Microsoft's macro dollars

Los Angeles Times: It's official. Microsoft won't be using its $56-billion cash hoard to buy a medium-sized country. The software giant instead will use its spare change to blunt shareholder criticism of its stalled stock price by issuing a one-time, $35-billion dividend. The payment -- so large that economists probably will be able to track the effect on the U.S. economy -- also underscored that the ongoing economic recovery has been friendlier to businesses and their owners than to workers making the widgets.
Microsoft's declaration of Christmas in July, and the fact that there are plenty of other cash-rich companies out there, is going to sound strange to heads of households struggling to get by on stunted paychecks. Industrial companies on the Standard & amp; Poor's 500 stock index, for example, have a collective $555 billion in cash sitting in their treasuries.
Gold mine
The existence of that corporate gold mine should increase head-scratching among workers whose hourly pay has failed to keep pace with the rising price of gasoline, milk and other necessities, including health insurance. Microsoft's corporate cash disbursement, believed to be the largest in U.S. history, also should provide competing story lines for presidential campaigns -- proof for the Bush administration that its upper-class tax breaks are working, evidence for John Kerry that workers are stuck with the tab.
That leaves consumers, who make the entire Microsoft venture possible, with just a pittance of consolation. The deadline for a $1.1-billion rebate that Microsoft agreed to pay for allegedly overcharging Californians for Windows software recently was extended to Sept. 28.