{"id":26138,"date":"2018-11-09T09:18:37","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T14:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=26138"},"modified":"2018-11-09T09:18:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T14:18:37","slug":"marshall-auerback-apple-has-an-early-case-of-ges-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2018\/11\/09\/marshall-auerback-apple-has-an-early-case-of-ges-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshall Auerback: Apple Has an Early Case of GE\u2019s Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Naked Capitalism <\/em>has the article M<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2018\/11\/marshall-auerback-apple-early-case-ges-disease.html?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=email&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">arshall Auerback: Apple Has an Early Case of GE\u2019s Disease<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nTo be fair to Apple, it is hardly unique. As early as 2010, market analyst Rob Parenteau noted that company managements, \u201costensibly under the guise of maximizing shareholder value, would much rather pay themselves handsome bonuses, or pay out special dividends to their shareholders, or play casino games with all sorts of financial engineering thrown into obfuscate the nature of their financial speculation, than fulfill the traditional roles of capitalist, which is to use profits as both a signal to invest in expanding the productive capital stock, as well as a source of financing the widening and upgrading of productive plant and equipment.\u201d Likewise, Professor William Lazonick noted in his work, \u201cProfits Without Prosperity,\u201d that the 449 companies that were publicly listed between 2003 and 2012 \u201cused 54% of their earnings\u2014a total of $2.4 trillion\u2014to buy back their own stock, almost all through purchases on the open market.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Share buybacks were effectively illegal under SEC rules until 1982, in the midst of the Reagan deregulation wave, when SEC Rule 10b-18 was introduced. Until that time, buybacks had been considered a form of stock manipulation. As early as the mid-1980s, more and more companies have resorted to them, and the practice has grown exponentially.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In one sense stock buy backs are effectively shrinking the size of the company to match the shrinking demand for its products.  That may be wise policy, but the stock buyback masks what is going on from investors who only look at the per share numbers.  Of course, turning cash into debt is not the smartest thing one could do if you cared about the longevity of the company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Naked Capitalism has the article Marshall Auerback: Apple Has an Early Case of GE\u2019s Disease. To be fair to Apple, it is hardly unique. As early as 2010, market analyst Rob Parenteau noted that company managements, \u201costensibly under the guise of maximizing shareholder value, would much rather pay themselves handsome bonuses, or pay out special [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26139,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26138\/revisions\/26139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}