I wish President Obama would call this out for what it is: un-American. It's just plain un-American that the people who run these corporations, companies that made so much money they can sit on it, feel no obligation whatsoever to the country's economic health, or loyalty to its workers. They are perpetuating the national unemployment crisis by refusing to hire, and they feel perfectly okay about that.
If only we still had stocks. Some people could really use a good, old-fashioned public shaming:
For months, companies have been sitting on the sidelines with record piles of cash, too nervous to spend. Now they're starting to deploy some of that money - not on hiring workers or building factories, but to prop up their share prices.
Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year, according to Birinyi Associates, a stock market research firm. But the rise in buybacks signals that many companies are still hesitant to spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could produce economic growth.
Some companies are buying back shares partly because they don't want to invest in developing new products or services while consumer demand remains weak, analysts said.
"They don't know what they want to do with all the cash they're sitting on," said Zachary Karabell, president of RiverTwice Research.
Historically low interest rates are also prompting some companies to borrow to repurchase shares.
