With the freshly-appointed captain of the world’s second-largest planemaker struggling to pull the company out of a nosedive, a US labor official flew to Seattle yesterday to try and help put out one of Boeing’s many fires: a massive factory strike.

Gridlocked: On Sunday, 33,000 unionized workers marked one month of picketing for better pay, a strike that has brought production of the company’s 737s to a standstill and has cost Boeing, its suppliers and customers, and Seattle-area businesses a collective $5 billion, according to Anderson Economic Group. The Acting Labor Secretary urged both sides to find a compromise following a long weekend of worsening outlooks.

After you logged off early markets closed on Friday, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg announced:

• The company is expecting to incur $5 billion in extra expenses related to its commercial and defense business this quarter.
• It will cut 17,000 jobs in the “coming months,” a 10% layoff that will affect executives, managers, and factory workers.
• The long-awaited 777X craft is being delayed another year to 2026. That really peeved one of its largest customers, Emirates, which ordered almost half of the total delivery and will now be having “a serious conversation” with Boeing, the airline’s CEO said.

And the strike shows no signs of slowing. Union leaders say picketers—who get $250/week from the strike fund in lieu of paychecks and health insurance—know they’re in this for the “long haul,” and have been saving up money to prepare. Every month the strike persists could cost Boeing another $1 billion, per S&P Global Ratings.

Bank of America aerospace analyst Ron Epstein called Boeing’s current predicament a “continuous doom loop cycle” caused by a cascade of problems across “quality, labor relations, program execution and cash burn.”

Looking ahead…Ortberg makes his first earnings call as CEO on October 23. He’ll try to put investors at ease over the company’s stock, which is down 40% this year since the door plug blowout heard ‘round the world.—ML

NASA launched a mission to find aliens on one of Jupiter’s moons. Scientists believe that Europa, an icy moon orbiting Jupiter, has a water ocean below its surface that could host the conditions necessary for extraterrestrial life. To confirm that’s true, NASA used a SpaceX rocket yesterday to launch the $5.2 billion Europa Clipper mission to the gelid body, where by 2031, it will conduct dozens of flybys to scan for the ingredients of life, including organic compounds. The unmanned spacecraft won’t actually land on Europa—and thus can’t determine if there are living organisms there—but if the project confirms scientists’ suspicions, the next step could be to send a probe to the surface.

🪧 Pro-Palestine protestors chained themselves to the New York Stock Exchange. Demonstrators from the group Jewish Voices for Peace broke into a fenced-off area outside the NYSE in lower Manhattan for a staged sit-in. The group’s political director told the New York Post that the goal was to “shut down business as usual on Wall Street.” Some of the protestors handcuffed themselves to the exterior doors of the building, and dozens were arrested. Per CNBC, none of the protestors made it inside to the trading floor, and trading continued as usual.

🦺 Some FEMA aid to North Carolina paused amid threats. Aid to some communities impacted by Hurricane Helene was temporarily halted and offices were closed after reports of violent threats against Federal Emergency Management Agency workers. One man, armed with a rifle and handgun, was arrested for allegedly threatening to harm FEMA employees. The threats appear to be driven by a toxic stew of dangerous misinformation, some of which has been peddled by former President Trump. FEMA has said that rumors about its disaster response make it more difficult to help people who need assistance.—AE

Former econ majors, prepare yourselves for some deja vu. Authors of the seminal textbook Why Nations Fail were part of the trio awarded the Nobel Prize in economics yesterday for their work to “better explain the reasons for persistent inequality between nations,” per the Nobel committee.

Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson, and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson will split the roughly $1 million cash prize for their research, which found a link between a country’s prosperity and the institutions it established during European colonization.

According to the award-winning research:

• Places developed either “inclusive” or “extractive” institutions based on population density. The former allowed for inclusive governance (i.e., democracy), while the latter extracted resources to benefit a small group of elites.
• Countries that developed inclusive institutions have experienced long-term prosperity; those with exclusive institutions haven’t. “Broadly speaking, the work that we have done favors democracy,” Acemoglu said.

A modern example: In the twin cities of Nogales, on the US-Mexico border, the north and south parts of the transborder city have the same climate and the same resources, but the section in the US is far richer because of the country’s institutions, according to the researchers.

But they aren’t without their critics. Some academics argue the Nobel winners’ premise ignores the effects of culture on prosperity. Others point to an irrefutable counterexample: China continues to experience explosive growth despite having an autocratic government.—CC

There were almost as many clowns at the movies this weekend as there are in the Dallas Cowboys’ front office. In one corner: Art the Clown, the viral jester of the slasher flick Terrifier 3, which won the US box office with an $18+ million haul on its tiny $2 million budget. In the other corner: the Joker, the iconic Batman villain played by Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux. The much-hyped DC Comics sequel made just $7 million in its second weekend, a historic 81% decline—the worst of any comic book movie ever.

Art’s knockout blow to his better-known counterpart is the latest in a long line of low-budget horror films far exceeding expectations. The movie’s marketing leaned into gore, bragging that it made some viewers walk out and even vomit. The only people more nauseous than Terrifier 3 viewers this weekend? Probably Warner Bros. execs, who had to watch Joker’s $200 million budget fizzle out like a bad joke.—AE