By Karen Brettell, David Gaffen, and David Rohde “When Carly Fiorina started at Hewlett-Packard Co in July 1999, one of her first acts as chief executive officer was to start buying back the company’s shares. By the time she was…
AIR IMPACT
Recognition of AIR research, opinions, and people in the media and elsewhere
How taxpayers prop up Big Pharma, and how to cap that
By Mariana Mazzucato “When Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price for Daraprim by 5,455%, he put drug pricing on the agenda for the leading 2016 presidential candidates. Bernie Sanders is reported to have rejected Shkreli’s campaign donation, and…
How Clintonomics created Carly Fiorina
By Rana Foroohar “By now, GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s business record has been well parsed: As CEO of Hewlett-Packard in the late 1990s and early 2000s, she orchestrated the blockbuster merger with computer maker Compaq.”… [Click HERE to read…
Stock buybacks prepare for the bear market
By S. L. Mintz “After retiring $2 trillion in the past five years, the record flow of stock buybacks faces new resistance. In fact, skeptical voices are being heard even from firms with maximum Wall Street credentials, such as BlackRock and Goldman…
Workers of America: You’re welcome!
By Heartland Capital Strategies “In our previous blog post, we discussed the recent SEC Commission approval of the CEO Pay Rule. Here we discuss Heartland’s contribution to the effort. As the Washington Post reported, two of the SEC’s commissioners “belittled the rule as…
The Obama administration really is worried about the U.S. economy
By Michael Hiltzik “The natural instinct of the people making economic policy at any given time is to put the best gloss on fresh economic data; that’s why the White House described Friday’s fairly dismal job numbers for September as marking “the…
Innovative Enterprise or Sweatshop Economics? In Search of Foundations of Economic Analysis
By Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) “In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter asserts: “perfect competition is not only impossible but inferior, and has no title to being set up as a model of ideal efficiency.” For neoclassical economists, the large…
Slowing stock buybacks one of the few reasons to fear Q3 earnings
By James Brumley “Less than a week after it was trumpeting a bullish call that would have seen stocks collectively gain 7% between then and the end of the year, Goldman Sachs hedged its bet by saying the upcoming earnings season could…
Risky business’: Companies are now funding share buybacks by selling bonds to other companies
By Tyler Durden “The buyback bonanza shown above is of course sponsored by ZIRP. Put simply, when borrowing costs are close to zero and when the market has become completely myopic as it relates to assessing performance, it makes sense to…
How United Airlines’ rapacious, scandal-ridden CEO screwed over his own company
By Leo Gerard “Jeff Smisek, the guy forced by scandal to resign last week as CEO of the world’s fourth-largest airline, is a major reason American workers can’t get a raise. Smisek and his overpaid boardroom buddies nationwide have swindled American…
