Before 1982, if a CEO used company funds to pump their own stock price, they could go to prison for market manipulation. This investigative report uncovers how Rule 10b-18 turned a felony into a standard corporate strategy. Instead of investing in workers or developing better products, trillions of dollars are now funneled into stock buybacks that primarily enrich the executive class. This legal loophole explains why your wages remain stagnant while corporate valuations soar to record heights. You are witnessing the systematic extraction of wealth from the labor force to the shareholder class, all facilitated by a rule change that most people have never heard of. It is not a broken system; it is a perfectly functioning mechanism for inequality that protects the elite while you work harder for less.
