You hear the shills and shysters on CNBC every day telling you about record corporate profits and the fact that corporations are sitting on $1 trillion in cash. These scumbags are trying to lure you into the stock market just before this entire house of cards collapses. Jim “always sure, never right” Cramer interviews the CEOs of whatever stock he is hawking that day and everything is rosy.
The real data tells a different story. Corporations have never had more debt on their balance sheets in the history of our country. What are these brilliant corporate executives doing with these borrowed funds? They must be investing in new plants and new equipment and hiring thousands of new employees because opportunity abounds in the good old US of A.
Not so much. These bastions of American capitalism are using the borrowed funds to buy back the stock of their own companies to the tune of $124 billion in the first quarter of this year. So, let me get this straight. The stock market is up 100% from its 2009 low and now they are buying their company stock. The old buy high, sell low method. These company executives must be really positive about the future for their companies. I’m sure they must be buying their company stock hand over foot with their own substantial wealth.
Not so much. Corporate insiders have been selling their company stock at an all-time high rate. Here is some info from ZH:
Nothing new in the latest S&P 500 insider selling (and occasional buying). There were 2 (count them: two) purchases of stock by corporate insiders, of which one, which accounted for 97% of all purchases, came from Berkshire Hathaway. As usual selling dominated, with a ratio of 41 in notional sales to buys. And while we have been exposing this relentless dumping by insiders for years now, TrimTabs has added some voice to these ongoing warnings in which insiders sell their holdings to far less knowledgeable investors who are happy to burn “other people’s money.” Specifically, TrimTabs looks at the corporate share repurhcase-to-insider stock buying ratio, and gets some shocking results, namely that companies that have enacted $168 billion in corporate buybacks in 2011 have matched this with just $10 million in insider buying, a 16,800-to-1 ratio.
And this is where the rubber meets the road. Why should corporate executives buy stock in their companies with their own money when they get paid million dollar salaries with guaranteed multi-million dollar severance packages and a huge part of their compensation is stock options. Their goal is to use borrowed funds to buy back their stock, which will make the EPS go up, luring the ignorant masses into buying their stock, then they cash in their stock options and buy a nicer house in the Hamptons.
I’m having trouble seeing how this helps our economy, the middle class, or the average worker. Can a Wall Street scumbag please explain the benefits to us all?
The real story behind the market ‘boom’
Commentary: Companies are buying stock, but insiders aren’t
By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — A new report from TrimTabs, the investment analysts, has blown the whistle on what really went on behind the stock-market “boom” we saw in the first quarter, when the S&P 500 Index rose more than 5%.
No wonder everyone turned bullish by the end of March — just before the market started tanking again.
So who was driving up the market? What was creating this boom?
That works out at about $2 billion for every day the market opened.
Meanwhile, according to Trim Tabs, guess who avoided buying stock during the first quarter? Company executives. The “insiders.”
These are the guys whose stock purchases tend to strongly signal bull markets and genuine booms. They were spending investors’ money buying their stock, but weren’t spending their own.
TrimTabs says insiders’ stock purchases came to less than $2 billion for the entire quarter, a comparatively low level.
“We’ve never seen such a sharp contrast between what insiders are doing with their own money and what they’re doing with the money of the companies they manage,” TrimTabs Chief Executive Charles Biderman wrote in a note. Stock buybacks outnumbered executive stock purchases by the highest ratio TrimTabs has seen since it started tracking the numbers back in 2004.
“While insiders are willing to use corporate cash to try to support the value of their stock-based compensation, they don’t seem to think their stocks are attractively priced,“ Biderman said.
No kidding. When it comes to insiders, follow what they do, not what they say.
When company executives are spending their own money buying stock, it’s a bullish sign. After all, who better knows their companies’ prospects? But when they are sitting on their hands or cashing out, it’s not so good.
As for companies buying up their own shares, this needn’t be a bad thing. After all, if you drive up stock prices, all shareholders benefit.
Share buybacks also are a pretty good way of returning cash to investors. They’re not as good as paying dividends, but they are a better investment than most of the other things management likes to do with the money — like investing in pet projects, or providing more executive perks or making ill-timed acquisitions.
Alas, in this case, there’s another chapter to this story.
Where did the companies find the money to buy back their stock? In some cases the money came from profits. That’s a good thing. But in other cases they just borrowed the funds.
According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve, corporate debt surged again last quarter — to the highest levels on record.
Debts for nonfinancial corporates hit $7.3 trillion by March 31, reports the Fed. That’s up more than $100 billion since the start of the year.
The total at the end of 2007, at the peak of the so-called “credit bubble,” was just $6.7 trillion.
This borrowing spree has pushed overall gearing for nonfarm, nonfinancial corporates to hefty levels. The Fed says that U.S. nonfinancial corporates now have debt equal to 50% of their net worth. It’s near record levels for modern times. As recently as 2006, it was just 40%.
When a company borrows money to bolster its own stock price, it makes me wary of the bonds. When the executives aren’t even willing to invest their own money, it doesn’t exactly make me enthusiastic about the stock either.
Thinker says:
Further proof that there is no difference between politicians and corporate executives… they both use other people’s money (OPM) for things they never would pay for with their own money. And they borrow money when OPM isn’t enough for the greedy bastards.
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29th June 2011 at 11:55 am
Kill Bill says:
Maybe if they all buy up their own stocks then go private, instead of publicly traded, it will obliterate Seppuku Street.
One can hope.
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29th June 2011 at 11:57 am
ecliptix543 says:
Burn it down. All of it. No need to waste resources trying to fix it. Just sterilize the whole thing.
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29th June 2011 at 12:01 pm
StuckInNJ says:
Here’s a nice summary of the Greek problem by Charles Hugh Smith.
What does that have to do with Wall Street?
Well … just read it and tell me that every point he makes about the Greek kleptocracy doesn’t also apply to Wall Fucking Street !!
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Despite a veritable flood of financial and political analysis about Greece, nobody seems to have noticed the obvious: Greece is a kleptocracy. Just as a refresher, here is the definition of kleptocracy. Ask yourself is this doesn’t fit Greece like a supple leather glove:
Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, from the Ancient Greek for “thief” and “rule,” is a term applied to a government subject to control fraud that takes advantage of governmental corruption to extend the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats), via the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service. The term means “rule by thieves”.
This is a classic description of a kleptocracy: ———– a financial and political Elite which skims and concentrates the wealth of the nation via corruption and embezzlement while being protected by the winking complicity of their fellow plunderers who hold civil and financial authority.
Here’s the real dynamic in Greece: ————- The Kleptocracy–broadly, the political and financial Elites of the nation–saw a stupendous opportunity to embezzle hundreds of billions of euros from greed-blinded European banks at super-low rates of interest.
Being kleptocrats, they sniffed out the basics of the bezzle right away, and have been playing it ever since: we’re not paying any of these loans back, so go get the money from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the German taxpayers, or declare bankruptcy. Your choice.
The Greek kleptocrats knew all along that the German, Dutch, French and Finnish taxpayers were easy marks, just as they knew the European Union Power Elites would fall all over themselves to “save the euro” which was the centerpiece of their “one Europe” strategy of domination.
Only the Greek kleptocrats just beat them at their own game. The entire game plan of the “one Europe” Elites depends on nation-states actually complying with non-enforceable codes of conduct and on European banks making prudent loans.
Neither condition held: ———– Greece’s Elites reckoned they could game the system and string along the Eurocrats, if not forever, then certainly long enough to engorge their Swiss accounts with euros skimmed from the banks, and they’ve played that hand to perfection.
Their performance is truly a thing of beauty, a masterful display of the Big Con.Yes, we will agree to austerity, but of course that is only for “the little people.” Then, we’ll renege on that, and demand another bailout. The Eurocrats will of course comply, lest their own plans for domination crumble along with the euro and the Eurozone edifice.
Meanwhile, the European banks were playing a similiar bezzle. They knew Greece had a history of defaulting on a regular basis, and any employee of the bank who lived in Greece could have briefed them on the kleptocracy’s hold on that nation. But the banks knew they could play the Eurocrats and the ECB, too, as the Eurozone had what amounted to a “German Put”: if any bad bank loans to Greece ever threatened the Eurozone, the German-led European Central Bank would make them whole.
Once again, the Eurocrats responded as expected, quickly massing hundreds of billions of euros to backstop the impaired loans to Greece and promising that bondholders would not suffer any losses.
The banks and the Greek kleptocracy are like the wife and the mistress of a prominent conservative socialite who absolutely needs to preserve a facade of conventional propriety. The kleptocrats, like the mistress, know they can blow down the entire charade, and so when they demand some baubles (bailouts) from their “Sugar Daddy” European Central Bank, the bank whimpers and complains but forks over the cash, lest the whole shaky facade collapses in a heap, along with the ECB’s dominance.
The wife, meanwhile, also gets her demand met. Now that the European banks have leveraged themselves up to pre-implosion Lehman Brothers levels of 30-to-1, they need a bailout, too, and so they tell the ECB, don’t even think about saying “no” because massive bank insolvency would also shatter the Euroland’s thin veneer of permanence.
The euro system is already broken, but the ECB and its Eurocrats are desperate to maintain the facade. The game is untenable, however, because the Greek kleptocrats and the European banks have all the leverage and the ECB is the bleating mark trying to satisfy the dualing demands of its wife and mistress.
“But you promised.” Ah yes, Dearie, but I changed my mind.
It is almost laughable to see the Eurocrats desperately trying to get another “austerity deal” approved, even as everyone involved knows it’s as phony as passing off your mistress as your “private secretary.” The austerity plan will not actually be put in place, none of the line-in-the-sand fiscal targets will be met, and the Greek kleptocrats will be smirking as the frantic ECB marks scrounge up another bailout and another face-saving “austerity program.”
The wild card here is the oppressed Greek citizenry, who might just spoil the fun by overthrowing their corrupt Overlords. They could also spoil the game by simply refusing to play any more, as a General Strike of any length would quash the fantasy of rising taxes and all the rest of the absurd assumptions at the heart of the “austerity program.”
If the Eurocrats and the ECB really want to save the euro, then they should help the Greek citizenry evict their kleptocratic Elites. But that would take genuine courage and insight, and alas, the Eurocrats, like all bureaucrats seeking to protect their fiefdom at any cost, don’t really care about the oppressed Greeks. They just want to play for time, and hope that a miracle will occur. Even as their fat, sweaty fingers hold a jumble of worthless cards–not even a pair of deuces–they persist in a laughably transparent charade of holding four aces.
The game is over for the ECB, the Greek kleptocracy and the european banks. All that needs to happen now is for the players to reveal their miserable cards and fold. The losses will be stupendous, but they will only get more horrendous the longer the game is allowed to go on.
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29th June 2011 at 1:47 pm
StuckInNJ says:
oops … forgot the link
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2011/06/greece-is-kleptocracy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+google%2FRzFQ+%28oftwominds%29
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29th June 2011 at 1:48 pm
Sparrowhawk says:
Smith followed up today with why the US is a kleptocracy.
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29th June 2011 at 1:55 pm
StuckInNJ says:
Thanks, Sparrowhawk.
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The U.S. Is a Kleptocracy, Too
If we dare look at the plain facts of the matter, we have to conclude the U.S. is a kleptocracy not unlike Greece, only on a larger and slightly more sophisticated scale.
Yesterday, I noted that Greece Is a Kleptocracy; the U.S. is a kleptocracy, too.Before you object with a florid speech about the Bill of Rights and free enterprise, please consider the following evidence that the U.S. is now a kleptocracy worthy of comparison to Greece:
1. Neither party has any interest in limiting the banking/financial cartel. The original Glass-Steagal bill partitioning investment banking from commercial banking was a few pages long, and it was passed in a few days. Our present political oligrachy spends months passing thousands of pages of complex legislation that accomplishes essentially nothing.
As Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig recently noted (in a rare admission by an insider–I wonder how long it will be before he “resigns to pursue other opportunities,” i.e. is muzzled):
The problem with SIFIs (“systemically important financial institutions,” a.k.a. too big to fail banks) is they are fundamentally inconsistent with capitalism. They are inherently destabilizing to global markets and detrimental to world growth. So long as the concept of a SIFI exists, and there are institutions so powerful and considered so important that they require special support and different rules, the future of capitalism is at risk and our market economy is in peril.
Do you really think Dodd-Frank and all the other “fooled by complexity” legislation has accomplished anything? Hoenig cuts that fantasy off at the knees:
As late as 1980, the U.S. banking industry was relatively unconcentrated, with 14,000 commercial banks and the assets of the five largest amounting to 29 percent of total banking organization assets and 14 percent of GDP.
Today, we have a far more concentrated and less competitive banking system. There are fewer banks operating across the country, and the five largest institutions control more than half of the industry’s assets, which is equal to almost 60 percent of GDP. The largest 20 institutions control 80 percent of the industry’s assets, which amounts to about 86 percent of GDP.
In other words, nothing has really changed from 2008 except the domination of the political process and economy by the financial cartel has been masked by a welter of purposefully obfuscating legislation. This is of course the exact same trick Wall Street used to cloak the risk of the mortgage-backed derivatives it sold as “low risk” AAA rated securities: by design, the instruments were so complex that only the originators understood how they worked.
That is the current legislative process in a nutshell. Much of the 60,000 pages of tax code are arcane because they describe loopholes and exclusions written specifically to exempt a single corporation or cartel from Federal taxes.
The U.S. is truly a kleptocracy because its political leadership actually has no interest in limiting the banking/financial cartel. When questioned why their “reforms” are so toothless, legislators wring their hands and bleat, “Honest, I wanted to limit the banks but they’re too powerful.” Spoken like a true kleptocrat.
2. Our stock markets are dominated by insiders. It is estimated that some 70% of all shares traded are exchanged in private “dark pools” operated by the TBTF banks and Wall Street, and the majority of the remaining 30% of publicly traded shares are traded by high-frequency trading machines that hold the shares for a few seconds, or however long is needed to skim the advantages offered by proximity to the exchange and speed.
If that’s your idea of an “open market,” then you’re the ideal citizen for a kleptocracy.
3. The rule of law in the U.S. has been divided into two branches: one in name only for the financial Elites and corporate cartels, and one for the rest of us mere citizens. Between corporate toadies on the Supreme Court who have granted corporations rights to spend unlimited money lobbying and buying legislators as a form of “free speech”–ahem, how can something that costs billions of dollars be “free”?–and vast regulatory brueacracies that saw nothing wrong with MERS and the complete corruption of land and mortgage transfer rules, the U.S. legal system is now a perfection of kleptocracy.
As economist Hernando de Soto observed in The Destruction of Economic Facts, the ForeclosureGate mortgage mess is not just a series of petty paperwork mistakes–it is the destruction of the entire system of trustworthy transfer of property rights for non-Elites:
Knowing who owned and owed, and fixing that information in public records, made it possible for investors to infer value, take risks, and track results. The final product was a revolutionary form of knowledge: “economic facts.”
Over the past 20 years, Americans and Europeans have quietly gone about destroying these facts. The very systems that could have provided markets and governments with the means to understand the global financial crisis—and to prevent another one—are being eroded. Governments have allowed shadow markets to develop and reach a size beyond comprehension. Mortgages have been granted and recorded with such inattention that homeowners and banks often don’t know and can’t prove who owns their homes. In a few short decades the West undercut 150 years of legal reforms that made the global economy possible.
The results are hardly surprising. In the U.S., trust has broken down between banks and subprime mortgage holders; between foreclosing agents and courts; between banks and their investors—even between banks and other banks.
Frequent contributor Harun I. summarized the reality of this political and financial coup by kleptocrats:
As described by Georgetown University bankruptcy expert Adam Levitin, in testimony to subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, “If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever, [and] could cloud title to nearly every property in the United States.” It would also raise the question of the legality of the resulting millions of foreclosures on American homeowners, since the banks cannot prove “ownership” of the foreclosed property.
The statement above gets to the elemental issue that apparently is lost on many otherwise intelligent people. This is not about frivolous claims based on technicalities. This is about securities fraud (theft) on a ludicrously massive scale. These so-called securities were sold to governments, pension funds and other financial institutions globally. Trillions were made by banks selling what is becoming clearly understood to be worthless pieces of paper and when the jig was up, which ultimately led to the destruction of economies globally, they made ordinary citizens the losers by sliding their worthless pieces of paper to the balance sheet of taxpayers worldwide.
And while some are quibbling over whether someone should get a free house, those who have perpetrated the greatest swindle in the history of mankind are about to get away with it, because they are “systemically important”, code for TBTF (too big to fail).
You think money laundering and tax evasion is a specialty only of Caribbean island “banking centers”? Think again; we have corporate oversight equivalent to that of Somalia. U.S.A. a haven for corporate money laundering: A little house of secrets on the Great Plains:
Among the firm’s offerings is a variety of shell known as a “shelf” company, which comes with years of regulatory filings behind it, lending a greater feeling of solidity.
“A corporation is a legal person created by state statute that can be used as a fall guy, a servant, a good friend or a decoy,” the company’s website boasts. “A person you control… yet cannot be held accountable for its actions. Imagine the possibilities!”
“In the U.S., (business incorporation) is completely unregulated,” says Jason Sharman, a professor at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, who is preparing a study for the World Bank on corporate formation worldwide. “Somalia has slightly higher standards than Wyoming and Nevada.”
The U.S. was declared “non-compliant” in four out of 40 categories monitored by the Financial Action Task Force, an international group fighting money laundering and terrorism finance, in a 2006 evaluation report, its most recent. Two of those ratings relate to scant information collected on the owners of corporations. The task force named Wyoming, Nevada and Delaware as secrecy havens. Only three states – Alaska, Arizona and Montana – require regular disclosure of corporate shareholders in some form.
4. Just as in Greece, taxes are optional for the nation’s financial Elites. In Greece, you don’t mention your swimming pool to avoid the “swimming pool tax.” Here in the U.S., that sort of tax avoidance is against the law (smirk). Here, you hire a Panzer division of sharp tax attorneys and escape taxation legally (well, mostly legally–whatever it takes to win).
If you are unfortunate enough to be a successful small entrepreneur who nets $100,000 a year, you pay 15.3% self-employment and 25% Federal tax on the bulk of your income, a combined rate of 40.3%, and a combined rate of 43.3% on all income above $82,400.
Those who net millions pay less than half that amount, somewhere between 17% for the top 1/10th of 1% and 21% for the top 1%: Citizens for Tax Justice, which looks at all taxes paid including federal, state and local taxes, said that in 2010 the top 1 percent of earners will pay 21.5 percent of taxes.
Note that the 21.5% paid by the top 1% includes all state and local taxes. Here in California, the small businessperson earning $100,000 pays between 5% and 9% state tax, so their combined state and Federal tax burden on their highest earnings is a whopping 50%. Then there are property taxes and the 9.5% sales tax, and endless junk fees skimmed from small business. Add all that together and the total taxes paid rises to the 60% level, or roughly triple what the top 1% pay.
(Bitter note from a tax donkey: To all those tax-and-spenders who whine that California has “low taxes,” please pay my “low” property tax bill, will you? It’s “only” $11,000 a year.)
Super Rich See Federal Taxes Drop Dramatically:
The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.
Eric Schoenberg says to sign him up for paying higher taxes. Schoenberg, who inherited money and has a healthy portfolio from his days as an investment banker, has joined a group of other wealthy Americans called United for a Fair Economy. Their goal: Raise taxes on rich people like themselves.
Schoenberg, who now teaches a business class at Columbia University, said his income is usually “north of half a million a year.” But 2009 was a bad year for investments, so his income dropped to a little over $200,000. His federal income tax bill was a little more than $2,000.
“I simply point out to people, ‘Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?’” Schoenberg said.
Do you really think you don’t live in a kleptocracy? Why? Because the truth hurts?
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/
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29th June 2011 at 2:10 pm
Thinker says:
Stuck, thanks for posting the CHS stuff… here’s another one to add to the mix:
While Greece Burns, Spain Test Drives A Post-Euro Future
…since I arrived to Spain a few days ago from London, I’ve been sniffing around to get a sense of how Spain’s crisis is unfolding. We see the news clips and YouTube videos of protests, of governments collapsing, of soaring unemployment, but I wanted to see for myself how feels on the ground, and how things have changed over the last year.
The most startling change that I’ve noticed, without doubt, is the inflation. Literally everything I’ve looked at– food prices at the local market, restaurant tabs, local electronics, highway tolls, raw material construction costs, mobile phone tariffs, taxi fare, etc. are much more expensive, to the tune of 10% to 25%.
So much for the theory that an economic slowdown would decrease prices.
John Maynard Keynes, who is consistently held up as the father of modern macroeconomics, suggested in his General Theory that keeping interest rates low and government spending high in order to sustain a boom (or get an economy moving again) would likely NOT result in inflation.
This has been the underpinning economic theory behind worldwide government efforts since the Lehman collapse… it’s the old “spend your way out of recession” play. Politicians and central bankers alike seem to believe, as Keynes did, that inflation is a low risk consequence.
Spain is one of many examples that proves this theory to be utter nonsense. Everyone on the ground knows that inflation is high; local newspapers are even running stories about how to best deal with inflation and preserve your savings.
Among other things I have noticed is the decline in service. Part of the reason Spain’s unemployment rate is so high is because it is so costly and bureaucratic to keep employees. Payroll taxes are quite high, so businesses have laid off their workers en masse.
You notice it instantly when you try to buy something at a retail shop or restaurant; there may be one person working for dozens of customers, and it takes forever to get anything done.
The other thing that has me quite concerned about Spain is the police presence. I don’t think I ever went 5 blocks in Barcelona without seeing a cop on the street. What’s more, they don’t just stand there waiting for something to happen, they’re actively going around harassing people.
My assessment is that the government is intentionally having the police turn up the heat on their intimidation tactics in hopes of squashing any future rebellion before it happens. They want to instill a sense of fear in the society to keep everyone quiet.
Read the full piece at the linked headline. It’s fascinating.
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29th June 2011 at 3:00 pm
Centerfield says:
Good God! My head is spinning after reading both of those. But thanks….just makes me squirm ever more. Friday is approaching…time to buy more non-perishables and ammo!
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29th June 2011 at 4:53 pm
Buckhed says:
But so many people bought “Hope and Change” in 2008. I hope they have some change left when TSHTF !
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29th June 2011 at 5:22 pm
Buckhed says:
Centerfield…buy only SS109 for the 5.56 oh and a few betamags too .
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29th June 2011 at 5:23 pm
ecliptix543 says:
Oh come on now, buckhed.. bad consumer advice!! Magpul’s PMAG is way better than beta’s. You know better than that!!
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29th June 2011 at 5:42 pm
Opinionated Bloviator says:
Buckhed – No change, that was needed to bail out Wall Street again (along with their 401k…) all they will be left with is hope (they don’t starve to death under a bridge)…
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29th June 2011 at 12:24 am
Connovarn says:
Hmmm………..use the cops to harrass people aready stressed out by unemployment and rising prices for basic food items. That’s going to end well
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29th June 2011 at 6:23 am