It took the mainstream media a few months to catch up to the theme first revealed here that in addition to the fading QE (even if supplanted by NIRP in Europe and Turbo QE in Japan), one of the primary driving forces of the market’s outperformance in 2014 was a relentless buyback bid as corporations, lacking better uses for their cash, bought a record amount of their own shares in Q1 (and as will soon be proven) in Q2 attempting to increase the EPS by lowering the S.
It was only logical that it would take the MSM a while to follow up with the logical next connection: one which is so simple we described it back in 2012 when we showed “Where The Levered Corporate “Cash On The Sidelines” Is Truly Going” – namely, an unprecedented scramble to lever up and use the proceeds to buy back stocks, a decision which is great for existing shareholders and horrible for the economy (as it means much less spending on capital investment) for employees (as it means less cash available for wages and thus, for the all important wage inflation) and for the long-term viability of the buying back company (as it levers up the corporate balance sheet without a matching increase in revenues or cash flows, in fact, the opposite).
Which brings us to today, and specifically, an FT article titled “Bankers warn over rising US business lending” in which we read that “US lending to businesses is reaching record levels but banks are privately warning that the activity should not be seen as evidence of an economic recovery.”
And the stunner: “Much of the corporate lending is going to fund payouts to shareholders, finance acquisitions and fuel the domestic energy boom, bankers say, rather than to support companies’ organic growth.“
What the FT is referring to is not only the record net unsecured debt plaguing corporate balance sheets, because as both we and Deutsche Bank showed, net debt is at the highest level ever while corporate cash has never been lower…
