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[Max™]

I will grant that there are situations where a company ends up overvalued or in other trouble and needs to do a buyback, if you'll grant that those situations are a tiny fraction of why companies repurchase shares.

Letting a CEO set the rules for their compensation and perform buybacks accordingly is indefensible, we're going on 40 years of Reagonomics now, it only works for a tiny handful who have been busily robbing everyone so they can sit on ever more massive piles of cash.

At this point when they try to piss on everyone else from up there it isn't even mist when it reaches the ground, at least for a while you could call it a trickling down of sorts, I suppose?

[Iduno]

Stock buybacks provide at least one useful service. They allow companies that made the mistake of moving moving to a publicly traded company, undo that mistake and revert to private ownership.

There are at least a few examples of companies that were at one point declining, and arguably failing, under shortsighted shareholder leadership, and once the company reverted to private ownership and they could look at the long term again, turned things around to become effective companies again.

(The Dell computer company is one that sticks in my mind.)

Yes. It's much better to fail in the hands of one billionaire than several.

[sluissa]

Stock buybacks provide at least one useful service. They allow companies that made the mistake of moving moving to a publicly traded company, undo that mistake and revert to private ownership.

There are at least a few examples of companies that were at one point declining, and arguably failing, under shortsighted shareholder leadership, and once the company reverted to private ownership and they could look at the long term again, turned things around to become effective companies again.

(The Dell computer company is one that sticks in my mind.)

Yes. It's much better to fail in the hands of one billionaire than several.

Private ownership doesn't mean owned by a single person. You can still have multiple shareholders. You simply aren't trading your stock on a public marketplace like NYSE.

And yes, I'll admit stock buybacks are probably often used for purposes that aren't in the best interests of the company as a whole, but if you view outstanding shares in a company as a form of debt,  a stock buyback is simply paying off that loan to rid yourself of interest(in the form of dividends) and regain control of your company. Like a lot of things in the financial world, there are often good reasons to do something, but also often reasons for something to be used nefariously.

[Max™]

That link I posted mentions how Buffet used tender offers to curtail an inflated market price of Geico before reinvesting it back into the company, he got massively wealthy because he recognized you can only butcher a cow once, but you can milk it for years.

Wall St. has been encouraging "shareholder accountability" which means stock price is the only thing that matters, so maximize it every quarter or else, and after looking at the 1982 SEC rule changes it took CEO's very little time to realize they could pump and dump entire companies if they wanted and just claim they were looking out for the shareholders if confronted about it.

[Trolldefender99]

Kinda disappointed not much diversity in the democratic playfield. Plus it feels like the party is really split up and fragmented, so hopefully whoever ends up as the nominee everyone units to take on Trump. As otherwise, Trump has almost the entire republican party on his side sadly.

My favored choices is still Andrew Yang, but he didn't make the cut for last debates. Also the only non white-old-male that is left. And despite the spat with Bernie, Warren is the only native american nominee and a female as an added bonus who is my 2nd choice. Not sure what is up with her and Bernie though, I thought they were semi-allies or at least friends but guess not or its just a disagreement or something. Guess to be expected since both want to be the President so they do have to compete with each other.

I used to be in favor of Biden, but he is Trump-lite except a democrat, even more of a white old male than even bernie is and a lot more boring. Better than trump for sure, pretty much anyone is at this point, but he is really questionable and my support isn't nearly as high for him as it was. Plus his debate skills are pretty lacking and not sure if he'd energize the party enough to beat Trump. Though I believe he still has huge support in polls and a huge african american support.

[PTTG??]

There's no real feud. It's just CNN trying to make sure Trump wins.

[Max™]

Warren's claim of being native american is questionable to say the least, definitely not a selling point.

Also: it feels like that butcher a cow once thing was some sort of folksy saying but for the life of me I can't actually remember hearing it before, surely I didn't make that up just then, right?

[dragdeler]

-

[scriver]

Warren's claim of being native american is questionable to say the least, definitely not a selling point.

Iirc she based it on an old family story, so yeah. I feel the whole thing got blown out of proportion back when though. Plenty of Americans have family stories of how they're descended partly from natives. Not all can be true.

We had a similar thing in my family. We used to think we were descended from Walloons (Sweden imported and enslaved a bunch of them in the 15th-16th century for our ironworks industry), even had an old disused family name that they supposedly was supposed to have been called, Henke. Well my dad got into lineage research and turns out we did have an ancestral Henke family, but they were damn dirty Germans, not Walloon, and imported for their glassblowing, not steelmaking.  Which kind of makes sense in hindsight since Henke isn't a very French sounding name but whatever. Point is that these family stories get corrupted very easily over generations of telling.

Also, lastly, regardless of how correct Warren's claims were: thinking somebody is native Americans just because of some far off blood link despite them having virtually no actual, "live" contact with the culture/nation seems very racist to me. " Not one drop" level racism.

[Kagus]

It's a very American thing to do, though. I've met quite a few "Norwegians" in the states who don't speak the language, have never been to Norway, and can't even find it on the map.

But their great-grandfather came across in search of opportunity and to get out of the house a bit, so by golly they're a Norwegian too! Hurray for Norgie!


I mean, shit... We even made a TV show about it.


EDIT: Also I'm not sure why Biden would get the "huge African American support", or even the label of having that, outside of direct media manipulation... Considering Bernie has actually supported and been personally involved with relevant movements, while to my knowledge Biden has primarily been doing lipservice in between massively making a fool out of himself with the occasional "whoopsie" comment.

[scriver]

If you mean the show like "descendants of emigrants come back to compete over meeting their far-fetched relatives then I feel that's different, that's people wanting to reconnect with their ancestry and reestablish a connection that they've missed, as opposed to people who go on calling themselves something while their far ago connection gets buried in the past and becomes meaningless.

It's sort of the difference between a person who just has a family story about being descended from native Americans, and a person who goes out of their way to learn if they have Xnd-cousins somewhere and get to know those, and learn about the culture and nation. I would never consider one of those swedescendant Americans in the show "Swedish" to the same extent as actual Swedes, but I can't deny there's an effort to rediscover and reconnect with Swedish culture.

Also I like that show so shush you

[Reelya]

Warren took a DNA test, it shows she very likely has a native american ancestor, but at most she's personally 1/64th indian, so 6 generations ago for a full indian ancestor. But you don't have to be 100% Indian to identify as an Indian. She could have had a great-great-grandparent who was 1/4 Indian but identified with their Indian ancestry.

[Kagus]

Personally, I identify most with my Nordic ancestors who traveled East into the wilds of early Russia and decided to make their homes there after profiting from the river trade.


I suppose you could say I'm Trans-Siberian.

[Frumple]

I suppose you could say I'm Trans-Siberian.

but are you an orchestra

do you have one of those drum/accordion/etc. things you strap on your back

EDIT: Also I'm not sure why Biden would get the "huge African American support", or even the label of having that, outside of direct media manipulation...

I'm not really entirely sure myself -- Biden's fucked over the black community pretty hard over the years in practice -- but from what I've picked up, it's a mixture of being Obama adjacent and having a good appearance of being able to win the general (true or not). Less genuine appreciation and more calculation he can kick Trump out the whitehouse.

It seems to mostly anchor itself in older, church-going members of the demographics in question (which isn't an attempt to diminish that impact, they're a pretty damn politically powerful subgroup), though. Biden's not terribly popular with younger people in general, and minority groups are no exception there.

All that said, it's flat fact that for whatever reasons, biden does currently have pretty damn substantial black support. He's one of the strongest candidates among that slice of the american population.

[Max™]

I mean, race is bullshit anyways, we're homo sapiens sapiens and lots of us have some neandertalensis and denisova mixed in.