Stock buybacks should have stayed illegal. It’s naked market manipulation done as a flex with whatever fresh layoffs cash you have on-hand.
The stock market is literally gambling, and these behemoth corporations are allowed to affect the outcome. It’s blatantly cheating, but TPTB made it not just legal, but commonplace.
I’m okay with buybacks because it’s the only way for a corporation to go private if they want to, and honestly I think the stock market would probably be a lot healthier if the idea was for corporations to eventually buy back stocks after going public instead of them getting traded like commodities. I mean, my understanding is that’s kinda how private investing works. You give someone money in exchange for ownership of a percentage of the company, a share of the profits, or whatever, and eventually the company will pay you back.
However, stocks that are bought back should be frozen for a certain period of or something; to keep corporations from using them to game the system.
Edit: I also think things like CEO bonuses and stocks should be capped to a percentage of their workers’ bonuses. If workers receive a $1,000 bonus, the CEO shouldn’t be getting $10 million. If the CEO wants to give themselves a $10m bonus, then that’s fine, they should just be prepared to shell out 6~7 figure bonuses to their workers.
Stock buybacks should have stayed illegal. It’s naked market manipulation done as a flex with whatever fresh layoffs cash you have on-hand.
The stock market is literally gambling, and these behemoth corporations are allowed to affect the outcome. It’s blatantly cheating, but TPTB made it not just legal, but commonplace.
I’m okay with buybacks because it’s the only way for a corporation to go private if they want to, and honestly I think the stock market would probably be a lot healthier if the idea was for corporations to eventually buy back stocks after going public instead of them getting traded like commodities. I mean, my understanding is that’s kinda how private investing works. You give someone money in exchange for ownership of a percentage of the company, a share of the profits, or whatever, and eventually the company will pay you back.
However, stocks that are bought back should be frozen for a certain period of or something; to keep corporations from using them to game the system.
Edit: I also think things like CEO bonuses and stocks should be capped to a percentage of their workers’ bonuses. If workers receive a $1,000 bonus, the CEO shouldn’t be getting $10 million. If the CEO wants to give themselves a $10m bonus, then that’s fine, they should just be prepared to shell out 6~7 figure bonuses to their workers.
Oh come on. Sometimes its bailout cash.