Rep. Alan Grayson: Money, Money, Everywhere

In an age of disparity, corporate wealth is far from an indicator of economic health. 

I read a number of finance-industry newsletters. I want to share with you a recent excerpt from one of them. Here it is:

$1,265,836,000,000.

This is the amount of cash that S&P 500 companies (excluding banks and other financial institutions) are currently sitting on. As of the beginning of the third quarter, the largest U.S. companies collectively held $1.27 trillion. That’s about 13.5 percent more than this time last year. ...

Where is this cash coming from? Well, borrowing accounts for some of it. But mostly, it’s that companies are simply generating cash faster than they are spending it.

Companies sitting on cash—the financial newsletter thinks that this is great news! Spectacular news! How nice—for them.