Despite Paying A Dividend Apple’s Cash Stockpile Will Keep On Growing Very Rapidly

Horace Dedieu’s bottom line is that Apple is going to keep accumulating cash at an alarming rate, despite the new dividend payout plan. As I argue in my column for today, under liquidity trap conditions this cash accumulation is a kind of monetary contraction that hurts the economy. We’d be better off if they engaged in a much bigger one-time dividend to actually spend this money down. Alternatively if the Federal Reserve would adopt appropriate monetary policy, individual firm-level decisions wouldn’t have these kind of implications.