Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (83912)	10/7/2010 9:16:05 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 89467

I think it's the totality of the suck up Obama has done: MIC budget all time high(AfPak, iraq, Honduras, Colombia, etc.) Obamacare fiasco Finreg fiasco BP cover up Protecting Bush, Rove, Cheney, Yoo and then expanding their policies... Now the foreclosure fraud nuke.... Now 42,000,000 on food stamps... The rich are getting richer under O than they did under Bush or Reagan! === From: Yulya 10/7/2010 9:04:26 PM of 114044 via WSJ "Meanwhile, the poorest Americans spent more as prices for necessities like food and rental housing climbed. Spending rose 5.6% from 2007 to 2009 for the poorest fifth of consumers, the most of any other income group, despite a 5.5% drop in after-tax income to an average $9,956 a household. In some cases, elderly people and others with low incomes dipped into savings or relied on credit to get by." ... "The lowest earners spent 15.4% more on food last year than in 2007, shelling out more for cereals, meat and processed vegetables." ... "Among the poor, rent expenditures increased 5.3%." online.wsj.com

To: koan who wrote (83912)	10/8/2010 1:03:31 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Why aren't they spending,koan? U.S. companies buy back stock in droves as they hold record levels of cash By Jia Lynn Yang Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 7, 2010; 12:04 AM For months, companies have been sitting on the sidelines with record piles of cash, too nervous to spend. Now they're starting to deploy some of that money - not to hire workers or build factories, but to prop up their share prices. Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year, according to Birinyi Associates, a stock market research firm. But the rise in buybacks signals that many companies are still hesitant to spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could produce economic growth. Some companies are buying back shares partly because they don't want to invest in developing new products or services while consumer demand remains weak, analysts said. "They don't know what they want to do with all the cash they're sitting on," said Zachary Karabell, president of RiverTwice Research. Historically low interest rates are also prompting some companies to borrow to repurchase shares. Microsoft, for instance, borrowed $4.75 billion last month by issuing new bonds at rock-bottom interest rates and announced it would use some of that money to buy back shares. The company already has nearly $37 billion in cash, but much of that money is being held by its operations overseas. The tech company is reluctant to repatriate the money, because it would get hit with a huge corporate tax bill. A share buyback is a quick way to make a stock more attractive to Wall Street. It improves a closely watched metric known as earnings per share, which divides a company's profit by the total number of shares on the market. Such a move can produce a sudden burst of interest in a stock, improving its price. Among the biggest buybacks so far this year: Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest maker of personal computers, said in August it would spend $10 billion buying its shares. Its shares rose 1.5 percent after the announcement. In March, the giant snack-food maker Pepsico announced it would raise its dividend and buy back as much as $15 billion in common stock over the next three years. The company's shares rose 1.6 percent that day. Last month, the board of The Washington Post Co. authorized executives to buy back as much as 750,000 of the company's Class B shares. Its stock went up 4.3 percent on the day of the announcement. Hewlett-Packard, for one, said it is doing buybacks to maintain the number of shares outstanding after employees cash in their stock options. But critics say buybacks are a shortsighted way for companies to offload cash when they would be better off investing for the future. "It's totally wasted money," said William Lazonick, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and director of its Center for Industrial Competitiveness. "It does not do anything long-term for companies." Lazonick added that executives like buybacks because they boost their own stock options. Defenders of the practice say companies are better off buying back shares if they don't see opportunities to spend while demand remains weak. "There are times when the best thing to do might well be to buy back your stock and issue it back again at higher prices," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. "There's nothing wrong with that." Buybacks have become more popular in recent months as companies look for ways to spend the massive cash piles. Nonfinancial companies held $1.8 trillion in cash and short-term assets at the end of the second quarter, according to the Federal Reserve. That is just slightly lower than in the first quarter, when corporate America set a record for cash holdings. A third-quarter survey of nearly 1,000 chief financial officers by Duke University and CFO Magazine found that the executives' optimism about the U.S. economy had dropped by more than 15 percent compared with the previous three months. That is nearly as low as survey results from the first quarter of 2009, when the economic turmoil was in full swing. Half of the CFOs said their companies will keep clinging to their cash, and only 0.7 percent said they expect to hire more full-time employees. washingtonpost.com

To: koan who wrote (83912)	10/8/2010 1:11:33 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

You simply refuse to accept that the problem the dems find themselves in with the voters is due to how Obama has conducted himself, and the house and senate dems. It has nothing to do with grumbling progressives. Let me first point out that all you are doing is getting the attention of the crazies and wingers. Secondly, I never said that liberals were the crux of the problem for Obama and Dems. What they did, however, is provide additional ammo for Obama's enemies. "See.....he can't even please his base." They had a field day with the whinings of Krugman and Greenwald. Bernie Sanders said it today. The dems need to fight like the Republican's fight. How many filabusters did the dems force? How many attempts at reconciliation did the dems try? LOL. They think Sanders is a commie. I don't how many reconcialiations were done....but there were any number of filibusters. And as I watch obama trying to convince the people to forget the economy and his action with eloquent speeches, he fails to see he is pushing on a string. The damage is done. What damage koan? What frigging damage? The only damage is your not standing behind your president.....esp now when he needs you. If Obama and the dems had been seen fighting for the public option, unions, to reverse the supreme court decision to make corporations people, ets by forcing the Republcian's to filabuster and using reconciliation even if they lost the public would have seen them fighting. All the public saw was wishy washy back and forth. The public option was too radical. Unions have no traction with capacity ute below 75% and with too many people without work. You're talking pie in the sky. As for wishy washy, no one was watching. People are too busy with their lives to watch Congress that closely. And instead, they spent a year waiting for one Republican, or blue dog dem who finally showed up after they gutted the health bill and everything else. Who cares? They got it through. You are the one pushing on a string. You are unhappy because you didn't get what you wanted so you whine and moan. You won't accept that your are a minority opinion in this country. So long as you don't you will always be disappointed. Sorry.