So what does it mean for the future, however, you might wish to determine in what year "the future" occurs?
In researching American Cars of 1958 I had to suffer through a long, highly detailed account of the US auto industry from The Reckoning by David Halberstam.
Even smart people, at least in the corporate world, are capable of doing dumb things.
And since they are capable of doing dumb things, what does it say about the average dumb person's capability to do something really stupid?
It's a well known fact among Wall Street participants that the largest US public stock corporations have been borrowing money simply to buy back shares in the open market, thus propping up the valuation, while limiting the dividend payouts to shareholders of the common issues.
One could easily say -- and I tend to think the three major credit rating agencies -- Moody, Fitch, S&P -- would all agree that this type of borrowing serves no useful purpose.
True, you could buy IBM at 100 and then IBM borrows to buy shares and a few years later, even though IBM hasn't increased its annual revenue run it's at 200 because the BOD has been buying enough shares to create a scarcity, a scarcity, I should add, that is, for the most part, artificial.
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