The Fed Just Unleashed a Trillion in New Debt: Companies Took the Money and Spent it on Dividends While Firing Millions

from Zero Hedge

It was all the way back in 2012 when we first described in “How The Fed’s Visible Hand Is Forcing Corporate Cash Mismanagement” that the era of ultra cheap money unleashed by the Fed is encouraging corporations not to invest in capex or growth or investing in a satisfied employee base, but to rush and spend it on cheap, short-term gimmicks such as buybacks and dividends which benefit the company’s shareholders in the short term while rewarding management with by bonuses for reaching stock price milestones, vesting incentive compensation.

We concluded by saying that this was “the most insidious way in which the Fed’s ZIRP policy is now bleeding not only the middle class dry, but is forcing companies to reallocate cash in ways that benefit corporate shareholders at the present, at the expense of investing prudently for growth 2 or 3 years down the road.”

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