Dividends that leave the business effectively insolvent in an emergency or financial downturn are irresponsible and should be disallowed. It should be remembere

Dividends that leave the business effectively insolvent in an emergency or financial downturn are irresponsible and should be disallowed. It should be remembered that direct stock by backs were illegal until recently as they were seen as a violation of insider trading and presented conflicts of interest. Further stock based compensation for executives is also relatively new. So we now have a situation that the incentives are clearly aligned for executives to pump stock prices to boost their own compensation through a previously illegal means of stock buy backs. Just look at the ratio of dividends to stock by backs in the last few years. You will see the result of those incentives.