Saturday, November 10, 2018

Keiser Report: Share Buybacks + Austerity = Economic Disaster (E1304)

The stock buy back con. Did economists ever believe that it would be profitable to shrink companies and under invest? Lots of people would like to start companies and see them grow, but why not just asset strip a company instead and make easy money? But the ruling elite dummy like it when Chinese companies zoom ahead because they invest in themselves.


In the second half but Max Keiser and Ross Ashcroft make a convincing argument about why Britain should have stayed in the EU. They say that British people will be driven into poverty by leaving. 

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the share buybacks failing to boost stock markets but succeeding in hollowing out wealth creation machine of capitalism. In the second half, Max interviews Ross Ashcroft of RenegadeInc.com about the austerity policies in the UK which have inspired the UN human rights rapporteur to visit. They also discuss the Brexit plan without a plan.

3 comments:

Konrad said...

“In the second half but Max Keiser and Ross Ashcroft make a convincing argument about why Britain should have stayed in the EU. They say that British people will be driven into poverty by leaving.”

Please summarize the "convincing argument." In the video, I didn’t hear any explanation of why a Brexit will destroy the UK.

Regarding the first half of the video, stock buybacks are a form of market manipulation. (Max Keiser calls it fraud.) Hence buybacks were illegal until 1982, when the Reagan regime legalized them. Today, companies that are deeply in debt, and which are facing bankruptcy, continue to engage in stock buybacks, often with borrowed money, in order to boost the price of their stock, and especially in order to make top executives richer.

Regular shareholders have no say in this. Regular shareholders are not allowed to vote on whether a company engages in stock buybacks.

Top executives use company money to buy back stock, thereby hollowing out the company for their own gain. This is why companies like GE, IBM, and Hewlett Packard are facing extinction. American Airlines, three years out of bankruptcy, is $19 billion in debt, and still the top executives continue to buy back billions of dollars’ worth of company stock, using borrowed money.

In this way, top executives get rich, while regular employees eventually lose their jobs.

Buy at least we don’t have evil socialism. Right?

Andrew Anderson said...

Buy at least we don’t have evil socialism. Konrad

Actually, we do. Only it's socialism for the banks and the rich, the most so-called "credit worthy" of what is, in essence, the public's credit but for private gain.

Konrad said...

@ Andrew Anderson: You are correct. Socialism for the rich, and neoliberalism for the rest.