What a tax on stock buybacks would and wouldn’t mean for the bull market

…And then there’s Apple, with the biggest share repurchase program of all, and a customer of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which has started construction on a $12 billion plant in Arizona.

“Apple is spending six times that in one year on buybacks,” said William Lazonick, professor emeritus of economics at University of Massachusetts and co-founder and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network — and a fierce critic of buybacks. “Apple could have made 20 fabs in the past decade…”