Then Harry told us to kick off 4Q04 we could expect 200 new orders for the 7E7 by December 31, which he initiated in mid-October with an order of 20 units from Phantom Airlines (PA). I call it PA, because this is actually a piece of paper " probably a Delaware shell corporation " put together by a few of Harry's friends who were part of the single plane deal that transported the press corps during the presidential election campaign this year. Wow, talk about dreaming in Technicolor.

Harry stuck to his 200 new sales pledge, even firing his VP sales prior to Christmas, to shake up the troops. Now comes news of a 30-unit order from Japan Airlines (JAL) " but the Japanese say these are still under negotiation, so they can't be called firm orders.

So, unless Harry is going to blow us away with 150 to 200 firm sales orders (depending on how you do the accounting) in the next three days, his promise of 200 new orders has fallen flat.

Not that we're counting Harry, but your guidance for 4Q2004 revenues seems to be off by about $25 billion.

I'd call Harry as someone lacking in veracity " and that's being kind.

Rather than stand up and take it like a CEO, however, Harry had Randy Baseler, head of marketing for Boeing's commercial aircraft division, be the man to tell us earlier this month that Harry's pledge of 200 (which now by the way includes the earlier ANA order) just might fail, but that we should "not be too concerned if that target slipped by a month or two".

This is all too much for words.

Fortunately I am not someone aflicted with Credulity Syndrome.

Harry must be counting on the U.S. Dollar going to near zero in the near future so that 7E7 buyers can pay for his dreams in monopoly money. Speaking of money, we already know what the shareholders have done for his stock options package, but that is an issue we'll discuss some other day.

And now that the Japanese have benefited with the recently inflated Yen to make their purchases of the 7E7, I suppose forex traders can next zero in on the Chinese renminbi (yuan), Singapore dollar, and the Malaysian ringgit take a similar flight.

Otherwise, how does Harry get to ring the Boeing cash register?

Well perhaps not the Yuan, but you know, I think I do remember seeing the Singaporean and Malaysian reps (who were not invited to the party) in Berlin Germany, November 20, standing in line to meet U.S. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary John Snow, at the annual meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors.

Re the Yuan, we all know that the Bush administration has pulled out all the stops to get the Chinese to stop Dollarization, i.e., the U.S. Dollar peg. Wouldn't that dramatically upward valuation of the yuan just be the icing on Harry's cake? Probably would lead to an immediate order of at least 60 7E7 units!

But, wait, hasn't the same Bush administration been working overtime to sell Dollarization in the Americas? Yes, they want it for Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada for that matter, but already having it for China, they don't want it there!

Yes, that's your answer right there. The U.S. doesn't care about Dollarization -- unless it's on terms acceptable to their tourism and export industries.

Returning to the 7E7 discussion, the Chinese will actually be a tougher sell than the Japanese because of the quid pro quo already received by Japanese manufacturers to build parts of the 7E7. In fact, the Japanese now stand to gain so many manufacturing jobs from the 7E7 that I hardly think it fair, if, as and when it gets built, to call the new plane ‘American'.

It's interesting to hear what the people of Seattle WA have to say in the Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer, and at the University of Washington, about this company.

As I understand it, for the 7E7 program, Japanese companies will design and build about 35 percent of the airframe. Mitsubishi will build the wings; Fuji the center wing box; and Kawasaki part of the forward fuselage, the main landing-gear wheel well and the main wing fixed trailing edge. Toray Composites (America), a Tacoma WA-based subsidiary of Japanese chemical conglomerate Toray Industries will provide all the much ballyhooed plasticized carbon-fiber-composite raw material from which most of the airframe will be built. Japan's Bridgestone will supply the tires and several other Japanese firms are doing smaller work packages for the 7E7 plane.

Looks to me that Harry Stonecipher has turned out to be one heck of a salesman for Japanese industry.

But is Boeing really any longer the major player in the commercial jet industry? Why don't we just call a spade a spade and say that Boeing is now employed as a war machine by the Pentagon. I think in the 3Q04, fully two-thirds of their revenues were military related.

In any event, I think investors in Boeing ought to read the Value Line research report.

Looking back over 2004, when I think of Boeing (NYSE: BA) I think (i) Harry Stonecipher hoodwinked us on his way to a phenomenal personal compensation package (based on millions of stock options), and (ii) his friends in Washington, New York, and up in Boston (State Street Bank & Trust) didn't do so bad either.

Meanwhile, the rest of us, including 157,000 of Harry's employees, are making New Year's Resolutions to do a better job of just ekeing out a living in 2005.

BCara@BillCara.com