share buyback queens since two thousand it blew one hundred forty six billion dollars on share buybacks the chart below shows the cumulative amount since two thousand and thirteen that i.b.m. wasted on share buybacks forty three billion in six years so as you see it's going up so you had thought that would be good for i.b.m. that they're buying back so many shares because this is what you hear on c n b c and bloomberg that it's really great firm bester is if they're buying back their shares well in fact wall street gurus keep hyping that share buybacks unlock shareholder value or return cash to shareholders or some other such thing but here is what i.b.m. share buybacks did to shareholder value as measured by the stock down forty six percent since two thousand and thirteen so in fact it has not helped investors really long term investor it's helped insiders at the company with their stock options and it has destroyed the company well the share buybacks up until recently

was illegal it's completely illegal why because it's accounting fraud in one way mean by that i mean that if a company is making a dollar per share in earnings if in fact they start buying back their shares the dollar is divided over shares and it looks like the company's earning potential and earning power is higher than it actually is and because so many corporations are involved in so much so much of the stock buyback you have a stock market trading on the top line or by c. and b. c. reporting seventeen times earnings but if you adjust for a stock repurchase programs and you eliminate the accounting fraud of stock buybacks the market is trading at the highest multiple of earnings ever probably one hundred fifty years probably cost. to forty times earnings those nosebleed

levels stocks generally crash number one number two. putting money into stock buybacks a manager not investing in the company you're not investing in cap ex you're not investing in marketing you're not investing in hiring people you're not investing in technology so that's a complete waste of money i.b.m. and eventually people say you know what i.b.m. is never going to make any money because they've blown it all on this is a legal stock repurchase program or above what was a big b i'm going to be pulled out because you realize that i'm more involved than i can even subscribe to this fraud this fraud even though the executives are basically extracting hundreds of millions of dollars billions of dollars from the economy from the stock market putting in their pocket and running to switzerland opening up a big account get a swiss chalet leave americans on the street open definition we don't care we're executives exactly so wall street says something similar in terms of what they could have done with one hundred forty six billion dollars extracted from the

company over those years in fact i b m could have spent this money on research and invented something cool but that would have been too hard far better to farm out much of the work to cheap countries like india shut down u.s. operations waste money on share buybacks in a vain effort to manipulate up its shares and instead watch them go to heck so they're not reinvesting in the company they're not reinvesting in the future a lot of corporations across the world are doing this in fact g.e. is basically on the verge of bankruptcy because and they've spent two hundred fifty billion dollars in share buybacks over the past few years propping up their shares the company continues i think it's down over fifty percent this year alone and g.e. and and yet like part of the reason is g.e. has basically an oligarch with two other companies including siemens in the gas turbine market so they control the market and therefore they don't have to compete . like a big. very every day the guy who's in charge of the bakery opens up the shop it's

all the donuts and it's all the bread and then that damn the day he said look we made a lot of money because we sold out of all of our balance and bread but it wasn't to customers it was to himself so stock buybacks are basically corporate you know circling of money totally in a way that doesn't reflect the business they're not in the business of except for the business of fraud and this is rampant throughout the entire s. and p. five hundred and one stud day of reckoning comes as it seems to be happening now you can see it drop of the market down forty or fifty percent you know in a way it can people like oh my god what happened well it's been building for years because they're engaged in massive open accounting fraud most ordinary americans won't care about that it seems so esoteric and like why would i care about it but it does hollow out the economy over the long term maybe not the short term because it gives a boost the share prices for that day that the share buybacks are announced and

they all cash out and short termism short termism but also there's monopoly power and this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue and finally economists from both the left and right are realizing how much it has harmed the u.s. economy because remember so many economists at the federal reserve are stumped by why we have full employment in the u.s. and yet wages are so low and part of it is the monopsony power over labor that all these old gaap lease across america whether it's in telecoms chicken farms in the midwest hollywood industry every industry is basically controlled by two to three meat major corporations in the pharmaceutical industry at c.v.s. and the other one rite aid or whatever but here's a headline for what twenty twenty what we can look for. they're pleading the hill dot com is pleading with progressive progressive can tackle the harm corporate consolidation is doing to our economy there's no exaggerating the role of power in

the twenty first century economy from skyrocketing drug costs to the disparities we see today including the digital divide in the banking sector that excludes entire communities it's clear that our nation's market power problem has created an economic system that is not working for americans so part of the reason is that basically policymakers are not making new policy about antitrust and instead leaving it up to judges to determine antitrust law based on you know mega corporations have all the legal power and activists are trying to take them to court to bust up their monopolies but the judges don't know anything about economies and what would be good for the economy they just look at whoever gives whoever persuades the judge and it's going to be the corporation who has thirty five lawyers each making two thousand dollars an hour who is going to be able to persuade the judge so the judges keep on deciding and overruling even like when

time warner just merged with the actual department of justice was against it but a federal judge ruled in favor for it because they had the lawyer is to convince them you know i like a copy of the u.s. constitution and there's a concept in here about separation of powers which is a brilliant innovation in jurisprudence separates the baddest actors in the society from colluding getting together and creating monopolies that has broken down so this anti-constitutional anti-american so what you're describing there is just on a failure of regulations it's a it's a it's a constitutional offense that according to the constitution would require extreme. dealt with in the extreme possible way well in fact what has happened is that these powerful corporations who have formed. are able to extract more and more profits up

until the one nine hundred eighty s. the basically the profit margin used to be eighteen percent in general across industry that they were able to the cost of producing the products including all the labor costs and blah blah blah and then they would charge eighteen percent more and now it's about sixty seven percent so they're getting more and more money therefore buying more and more politicians politicians don't therefore want to engage in introducing updated legislation the last time we had policymakers do any antitrust law was back during the roosevelt era so we have the sherman act in the clayton act and those are long time ago so there's been no updated ones that you know these huge corporations have provided have given themselves a whole bunch of loopholes they found all the loopholes in the past seventy eighty years to get around all of those have to have democracy was working properly these politicians would put themselves up on e bay so like chuck schumer would just auction them so far off like a hundred thousand dollars or get chuck schumer to do your bidding as a corporation great nancy pelosi just put yourself on e bay be honest about your the knowledge see mansi air up for grabs you know you go

to the highest bidder that's the democracy in america it's ruled by dollars in. law that came out recently told to put money into politics to which i can't remember the name of it but it's all i'll go into that monopsony thing in the last minute here because he they mentioned that the increasingly concentrated power that employers use to shape the broader labor market to their own advantage known as labor market monopsony is one major problem that regulators have failed to address the federal trade commission and department of justice have focused so squarely on how anti-competitive behavior affects consumers that they have overlooked how it drives lower wages limited worker mobility and less entrepreneurship so what i'm saying is that these sort of issues are really important for the ordinary voter to look at rather than. all these you know social and cultural issues that become the primary. you know sort of election sort of issues when they

don't matter in the long run to the health of your entire family and community yeah you know the opposite of that of course would be a union pay unions what about unions anyway we're going to take a break much more telling you i don't know what. it is now we're building around pretty good here and no one to know why says terrorists. memories. twenty four years ago this country sold. to the world. after the genocide there a mob women in rwanda. children women took pics of what the men had broken.

through the walls to sleep. i don't force on the syria the world's going to see the birth of business with the most historical. but a slow slow slow slow slow motion. ok see the guys go and. look at the model you put it's diplo it's so good from the

show such as the flu it's a. new tool and you're going. to be. joining the past thirty years lebanon has been subject to six invasions from israel. six invasions at practically every every every five years we are having. one let's say and this is definitely coming through the health club and.

welcome back to the kaiser report i'm asked as are time now to go to london and speak with ross ashcroft renegade nc ross welcome to the kaiser report. well thank you guys are all right ross we've been talking about stuff for a long time and comparing notes on a lot of different ashes and it's time now to talk about brags it and looks like what many folks have predicted there would be kind of a mess. give us a bit of an update but it is it's a total mess and what we're seeing is it's a bit. of any kind of leadership the political leadership whether it be to be

able to negotiate probably a little bit worrisome siri an hour early. rich reports that silly and now thinking well actually was not the right choice insofar as if i don't know the negotiations have been this badly there's no way either plan for it so we have here or not it is a total impasse total mess and we also have of course it is a prime minister who doesn't listens ironically home yes or music without an undertone to a script that is determined to do things on her own terms so she's covering your. example not anybody of course she's there and trying to shock the travel and work out it's amazing very hasty decisions only the u.k. and its relationship with your what was interesting there may from the very beginning you had two different schools of thought you had the people who were

saying well you know we like to be sovereign and we want to be separate and we want to make our own trade deals and then there was another camp of people that i put myself in that other camp who said wait a minute just look at the economics the economics are trust us and you're going to suffer a catastrophic g.d.p. collapse and by the way that argument doesn't hold any weight with people i spoke to the british people i spoke to i would say are you prepared to suffer a catastrophic e.g.d. collapse and everyone i spoke to said yeah it's worth it it's worth a. it's worth it for self sovereignty but now as you get closer to the precipice and it looks like a catastrophic g.d.p. collapse people are saying wait a minute i don't really vote for that but let's just talk about the economics for a second ross because we like to focus on the numbers here they are a separation from the largest trading block in the world and the no longer able to have your own currency in that trading block means that suddenly everything gets

a lot more expensive and suddenly the economies of scale of being part of the largest trading block collapses and it caught the economics of this are terrible ross what are your thoughts firstly i think that a lot of people who are not there yet if we come right back to the economics of it a lot of people in the u.k. have seen as you know where it's wage stagnation for a long silence so when david cameron who incidentally is now. the monster all this is now sitting in a shop somewhere i don't know those which are trying to write is memoirs and spend a minute in the way that gives them an out of this what he called this referendum a lot of people took that as an opportunity to blow the nose of the establishment so when you talk about economics if you're talking about people who go out there lawless ship day in day out those all this is all going to be tutsi we've been oppressed the so long this all of which is he said look we're going to as is a quote elite and that's what they chose to do i think it's starting to. come home

and he goes on to realize that that's true ramifications but again but bizarrely i think emotionally people are thinking well actually i don't track i just want something different and if this is different then so be it let's see what happens. well i remember having a conversation with lights off ross one on one during a somber exit disaster and he cannot accept. excite one logical example of why this made economic sense he just kept pushing the the amount of argument as you put it and it just looks like one man ego centric drive for attention and he's willing to kill the british economy and destroy britain for his own ego ross you know or you know go down some people go down as one of the most successful politicians

other people put it down as that most are most of the time. if you can't answer the economic argument then your political argument falls apart which is exactly what's happening across the u.k. in fact across many developed economies now so. i do think history will judge nigel i think you are judging truthfully but not really very kindly he enjoys publicity as we know whether his economic credentials. overall show. made a very emotive case and a lot of people listen and both said because of the salute chest beating and heart on the sleeve. british won't that he and he's a bloke to be people that doesn't always make good economic sense. all right so let's talk about some of the specifics many big banks are threatened to leave london sense of pranks and thought. is that all takara will they actually leave

and one of the what consequences of this for us well are but is always threatened if any economic argument goes against them back is always threatened to leave. the default madness if you like and a lot of people say well you can leave us go out i would and in a sense if we want arms you do have a case because a small of financial sector in the u.k. would be a good thing we have a thing nickel of violence curse words since the big bang and i think that. in the eighty's finance has basically absolutely consumed on it and apparently trickle down economics works well ask the people tower hamlets which is adjacent to the city are going to trickle down economics works most deprived. article in the country so a massive blow to financial sector isn't always good for the nation so

a smaller financial sector would be a go then if those bankers are going to go there to read. such a sign that that's their business choice but overall not many tears and being shot at the bankers who want to leave and get the british economy back from any expected it's a financial. speculative and financially german economy and also own more manufacturing and in advance of a bomb and then it grows the real economy and diminishes the financial side of the economy is a good. arite while we're talking about h.s.b.c. barclays lloyds royal bank of scotland the big four british banks as long as there's a drop of blood in the corpse these parasites these leeches will suck at dry. percent correct looked at don't. listen to the work for me when was the last time you trust that a banker over anyone who were violence watch what they do. and had also from

another going to be a straight up book oh and this might sound trite but it's very difficult five years ago a very nice set up there are not kids in school who go home to their wives and so by the way we're off to mumbai unlikely to happen anytime soon so what's the action don't listen to much the word right how about house prices of course they one barometer that every british person checks every morning to see how they're there to judge their own net worth and value in the world prices are falling at the moment well the price at exacerbate that were prices are responsible for a lot of things but the best. is that they're made every dinner party or social about in the u.k. basically. because as you say people link their self-worth to their house plus he has a new level of lauren or mark normal wallace you know what i actually so because it's

not so far as it's ridiculous we've got a total speculative house price mania in this concert and house prices are going down and it's got very little if anything to do with rex the reason they're going down is that we have a credit to two thousand and eight and then reflate it out to two thousand and eight which is the largest in human history if you think that any credit bubble size that went out is a natural to the market condition you're either a politician a banker or living and lara so the reason house prices go down isn't because it wrecks it it's because we've got that deflation because they're really coming aren't support the process anymore and an actual economy really is taking an absolute pounding and if you want to see that in real time and the shares for instance arles look at stocks and shares that becomes rather. all the shadows and understand where this is headed but breaks it in this country is the. goal of

rescue says and the reason that house classes ago that repeat is because of debt deflation it isn't becomes a proxy all right fair enough now one thing that continues ross breaks that are no brakes that is austerity for those outside the him may not know about this policy tell us about it what's going on there at the. very bluntly it is dressed as an academic decision and arguably the worst dancer and this trait of recent history along with their son either was harmless and recent history george osborne and our government speculate a little decided to pick austerity as a political choice and that's it he point because everybody thinks it's an economic choice he uses this incredibly clever terminology which voters go places if you're going to a credit card now then you've got to pay down a debt and households understand that because that affects them every day and he also says things like you put

a man in the roof was the sun shining and later for instance didn't do that and this stuck with services well that gave him license to do is to impose austerity and it as a political choice not an economic choice and an austerity really does is when it's nice. for them it takes money out of the economy and as a political choice it really is two prong so i'd say that it's all about class war so instead of making the people who caused the crisis in the first place the speculation pay for it what will decide to do was put the economic crisis the process at the door of the people who support it now in the working class or the underclass immigrants out of those people who can least afford them. and that was a class war choice and the second thing which is also incredibly helpful to the

city council sector is that austerity tamiko back to privatization what you do is you start a public asset phones use and show the public how incredibly. solder council is and such does arad in disrepair and then what you do is you take an asset and threatens of the pocket sector and this is a classic trip when austerity has basically license. basically austerity taking money out of the economy instead of musing money and so it's a growing economy it's got a productive our economy it engineering exception moving again grazing bits of the economy not speculative bets like house. house prices and this as a sending money out of the economy and then. well you know it's inevitable that we have to do this because they use the household budget now is it say you hate on debt when actually that analogy doesn't hold water right now the u.n.

special wrapper tour is going to visit the u.k. a look at the human rights as just running austerity they came to the us and found an appalling situation from san francisco to the deep south and they're now they're on the way to the core to the k. what they think they kind of the same expect to say so us in our rights is the worry about what's going on in the in the. inequality we are paid inequality and the people are going to least support of course there are so see other people exactly the people who have been given austerity it's a great society apart in this country and the press strangely don't cover it nearly a not so the un needs wins a big it's right that they do i just give you one stat on this that since there's been an eighty percent increase since two thousand a lot. of children in temporary accommodation and that's. they got the most over one hundred thirty thousand if you're telling me that that is

a sign of healthy economy or a healthy country or a healthy political scene or well you need out strata time thanks for being on the kaiser report that's going to do it for this episode of the kaiser report with me max kaiser stay separate lives i guess ross ashcroft of the renegade ink if you like to get a touch tweet us a kaiser report. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see that. ministry as police forces in the city administrations of many countries depend on

one corporation and another by michael hoping the boy doesn't come from the presence of god i'm just going to guns not woods as that see the gun into the sea it's enough to supply proof and proprietary software you don't know the source code isn't that such a security risk when you have a black box operating in the public eye to microsoft dependency puts governments under a cyber threat and not only that. mr moore. is selling this they want to move. into. these two groups. with. these this is the. one who started on the all patients stop and it was a student who was a fund is up and his cards on the fine. what politicians do you should. put themselves on the line to get accepted or

rejected. so when you want to be president. some want to. have to be right to be cross was like before three in the morning can't believe. i'm interested always in the warnings about our age. it's been seventy years since the united nations adopted the universal declaration on human rights but in many places in remains a declaration and not a reality how to bridge the divide between trying to see them reaching.

subscribe to rob people also get a rookie comes in for just twelve euros fifty per month. and it's all to put aside after a trip over a meal to european army as the french president warmly welcomed paris to commemorate the first world war. more divisions emerge in the u.s. this time over a video involving c.n.n. reporter jim acosta in the material was adopted in a war doesn't justify bombing the journalist from the white house. cry as saudi arabia goes in for many children the u.n. wants tens of thousands die every year as a result of the soudan bombing campaign. and the syrian army.