I don’t think you can make an absolute statement that buy backs are a good thing (always). For instance, look at Stamps.com in the last 4 months. It went from $284 to $34 and they were aggressively buying back shares in the high $200s for quite a while. Is it better off for shareholders that they were doing that as a buyback or a dividend? The concept behinds buybacks is a good one, it makes your “slice of the pizza” bigger. But historically speaking buybacks have proven to not be a beneficial use of capital.