Have you ever seen a decent rationale for issuing debt for the sole purpose of buying stock or issuing dividends? It's a widely accepted practice, but I've never seen anyone explain it in a way that doesn't make me scratch my head. Even Apple, they of $150 billion in cash reserves overseas, issued something like $17 billion in debt in 2014 (or thereabouts) for no other reason than to up their dividend. I think stock manipulation is the only reasonable explanation. What else could it be. FICC trading makes a lot of people a lot of money, so the more fixed income securities there are to play with, the more traders can buttfuck each other. The gun-to-the-head tactics of so called "activist investors" seem to be calling the shots in many of these cases, but I don't think they're going to be leaving many of their targeted companies in better shape than they found them. As the nihilistic saying in trading goes: I'll be gone; you'll be gone.