Then, too, it became clear that the FAA had abdicated much of its oversight to Boeing itself. Most disturbing was what the crashes revealed about the rotted culture of an iconic American company, as the plane’s grounding stretched to almost two years, cost more than $20 billion, and finally forced the departure of Muilenburg. Once ruled by engineers who thumbed their noses at Wall Street, Boeing had reinvented itself into one of the most shareholder-friendly creatures of the market. It celebrated managers for cost cutting, co-opted regulators with heaps of money, and pressured suppliers with
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