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Subject: Stock Buybacks

In some countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, corporations can buy back their own stock in a share repurchase, also known as a stock repurchase or share buyback. There has been a meteoric rise in the use of share repurchases in the U.S. in the past twenty years, from $5b in 1980 to $349b in 2005. A share repurchase distributes cash to existing shareholders in exchange for a fraction of the firm’s outstanding equity. That is, cash is exchanged for a reduction in the number of shares outstanding. The firm either retires the shares or keeps them as treasury stock, available for re-issuance. Under U.S. corporate law there are five primary methods of stock repurchase: open market, private negotiations, repurchase put rights, and two variants of self-tender repurchase, a fixed price tender offer and a Dutch auction. (Wikipedia Feb 2010)

Phony financial reform

Dodd-Frank won’t make better markets

Financial markets can be extremely complex, with many areas that can fail and break.

Unfortunately, instead of a ‘game-changing’ confidence-inspiring reform, the Obama administration presented the United States with the Dodd-Frank Act — a legislative miscarriage that has the potential to hold back recovery and impair the position of New York as a world financial center for decades — unless repealed or drastically amended.

Corporate Governance:

Stock buybacks are still bad for investors

The evidence against the wisdom and fairness of stock buybacks continues to build, but the Main Stream Media still doesn't understand.

M. A. Gumport of MG Holdings has published the July 2010 edition of the Buyback Monitor, showing corporate stock profits for 275 firms over the period 2000-2010. Without buybacks, share prices for the group now would be at least 5.3% higher (nearly 10% higher after adjustment for foregone interest income).

The lack of attention to protecting long-term investors against the massive fraud of stock buybacks is just one more sign that it will be some considerable time before the US works its way out of the present financial morass.

This is a 'game-changer'

Economic recovery may wait until 2016

Economic systems and institutions tend to gradually corrode and become increasingly inefficient and unstable

The current economic crisis, which started with the market crash of 2008, is a ‘game-changer’ that requires effective leadership with a firm grasp of economic reality and a willingness to introduce sensible bipartisan reforms in many areas of financial markets.

Unfortunately, these conditions are unlikely to be met before 2016. In the meantime, history suggests that there are likely to be many false rallies and dashed hopes before true recovery begins.

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Featured articles on inside pages

Stock buybacks

Stock buybacks and dividend equivalency

Corporations have argued that stock buybacks are equivalent to dividends. This article explains why this is not true and why suggesting buyback-dividend equivalency may constitute fraud.
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Securities Analysis

Efficient Market Hypothesis: No proof

The Efficient Market Hypothesis continues to impede understanding of how capital markets work. This hypothesis suggests that world capital markets are guided by crowds of rational, competing, profit-maximizers, each trying to predict future market values of individual securities. The Efficient Market Hypothesis has never been proven.
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US Politics

What is the future of private pension plans?

Between 1999 and 2002, US private pension funds lost US$ 1.2 trillion in value. It would almost seem that pension fund managers had been speculating with retirement money, attempting to beat each others' short-term performance statistics, with little interest in safeguarding the assets of plan beneficiaries. More ...

US equities

Stock values and cash dividends wither

Wall Street ballyhoo and flim-flam to the contrary, the year 2005 closed-out half a decade of misery and pain for the average investor in US equities. Average cash dividend yields never surpassed 3.8% during the period, and most of this was consumed by taxes and management expenses of the open-end mutual funds. More ...

US Bonds

Bond demand exceeds supply for a decade

Over the decade, 1995-2004, the demand for US bonds of all types has surpassed new bond issues in eight of the last ten years. This is the reason that bond prices have held firm, even in 2003, when net new issues reached almost $1.8 trillion. More ...

World Economy

Signs of US losing its groove?

Thirty years ago, US income from abroad was more than double the amount of income that the US paid to the rest of the world. This year, or the next, this foreign income surplus may disappear forever. Is the US 'losing its groove'? More ...

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2010-08-13 16:01