It's estimated that up to 75% of all stock market gains can be traced back to the hundreds of billions of dollars corporations have borrowed to buy back their own shares.[1]The ghastly off-shoring that corporate America inflicted on American industry and all Americans was bad enough but these stock buy-backs benefit no one except insiders and stockholders -- and that in a patently short-term way.
In my various market boondoggles, entrepreneurial Valhalla to me was reaching a point of simple profitability so that I could possible contemplate the doors remaining open for the foreseeable future. All kinds of other possibilities loomed as well, such as being able to make a beneficial difference in the lives of customers, clients, and employees. Adding value, success, growth.
This seems to be in stark contrast to these business leaders who squandered stability, growth, innovation and employee futures as though they were trifles.
I don't know what it is about 21st-c. America but we seem to have cornered the market on business and political leaders who yearn to foul their own doorstep. And ours. And who are so shortsighted that they look no further into the future than their next half-caf cappuccino with soy milk and a caramel swirl. Hold the saliva.
Notes
[1] "Could Wall Street Lose The Election?" By Charles Hugh Smith, ZeroHedge, 8/13/20.
1 comment:
A few years ago there was an article in the New Yorker about how the tech giant C Suite were buying survival bunkers and remote land (often overseas) against the day that AI / other automation razed employment and people got angry about it.
Look, I'm all for individualism and profit, but when it comes at the expense of your fellow man - and you know this is what will happen - that's not a good thing any more.
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