Michael Milken bashes stock buybacks

In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, famed junk bond financier Michael Milken discusses the importance of prudent capital management -- and the role that the stock buyback binge of the past few years played in creating the current crisis. Milken writes:

Without stock buybacks, many such companies would have little debt and would have greater flexibility during this period of increased credit constraints. In other words, their current financial problems are self-imposed. Instead of entering the recession with adequate liquidity and less debt with long maturities, they had the wrong capital structure for the time.