No, the current buyback madness (at least at these levels) is a very recent invention of the past decade and quite abnormal. We can go back to reinvesting in companies and employees and research tomorrow if we want to.

But this would require boards and executives who didn't want to just grant themselves huge amounts of equity while buying back stock. So far not many boards are standing up for this.

Yeah recent like you said for boening last six years. They are doing what everyone else is doing so it is pretty strange to single them out on this issue.

I've complained about many companies that are devoting even more resources to buybacks on this very forum, including Chevron, Texas Instruments, Google and Oracle. Google in particular has been the trendsetter, everyone else is trying to keep up with their buybacks.

This news story is about Boeing, so yes I'm going to talk about Boeing here.

Do you work in defense or aerospace? You seem to be taking this personally for some reason.

Nope and neither am I taking it personally