The topic of share buybacks dominated the news in 2019. In that year, S&P500 companies bought $480 billion of stock, and led to strong stock demand, masking some of the cracks in the underlying economy as we headed for 2020. COVID came and… well, to be frank, fundamentals flew out the window, as did cash flow, debt covenants, and pretty much everything else and we stopped thinking about financial health.

Your financial advisor would tell you: “don’t worry! The stock market is forward looking and growth will be strong in 2021” (to accept this is to ignore that when you shrink 3.6% and then grow 3.6%, you are still smaller than 2019 levels, and therefore valuations are more stretched than they were with worse balance sheets… but I digress).

But the economic cycle IS real and printing money has consequences. We are seeing it in lumber (housing), grains (food), health care (bloated) and education (tuition) but most half glass full financial talking heads (aka fee taking advisors) are partying like it’s 2006, knowing that it might be years before the bubble pops and they got to get while the getting is good.

But there remain reminders of a time when economics mattered. When share buybacks were a bad idea. When bankruptcy led to mergers and job losses. Such as this one…

As seen at the airport headed to Chicago… Throwback or reminder of what comes next.