PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS MAY not be good for much, but we know when a conversation turns. As veteran observers and want-to-be novelists, we sense moments when the Zeitgeist changes and new narratives snowball into a critical mass or even a consensus. When the future story of Boeing is written, early 2022 may be one such pivot point. The catalyst came April 27 when Boeing reported first-quarter losses. Almost universally, financial analysts expressed dismay and disappointment, not because of the losses themselves but their breadth and depth. Many observers called it a "kitchen-sink" report-an allusion to the American idiom "everything but the kitchen sink." In other words, perhaps the report aimed to purge all bad news. The problem is that Wall Street thought Boeing did that already in January, if not also last year. "Just when you think things can't get any worse at Boeing, they do," lamented Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard.
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