By the way, Southwest blew $5.6 billion on stock buybacks in the past few years.
They could have made investments in their services and infrastructure.
They could have prepared for extreme weather events.
But no. They decided to enrich their shareholders.
@rbreich
Stock buybacks should be illegal.
Stock buybacks after a bailout should be mandatory jail time.
@mitchdenny @rbreich
What's inherently wrong w buybacks?
- market manipulation
- redirects money that could go into business investments/expansion
- indicative of price gouging
- shifted exec comp to stock performance vs business performance
Buybacks were illegal until Reagan. We forget that.
@mitchdenny @rbreich
Prior to Reagan, companies typically balanced 3 priorities: growth, customers and employees. Exec comp reflected that. Look at annual reports from the 50s and 60s.
Then that shifted solely to shareholders. That's led to mass layoffs, wage stagnation, price gouging, underinvestment, consolidations - and exec comp skyrocketed because they were paid on stock price. A company could be declining, but could still grow the stock price w buybacks.
@TCatInReality @mitchdenny @rbreich
Then along came a Nobel Prize winning economist from U Chicago who sagely pointed out - it's the shareholder stupid. And so it now is.
Robert Reich
TC Won't Give In To Lies
Mitch Denny
GD