Last post for 2008

Another year has passed with changes happening (probably more idiotic than not) far beyond what we thought last December.

In terms of finance, many knew that things were going downward. Yet, as failures occurred (Bear Stearns, et al), some kept thinking that we will go up from here. All the way to September, when we finally knew that the Wall Street (including the golden boys) of the casino capitalism, and of the huge payouts to their supposedly best and brightest, was no more. The bill that the taxpayer will end up with is still unknown (will it ever be figured?); the truth is that no claw-back has attempted to get back the 100s of millions paid out over the years to these smarties.

In terms of engineering, at the same time a year ago, we were waiting for 1st quarter reports and schedule changes to determine EIS for the 787. That timeframe changed a few times to the currently held view of 2010 as an appropriate (looking-forward) guess.

So, we had a couple of questions in works about finance before the side-bar of who might be to blame for the mess. And, we were going to ask some about engineering. As, there are parallels that are really strong (highly correlative relationship).

The thing about engineering is how to keep 'Murphy' away and, especially, to avoid the 'perfect storm' situation. Well, one thing might be to avoid hubris which ought to be easier for engineering than for finance. The former needs to test in the real world using certifiable measures; the latter mainly games and then privatizes profit and socializes loss as the means to get back into balance.

So, the questions on the engineering side would include things like determining earned value, how to know a contractor's status, what indicators would 'measure' leverage in outsourcing, when is computer modeling pushed too far (cannot proxy nature, except within limits), and much more. The seeds will be updated with some of these and, perhaps, will be rewritten in another format.

Remarks:

08/01/2013 -- Ben cannot unwind or taper down; he has too many Doves. We'll have to get back to the king thing (yes, the divine rights of the CEO, new royalty, in other words) and dampening of these types by a new outlook (Magna-Carta'ísh).

12/29/2012 -- Summary - 2012.

01/01/2011 -- We have four last posts of December under our belt.

05/18/2009 -- Testing in flight is within sight.

01/22/2009 -- Now a new day and way to consider these matters.

Modified: 08/01/2013