{"id":7534,"date":"2015-04-24T06:45:02","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T11:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7534"},"modified":"2015-04-24T06:45:02","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T11:45:02","slug":"corporate-americas-millstone-of-too-much-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7534","title":{"rendered":"Corporate America\u2019s Millstone of Too Much Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mauldineconomics.com\/connecting-the-dots\/corporate-americas-millstone-of-too-much-cash\" target=\"_blank\">Corporate America\u2019s Millstone of Too Much Cash<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Corporate America is flush with cash. Amazing amounts of cash.<\/p>\n<p>According to research house FactSet, the combined cash balances of just the 500 companies in the S&amp;P 500 is sitting at a record $1.4 trillion.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_1_20150421_CTD.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a mountain of cash, but here\u2019s some perspective on just how much money we\u2019re talking about. $1.4 trillion is enough money to buy all the shares of Berkshire Hathaway\u2026 and Facebook\u2026 and Apple\u2026 and still have money left over.<\/p>\n<p>That amount increases to almost $2 trillion if you expand the universe to include all publicly traded stocks.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/qz.com\/380342\/the-global-economys-bizarre-problem-too-much-money\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_2_20150421_CTD.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A publicly traded company has five options when it comes to deploying that cash:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pay down debt<\/li>\n<li>Buy other companies<\/li>\n<li>Pay out dividends<\/li>\n<li>Buy back its own shares<\/li>\n<li>Let it sit in the bank and earn interest<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The last option\u2014let it sit in the bank and earn interest\u2014isn\u2019t very attractive in this day and age of zero interest rates, and most companies with gigantic cash hoards have already paid down most, if not all, of their debt, so the only viable choices are numbers 2, 3, and 4.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Corporate America\u2019s Millstone of Too Much Cash Corporate America is flush with cash. Amazing amounts of cash. According to research house FactSet, the combined cash balances of just the 500 companies in the S&amp;P 500 is sitting at a record $1.4 trillion. That\u2019s a mountain of cash, but here\u2019s some perspective on just how much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1035,4925,4926],"class_list":["post-7534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cash","tag-cash-hoarding","tag-us-corporations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7535,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7534\/revisions\/7535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}