According to preliminary numbers from Standard & Poor’s, buybacks among S&P 500 components rose rose 15% in the third quarter, after a 55% decline in the second, leaving them 42% below a year earlier. Measured as a percent of GDP, buybacks are now in the same neighborhood they were last seen in in 2010—though that’s still well above where they were any time between 1998 and 2004. Measured as a percentage of operating earnings, as in the second graph, buybacks fell to their lowest levels since 2010, 32%. Despite the increase in dollar volume, buybacks declined as a percentage of earnings because earnings were up 42% in the quarter. In the 40 quarters between 2010 and 2019, buybacks fell below […]
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Health effects of Confusing Absolute w/ Relative?
Dr. William Darity, in charge of many things at Duke University, has been steadily advancing his theory of stratification economics, arguing...
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A Multi-Century Elevator Ride
In the late 1800s, Native Americans told naturalists working in Alaska that the marbled murrelet, a small seabird that flies underwater when...
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A Metaphor Unlikely to Deliver: Betting on H20
Michael Hiltzik has a piece buried in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, with the catchy title, “Wall Street Can Now Bet on the Price of California...