McNerney finally had to admit defeat in the outsourcing strategy—bringing work back in-house, buying suppliers, and ultimately spending a staggering $50 billion to finish the job. The costs might have bankrupted another company, but Boeing could rely on generous rules known as “program accounting” that allowed it to average the upfront expenses over the plane’s decades of expected service. The approach still made some on its finance staff nervous; they considered the projections so unrealistic as to violate the rules. “I used to get calls from inside Boeing and it would go, ‘We’re all going to
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