“What
are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t
need to make smart decisions–if they can get rich making dumb decisions? The
incentives on Wall Street were all wrong; they’re still all wrong.” ― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Corporate earnings
reports for the fourth quarter are pretty much in the books. The deception,
falsification, accounting manipulation, and propaganda utilized by
mega-corporations and their compliant corporate media mouthpieces has been
outrageously blatant. It reeks of desperation as the Wall Street shysters
attempt to extract the last dollar from their muppet clients before this house
of cards collapses.
The CEOs of these
mega-corporations accelerated their debt financed stock buybacks in 2015 as
stock prices reached all-time highs and are currently so overvalued, they will
deliver 0% returns over the next decade. This disgraceful act of pure greed by
the Ivy League educated leaders of corporate America to boost their own stock
based compensation is reckless and absurd.
It is proof education at our most prestigious universities has
produced avaricious MBAs following financial models and each other like
lemmings going over the cliff.
Proof of their foolishness is self evident after perusing the chart below.
These intellectual giants evidently never learned the basic rule of buying low
and selling high in order to make a profitable trade.
The previous all-time high in stock buybacks occurred in 2008 at
the previous peak. That brilliant strategy led to 50% shareholder losses in a
matter of months. No Board of Directors fired any CEO for these disastrous
strategic blunders. These cowardly ego maniacs didn’t buy back any stock in
2009 and 2010 when they could have made a killing with valuations at decade
lows. After the stock market recovered by 100%, these stooges then began
borrowing and buying. It has now reached another all-time high crescendo.
