I've been trying to understand animosity to buybacks. It's definitely not that buybacks are often done at high prices that harm shareholders as we've discussed. The animosity comes from a number lines of reasoning, some of which arises from "misunderstands corporate finance" and some animosity comes because there's a few types of bad behavior associated with buybacks.[1] One is taking bailout money and doing buy backs. Here's a lesser known one that strikes me as actual corruption. This quote is from a speech by former SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson:

"And, in the process, executives take a lot of cash off the table. On average, in the days before a buyback announcement, executives trade in relatively small amounts'less than $100,000 worth. But during the eight days following a buyback announcement, executives on average sell more than $500,000 worth of stock each day'a fivefold increase. Thus, executives personally capture the benefit of the short-term stock-price pop created by the buyback announcement."

I guess that is what they call establishing "plausible deniability."

I labeled this OT but is it? Buffett carefully does stock buybacks as a form of delivering the benefit of excess profits to shareholders, but we are now paying a 1% tax because of the stench around stock buybacks. Try explaining that Buffett is different than all those other people doing buybacks, so a penalty tax is not appropriate. Good luck!

[1] I took the above quotes from today's opinion piece by Matt Levine bloomberg.com - Is chatgpt securities fraud