Member-only story
A Pregnant Diagnosis
My Cousin Ray Sixkiller was relishing his renewed lease on the Cherokee Smartass audience, which had expired along with Indian Country Media Network.
“There is no truth to the rumor,” he declaimed, “that Boeing spent its tax cut on safety evaluations for new aircraft.”
I chose not to dig into him on two plane crashes and the grounding of the 737 Max fleet and, worse, forfeiture of the U.S. FAA and NTSB as the arbiters of state of the art airline safety for the world, so I replied that he could take comfort in the value of his Boeing stock.
“Well, Ray, your portfolio did OK. Boeing upped your dividend 20 percent and allotted $18 billion to repurchasing its own stock. Fewer shares make each share more valuable. Congratulations!”
He had a funny look on his face, so I had to ask what was wrong.
“I only have one share,” he admitted. “I won that in a raffle put on by the Cherokee Republicans.”
“Well,” I stuck the blade in a bit deeper, “just sell a few shares of Starbucks and put the money into Boeing.” He was not amused. I’m not sure if that was because he’s not a Howard Schultz fan or because he’s just not a big player in the market and does not care for being razzed about it. Whichever, he decided to change the subject to something he thought would cause me a similar level of…
