<story><title>Companies Use Borrowed Billions to Buy Back Stock, Not to Invest</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-08/companies-use-borrowed-billions-to-buy-back-stock-not-to-invest</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>So many comments here along the lines of &amp;quot;So what, they&amp;#x27;re making an efficient use of capital.&amp;quot; That&amp;#x27;s missing the point. So much of the argument behind the 2017 tax cuts and the Fed&amp;#x27;s low interest rates was that they would spur &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; investment (that is, investment which increases productive capacity or improves productivity) that would benefit everyone, mainly through jobs. If all this extra money is just resulting in a more tax-efficient way for companies to give money to their shareholders, which in reality is a small slice of the populace, highly skewed towards the wealthy, it&amp;#x27;s certainly worth it to call bullshit that these governmental moves that everyone ends up paying for only end up benefiting the wealthy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lazare</author><text>&amp;gt; So much of the argument behind the 2017 tax cuts and the Fed&amp;#x27;s low interest rates was that they would spur real investment (that is, investment which increases productive capacity or improves productivity) that would benefit everyone, mainly through jobs.&lt;p&gt;Sure.  Do we have any reason to think that&amp;#x27;s not working? When an investor makes a successful investment, and the company becomes very profitable and has spare cash they can&amp;#x27;t find a productive use for, and give it back to the original investors...&lt;p&gt;...what do you think the investor is going to do with it?&lt;p&gt;1) Look for another good investment (something they have a track record for doing)&lt;p&gt;2) Pile the money up in a big pile and have a bonfire, as they literally have no other ideas for what to do with the money.&lt;p&gt;3) Something else?&lt;p&gt;1 is the obvious answer, yet you seem to be the answer must be 2 and can&amp;#x27;t possibly be 1, but you provide no reason to think so, the linked article provides no reason to think so, and you don&amp;#x27;t even seem to have realised 1 is a possible outcome.&lt;p&gt;Further, you seem to be implicitly assuming that a company management who are not professional investors and who don&amp;#x27;t think they can find a good use for the money will still do a better job of making investments than the firm&amp;#x27;s investors, who are. Is there a reason for this?</text></comment>
<story><title>Companies Use Borrowed Billions to Buy Back Stock, Not to Invest</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-08/companies-use-borrowed-billions-to-buy-back-stock-not-to-invest</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>So many comments here along the lines of &amp;quot;So what, they&amp;#x27;re making an efficient use of capital.&amp;quot; That&amp;#x27;s missing the point. So much of the argument behind the 2017 tax cuts and the Fed&amp;#x27;s low interest rates was that they would spur &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; investment (that is, investment which increases productive capacity or improves productivity) that would benefit everyone, mainly through jobs. If all this extra money is just resulting in a more tax-efficient way for companies to give money to their shareholders, which in reality is a small slice of the populace, highly skewed towards the wealthy, it&amp;#x27;s certainly worth it to call bullshit that these governmental moves that everyone ends up paying for only end up benefiting the wealthy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrfredward</author><text>Say a company buys back 2 billion in stock, rather than investing it in new equipment. Does that reduce the amount of money invested in the economy? The answer depends on what the investors who sold do with that money. If they invest it somewhere else, then the company&amp;#x27;s decision doesn&amp;#x27;t reduce the amount invested in the economy.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t believe private investors decide they&amp;#x27;d rather buy a yacht than invest their money just because a company bought back shares. More likely, the share buyback just moved money from a mature company to growth stocks or startups, which is exactly what should happen in a healthy economy.&lt;p&gt;Put another way...should Dinosaur Oil Inc use their profits to build another refinery even when they don&amp;#x27;t think it makes financial sense...or should they buy back stock, make their investors happy, and then be in a more vulnerable position when the investors turn around and fund Shiny Solar Inc?</text></comment>