For a decade, since before she was in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren has been saying that stock buybacks provide only a “sugar high for companies in the short term.” That metaphor seems too benign. It’s more like the high—and addiction—produced by cocaine, another craze that swept America in the 1970s and ’80s, and that makes addicts neglect their important but mundane duties and long-term health in favor of the next jolt of artificial self-confidence.*9 Consider this remarkable fact: from 2010 through 2019, most of the money invested in U.S. stocks came not from true investors but from
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