Comment to INET & William Lazonnick´s post on Buybacks

Briefly and telegraphically my comments on (1) William Lazonick´s Inet (2) post on Joe Biden buyback policy and comment when still Vice-President.

(Stock Buybacks) “Manipulate the market and leave Americans worse off”….too much to be said so easily. But those were the words of a politician (Joe Biden), not academic (empirically-based) words. The author says implicitly that buybacks should be not legitimate, when it is a key element of capital allocation.

The few evidence references in the article point to INET and the author´s Non-for-Profit org. The only “purpose” of buybacks, (so they say of Apple!) is increasing the stock price, (and they take as a given that Apple is not investing enough). Where is the evidence of such statement? Apple´s prospects do not seem to be precisely low…….