[drzaiusapelord]

Great comment. ZIRP is endless stock buybacks and $boomer_rock_band or $expensive_celebrity speaking at your conference. Those are capital owner and executive benefits and don't drive the product or curate new customers.

Tony Hawk at this event is just a marketing stunt and his celebrity can be beneficial to drive engagement, impress potential customers, keep existing customers happy, help with recruiting, etc. Those stunts can get incredible attention. Look at how common celebrities in advertising and endorsements are.

Stock buybacks, having the Moody Blues play your annual meeting or the Rich-dad-poor-dad guy give a speech to execs and play down to their biases doesn't drive marketing or the product. Its what execs enjoy personally and burn through money for these entitlements. Instead this money should be used to give raises to the working class.

Also I'd substitute accountants for MBA's in your comment.

[sokoloff]

Share buybacks are a capital return to investors. This is a sensible and desirable thing to do in a lot of macro environments. ZIRP may increase the instances of borrowing money to do share buybacks, just like it would increase the propensity to borrow money to do any other valid corporate activity. There were share buybacks in the 80s and 90s when interest rates were quite a bit higher than today.

Adjusted for inflation, there were more buybacks in 2000 than in 2015 and interest rates were quite a bit higher in 2000 than in 2015.