This article by Jesse Felder explains the financial engineering that hollowed out Boeing’s (and McDonald’s, Caterpillar, and 3M) balance sheets and cash positions over the past 5 years, and how it was driven by “stock based compensation”.
From the article:
"On average, these companies each spent $200 million per year on issuance of options to top management. Those very same managers were the ones who decided it was a good idea to leverage the balance sheet to buy back stock. At the very same time, they also decided it wasn’t a good time to be a holder of those shares and so they sold, collectively, over half a billion dollars worth of their own shares in the open market. As I wrote about year ago, “If This Isn’t Stock Manipulation, I Don’t Know What Is.” "
The equity holders of these companies should not now be bailed out by the US taxpayer, either via the Fed Reserve, or the CARES Act, or any other means.