AN ADMISSION OF DEFEAT? “Announcing layoffs along with a stock buyback – let’s think about what that means. AstraZeneca did that just the other day, and they’re far from the only ones in this industry (or others) spending billions to buy back their own shares while they’re cutting costs elsewhere.”

Plus: “Here we have all these companies obsessed, basically with keeping their stock prices up, and saying the best thing that they can do with their money is spend billions of dollars on stock. And my view of that is, any company that says that they have nothing to better do with their money, the CEO should be fired.”