The Two Janet’s And The Perfect Storm Ahead
The Bloomberg news crawler this morning is heralding the heart of our thesis: Namely, that “flush with cash from the tax cut”, US companies are heading for a “stock buyback binge of historic proportions”.
This isn’t a “told you so” point. It’s dramatic proof that corporate America has been absolutely corrupted by the Fed’s long-running regime of Bubble Finance. Undoubtedly, the C-suites view the asinine Trump/GOP tax cut not as a green light to invest and build for the long haul, but as manna from heaven to pump their faltering share prices in the here and now.
And we do mean a gift just in the nick of time. The giant Bernanke/Yellen financial bubble is finally springing cracks everywhere, putting corporate share prices and executive stock option packages squarely in harms’ way.
So what could be more timely and efficacious than an enhanced, government debt-financed wave of stock buybacks to rejuvenate the speculative juices on Wall Street and embolden the robo-machines and punters for another round of buy-the-dip?
Indeed, corporate stock buying is now cranking at a $1 trillion annual rate or nearly double the rate of the last several years. That huge inflow of cash and encouragement to Wall Street will undoubtedly break the market’s fall in the short-run; and over the next several quarters, perhaps, enable an extended stop-and-start stepwise decline rather than a sudden sharp plunge as in the fall-winter of 2008-09.
It also underscores why the Paul Ryan school of conservative policy wonks got it so wrong on the corporate rate cut. They still dwell in a pari passu world where higher after-tax rates of return would, in fact, stimulate increased investment, growth, employment and income.
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