NYT editors: Do as we say, not as we do

The New York Times, which has argued in recent years that corporate stock buybacks should be illegal, announced last week that it will purchase $250 million of its own shares, the latest instance of the Gray Lady’s left-wing editorial board positions being at odds with its business decisions.

The Times stock repurchasing program—which is when a corporation buys shares of its own stock in order to lower the supply of available stock and boost the price—is being financed in part with higher-than-expected profits and an 11 percent increase in revenue from 2021, according to the Gray Lady’s Feb. 8 announcement. Following the buyback announcement, the company’s stock spiked by 12 percent.

But stock repurchasing programs are part of the reason “American workers have suffered a devastating loss of economic power, manifest in their wages, benefits, and working conditions,” according to a June 2020 Times editorial. Stopping this trend, the paper wrote, necessitates “reversing the legalization of share buybacks.”

[The freakout over stock buybacks is usually misplaced anyway. The issue isn’t so much that corporations want to juice their C-suite bonuses (although that IS an issue), but that the tax and regulatory environment makes other investment strategies less attractive. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the oil and gas industry, where long-term investments make little sense when the federal government insists that they will end the use of fossil fuels within the next decade. — Ed]