winning and character-driven work, with subjects that have included masked puppeteers, mutual aid groups, and community activists.

Kate Concannon

Kate Concannon is the Supervising Senior Editor at The Indicator from Planet Money. She leads this small, collaborative team of hosts, reporters and producers in making sense of crucial, but often complex and confusing, economic news in just 10 minutes a day.