SlyFrog
4904
I seriously have no idea why a stock buyback should ever be illegal. If a company cannot find a use for money, they should just piss it away on something rather than give it back to the people who own the company?
Companies obviously should not be able to use public funds to just hand to their shareholders. I have big problems with government bailouts. But to suggest that buybacks should be illegal in most circumstances is silly. All it really is is a form of dividend that is taxed at a better rate. If a company is profitable and has excess money, why shouldn’t it be able to return it to its shareholders?
(Separate issue - we should simplify our tax code so that people don’t get better rates for doing the same thing but structuring it differently. There is no reason why issuing a dividend to shareholders of a million dollars is taxed at ordinary income rates, but buying back a million dollars of shares from all shareholders is taxed at capital gains rates. It’s just a silly work around.)
Nesrie
4906
I had to make-up for the last one ;-). I hope there will be more videos like the one above though, to add some light for when we get to look back at this particular moment in time.
SlyFrog
4907
That’s seriously one of the dumber articles I’ve seen in a while. The guy is literally conflating different concepts and confusing how buybacks work and such all over the place. It’s just so dumb, and you can tell the author has next to no understanding of finance.
No, I have no interest in taking a bunch of time to go line by line and explain the exact details of how badly stupid it is in a thread that is instead devoted to Coronavirus. But good god, it’s stupid.
ShivaX
4908
I assume FDR made it illegal for a reason, but I’m not a Wall Street guy.
I just know we paid for a ton of buybacks for no fucking reason at all.
For most of the 20th century, stock buybacks were deemed illegal because they were thought to be a form of stock market manipulation.
nKoan
4909
Alas Bloomberg and Steyer have already dropped out.
/s
This one? It only had 12 of them, though…
Timex
4911
That would be a distribution paid to stock holders. But that’s different from a stock buyback.
ShivaX
4912
12 Monkeys is great.
The one I hated had a magic monkey and if you could just catch the magic monkey you could magically cure the disease. But you had to hurry before the airforce nuked the town or something.
Fucking magic monkey. Even young me knew that was horseshit.
ShivaX
4913
Things are going well, I see.
“White House officials have scrambled in recent days to assemble a massive rescue plan as large parts of the U.S. economy show signs of buckling. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Republican senators on Tuesday that the unemployment rate could skyrocket to 20 percent, a level Trump said Wednesday would be “an absolute worst-case scenario.””
Why is it when Trump says things like “absolute worst-case scenario” I automatically expect it to be much worse than that? It is Pavlovian? Why am I drooling all of a sudden?
Only in America could a zero like Pence somehow elevate himself above a sidewalk turd sweeper.
Yep, I’ve already had to do this with my teens. They are not happy about it, but so what? Their asthmatic brother does not need them bringing this stuff home.
That’s great. You are a good parent, my friend.
Oghier
4918
I think the governor of NY is doing a pretty great job communicating about this. I wish my state’s governor was doing… anything.
This is a pretty funny interview.
KevinC
4919
A little bit of levity is welcome right now.
Sorry to hear about your niece. I hope everything proceeds relatively stress-and-symptom free.
I got an update from my cousin this morning… she and her family got tested three days ago and are quarantined until March 27th.
It seems as if we are stuck in a bureaucratic mess, long hold lines and little information. We have now been told to wait at least until Friday for test results but even that seemed hopeful. It’s frustrating and difficult to understand why the US is lagging behind so many other countries but for now there is nothing to do but wait. I am feeling fine and no one else has shown symptoms luckily, so we will keep you posted.
And as Pence and company fail to put specifics on testing, ventilators, etc…the market has to apply the brakes again due to a drop of over 7% while they’re speaking.
RichVR
4922
Yeah, Trump can’t handle the question about ventilator numbers and hands off to Pence. Pence has no fucking clue either and spews garbage. Par for the course.
