Hello I'm Simon Long International Editor at The Economist and this is Money Talks on Economist

coming up on today's show how Chinese tourists are helping shift the country's current account from surplus to deficit.

And what hurdles does Volkswagen face as it tries to go green.

First though,

Britain, Singapore and Australia have become the latest airlines to ground Boeing's 737 Max airplane

after two deadly crashes in the past five months.

In the latest on March the 10th, a virtually new Boeing 737 Max airliner crashed near Addis Ababa within minutes of taking

off, killing all 149 passengers and 8 crew aboard. In October last year a similar crash killed 189 people in the sea off

Indonesia. The crashes raise questions about the safety of the American aircraft

makers top selling planes.

Charles Reed, the economist travel blogger Gulliver, has been following the story.

Charles, obviously the superficial similarities between these two crashes are alarming,

but we're still waiting for the authorities to review the black boxes and give a ruling.

How unusual is it for countries to ground planes before that

ruling has come?

Well it has happened before to in 2013 with Boeing 787. There are problems with Boeing 787 there are problems with the lithium-ion batteries on that plane and

those planes were grounded for three months but I think the big difference is that those batteries didn't cause any fatal accidents

which kill passengers whereas the possible problems which caused these two crashes have killed quite significant

numbers of people and if we look at new plane types in general new planes don't

tend to crash so not only to have one but two crashes of a new airplane

is rather worrying whether or not they're crashes were caused by the same problem.

And what is the company Boeing itself saying about this,

...