The Future Is So Bright, I Gotta Pare Spades

The future looks so bright in the Obama economy that an industrial bellweather company is shrinking by 18%.

Illinois Tool Works Inc. (ITW) today announced that its board of directors approved a new share repurchase program that authorizes management to buy back up to $6 billion of the Company's common stock over an open ended period of time. The full authorization represents approximately 81 million shares based on ITW's closing share price on August 1, 2013.

That's $6 billion for which the company can't find anything productive to do with, so it's going to hand that money back to shareholders to figure out.  Rather than do the spade work of economic growth, ITW is giving up a chunk of their productive resources.  ITW is a $33 billion market capitalization company, so it is shrinking by 18%.

Remember folks, you heard it here first, way back in 2009 I might add, at the very dawn of the Era of Hopenchange.  Am I a genius?  Sometimes I flatter myself, but the truth is I am not - Obama's philosophy and his policies that emanate from it were so patently obvious for all to see and who weren't willfully blind.  Furthermore the implications of those policies were so thoroughly predictable, that I and many others predicted almost exactly how the Era of Hopenchange would result in stagnation, malaise and slow steady loss of dynamism in America.  It wasn't hard folks.  We get the government we deserve, good and hard I might add.  Enjoy it!