[robertlagrant]

I don't think there's any point saying this in this way, though. Not every company will do anything it takes to hit a stock market goal, even financial engineering. Many will just work on fundamentals, and either go broke or get outcompeted or succeed.

And there are plenty of companies that aren't public companies with any stock to buy.

It just seems far too simplistic. You seem to be critiquing the times that some company use slightly dodgy financial engineering to boost their stock price. But that's not many companies, and not all the time - it's never a permanent fix. There's certainly no need to attach stock price reason to these layoffs, which are much more likely just cost-cutting measures designed to save the company a load of money it thinks is more valuable than the work of those people.