I'm Tom Morello, and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio R.

Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio R. My name is Steve Scroovan, along with my

co-host David Feldman. Hello, David. Good morning.

And we'll save the man to the hour Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.

Hello, you know, Apple rang in the new year making history.

You came the first ever publicly traded company to be valued at three

trillion dollars. That's more than Walmart, Disney, Netflix, Nike,

Exxonmobile, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Morgan Stanley, McDonald's,

AT&T, Golden Sachs, Boeing, IBM, and Ford combined.

Apple's brand is ubiquitous, and they consistently drop new products to

break in revenue. So it makes sense that their stock would be valuable.

But three trillion dollars is there something else behind Apple's

historic valuation? We'll ask our guest William Lasonic, Professor Emeritus

of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Professor

Lasonic is an expert on the corporate strategies behind, quote, unquote,

maximizing shareholder value. He also put the spotlight on stock

buybacks with his seminal article in the Harvard Business Review, profits

without prosperity, stock buybacks manipulate the market and leave most

Americans worse off. Mr. Lasonic first appeared in this program two and a

half years ago to tell us how Boeing executives were boosting the company's

stock price over concerns for safety. Then after Professor Lasonic,

we're going to do some listener questions. And as always, somewhere in the

...