First of all zero hedge is entirely the wrong place to get any information on the economy. He really does not have any idea how the economy works. For the last couple of years he has been predicting that the economy would crash and gold would skyrocket and exactly the opposite has been happening.

It is true that companies usually have a choice between investing and paying money back to the shareholders. It may be true that nowadays companies have mostly chosen to pay money back (i have not seen statistics, but it certainly feels that way sometimes).

But the federal reserve is not to blame for this. Federal reserve policy makes money cheap but it does not force companies to pay money back to shareholders instead of investing. It does not weigh much on that choice. In fact if anything loose federal reserve policy should be steering companies towards investment as cheap credit should help consumption. However, this effect may have been negated by much tougher credit terms for consumer loans.

But this lack of investing cannot be blamed on the federal reserve.