First published Nov. 9, 2008
You’re kidding, right? I mean, seriously, Jerry Yang did not get down on his knees to beg Steve Ballmer to buy Yahoo last week, not after he stone-cold rejected Ballmer’s feelers back in May (when Yahoo shares were more than double what they are now).
Now the question is, does Microsoft still want Yahoo? Redmond put out a statement saying “no.” Analysts said the truth is probably more nuanced than that – Microsoft probably would do a deal for Yahoo’s search division, but certainly not the whole company, and it would probably be a lot easier to get that deal done if Yang were out of the picture.
Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, Boeing Machinists got back to work last week, after ratifying a four-year contract by a 74-to-26 margin the weekend before. That was the good news.
On the other hand, Boeing last week also:
- Acknowledged problems with incorrectly installed 787 fasteners are going to delay the new jet’s first flight even further. There was also a report that Machinists returning to work in Renton found problems with some fasteners installed by suppliers on 737s.
- Issued a call for improved union relations, then got a resounding “no way” from leaders of SPEEA, the engineers’ union, after presenting them with an initial contract offer. Boeing says it will deliver its final offer on Tuesday, but the union’s calling for talks to continue beyond that to try to resolve wide differences
- Saw its stock take a hit when one analyst speculated that Boeing and Airbus will end up with 200 “whitetails” (the industry term for a plane that’s completed but not sold – so there’s no name to paint on the tail) because of issues with financing. This comes even though CEO Jim McNerney said in plain English during last month’s earnings call that he expects zero whitetails in the coming year.
And Commercial Airplanes chief Scott Carson gave a surprisingly soft-key assessment of Washington’s business climate. After all the speculation about the company being on the verge of pulling up stakes in disgust over intransigent unions, the Cougar-in-Chief instead gave only a measured warning that “location is a choice,” before urging the Legislature to increase funding for higher education (particularly in engineering fields, where Boeing faces worker shortages) and calling for long-term partnerships between business, labor and government statewide. For those of us expecting a reprise of Alan Mulally’s famous “we suck” speech, this was not it.
Finally, the election. Certainly, Barack Obama’s election last Tuesday marks a huge cultural milestone in United States history. For me, at least, it shows that just maybe we Americans are starting to live up to our promise to ourselves that all men are created equal. We’re not there yet, not by a long shot, but for one night last week, Martin Luther King’s dream was redeemed.
On an economic level, I suspect that Obama’s election also represents the high-water mark of the Milton Friedman market orthodoxy ushered in by Ronald Reagan 28 years ago. For all his soaring eloquence and John Dean’s 50-state strategy, Barack Obama is president-elect because the economy went in the tank this fall, and voters decided they couldn’t trust John McCain and his free-market foot soldiers to fix it. This shift toward “’70s-style economic populism,” as one analyst put it, if it indeed comes to pass, will have profound consequences in all sectors of our economy. Look for more regulation of capital markets, and perhaps roadblocks to outsourcing, which will have a double-edged effect in this trade-dependent state.
In the here and now, I suspect Obama and the Democrats are going to present us with an old-school Keynesian stimulus package this winter: they’ll spend our dollars for us, probably to fix roads and bridges and funnel more money to states. (Although Nancy Pelosi is also arguing for tax cuts for individuals, too.)
We can oppose these things on a philosophical level. But let’s be pragmatic: Western Washington’s roads and ferries are a mess, and anything that generates more federal transportation dollars is a good thing, both as a long-term investment, and as a job-creating measure in the short term. We’re also facing a real problem, as laid-off workers flood our community colleges, even as the state cuts their budgets. Federal aid would come in really handy right now, while making us stronger for the future.
It’s interesting – and important – to note that Obama won counties east of the Cascade Curtain. “You can take this as a sign of creeping liberalism, and maybe that’s a small part of it,” said Wenatchee World editorial page editor Tracy Warner, “but more likely people are simply fed up with the government and want something different.”
Obama represents change, and change is indeed coming – maybe more profound change than any of us expect.
