You're right: even though $2 trillion of bonds have been issued by US companies, one $14 billion ($0.014 trillion) issue to buyback stocks completely reverses my entire narrative.
The pandemic has not hit Apple as hard as other industries, and they're taking advantage of low interest rates by issuing debt.
And there's nothing wrong with buying back stock. It's bad when managers use it to boost their personal compensation. That's not happening in Apple's case; they are just returning capital to investors because Apple is doing well and is sitting on a huge balance sheet.
One company(like Apple) negates thousands of small companies. There are many large companies like Apple. The Market Cap of the S&P 500 is up $4 trillion. All of those bonds went straight into the market.
Why not just show me the increased consumption? Show me these increased workers. Show me the raises.
CPI is up 1.5%, due directly to Congress, not the Fed. Unemployment is at 10%. The money supply is up 25%. The velocity of the M2 is down 21%. Straight into assets.
There's nothing wrong with using debt to buyback stock because the environment is corrupted. That's the problem. Fix the environment.
Apple is kind of a poor example here because they're borrowing money at extremely low interest rates and the collateral is all the money they have overseas. They took advantage of that one time 15.5 percent rate after the TCJA passed but they didn't stop earning gobs of money overseas. They're not taking on actual debt to finance buybacks, they're just creatively getting around tax laws.
The pandemic has not hit Apple as hard as other industries, and they're taking advantage of low interest rates by issuing debt.
And there's nothing wrong with buying back stock. It's bad when managers use it to boost their personal compensation. That's not happening in Apple's case; they are just returning capital to investors because Apple is doing well and is sitting on a huge balance sheet.