One interesting fact I learned the other day: IBM did 140 billion in stock buy backs in the last decade. They have a 100 Billion dollar market cap. I think that is a bit of what we have going on right now. A system propped up by injected cash, which works for now because everyone plays along. Most of this injected money goes into the pockets of the rich, who are the ones holding the assets that the FED is bailing out…
A main purpose of buying a stock is to receive dividend payments. Buybacks are just a tax efficient dividend.
The latest craze to make paying dividends sound evil is just strange.