1. Corporations exist to benefit their shareholders over some term (short, long, whatever) as the shareholders ask for, through their elected board of directors

1. Corporations exist to benefit their shareholders over some term (short, long, whatever) as the shareholders ask for, through their elected board of directors. I tend to be sympathetic to what you're saying about taking the long view (esp. for a company like 3M) but the many vs. few doesn't make sense in a corporate context. It's the now vs. the later. 2. "Buy bonds"?? A corporate CFO would be pilloried for buying bonds. The shareholders are emphatically not interested in the CFO playing amateur bond-picker in order to generate a bunch of double-taxable income.