Real Estate Wasn’t the Only Bubble in 2004-2006 That's Now Abursting...

Easy Loans Financed Dividends

By FLOYD NORRIS

New York Times

“Dividends don’t lie.”

Chalk up the death of another Wall Street cliché.

In the late bull market, dividend payments provided one of the seemingly strongest arguments for the bulls. Maybe earnings numbers could be manipulated, but dividend payments required cash. If the company had the cash to hand out, you could be confident the earnings were real.

It was a lie.

It is now becoming clear that the great news on the dividend front from 2004 through 2006 was not an indication of solid corporate performance; it was just another sign of lax lending standards. Lenders who willingly handed out money to homeowners with bad credit were even more generous to corporate borrowers.

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