Who has ensured the growth of the US stock market over the past 5 years? Fed and investment banks? Of course, however, buybacks and dividends are the main long-term driver of increasing the capitalization of companies, while over the past five years, the main buyers in the US have been the companies themselves in terms of cumulative net cash flows. Dividends and buybacks have risen to anomalous levels in recent years, exceeding $1.3 trillion for corporate America.

From 2017 to 2021, more precisely from Q4 2016 to Q3 2021 inclusive, the disposition is as follows ...

Over the last five years, dividends and buybacks amounted to 5.7 trillion for companies that form at least 90% revenue and at least 90% of capitalization from all public American companies traded on US exchanges.

From Q4 2011 to Q3 2016 the total volume was 3.93 trillion, from Q4 2007 to Q3 2011 much less – 2.5 trillion, and from Q4 2002 to Q3 2007 only 1.53 trillion. More than 60% (or more than 3.5 trillion) of the integral volume of distribution of all buybacks and divas across all companies are concentrated in the first 66 companies that spent over 20 billion dollars on shareholder policy over 5 years. The first 20 companies form almost 36% of all divas and buybacks, and the first 10 companies form about 25%! Incredible concentration..

Apple distributed a whopping 400 billion, followed by Microsoft with 167 billion, JP Morgan Chase 140 billion, Bank of America 120.5 billion, Oracle Corporation 120.5 billion, Wells Fargo & Company 116 billion, Google 100 billion, Citigroup 85 billion, Cisco Systems 80 billion, and AT&T Inc. 79 billion

The radical shift in shareholder payouts is concentrated in a small group of technology and financial companies.

Last November, in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper, Ashmanov said he wanted to create a "catalog" of toxic content .... and presented the idea when he met with Putin. He discussed this idea with Valery Fadeev, head of the Human Rights Council, and Aleksey Goreslavsky, director general of the Dialog ANO under the Moscow government.

“The idea of ​​the project appeared in the course of the work of the autonomous non-profit organization Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Youth Environment to search the Internet for prohibited content about “school shooters” and “suicides,” said Ashmanov. He explained that there is a huge gray area on the Web, due to which people are involved in activities that are already prohibited. Ashmanov sees the creation of a registry of toxic content as a way to do something about this gray area, that is, content that is not yet banned.

In a presentation with illustrations of his ideas, Ashmanov explained that he considers information about violence, discussions about dangers of vaccination, radical feminism and refusal to have children to be toxic content. He also included the promotion of LGBT people and bestiality in this category.

And

Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed to report by June 1 this year on the results of consideration of the idea of creating a registry of toxic content on the Internet to protect children. This is stated in a message posted on the website of the Russian government.

They will ban all of this soon.

The U.S. trade deficit in goods topped $1 trillion in 2021 for the first time ever, as an economic recovery enabled Americans to snap up a record amount of imports such as toys, cell phones and appliances.

For all of 2021, the trade gap in goods rose to $1.08 trillion from $893.5 billion in the prior year. The deficit in 2020 had also been a record high.

The deficit in goods increased 3% in December to $101 billion from $98 billion, according to an advanced government estimate. It was the biggest monthly increase on record.