📅 On This Day
Reagan Fires 11,000 Controllers, Rewiring American Labor Forever
On August 3, 1981, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization walked off the job demanding better pay, staffing, and working conditions. President Reagan responded by firing the 11,345 controllers who defied his back-to-work order and banning them from federal service for life. The moment proved a watershed — private-sector employers took fresh courage against unions, and the long shift in labor bargaining power that followed reshaped corporate cost structures and, ultimately, dividend capacity for a generation.
A single firing order in 1981 quietly tilted the scales between labor and capital for decades to come.
🇺🇸 US
Source: Wikipedia; Zinn Education Project
🌍 Around the World
Norway's 25% Withholding Tax Tests Patience of Income Investors
Norway withholds 25% on dividends paid to non-residents, though the U.S.–Norway tax treaty can reduce that rate to 15% — often applied at source for widely held ADRs like Equinor (EQNR). The catch: that 15% is permanently lost inside an IRA, a meaningful drag at the high yield levels Norwegian energy names tend to carry. For taxable accounts, reclaims above the treaty rate can be filed through Norway's Skatteetaten portal, which processes refunds in a relatively efficient six to twelve months.
Norway's commodity-rich market can be generously unpredictable — extraordinary dividends surge when energy profits do.
🇳🇴 NO
Source: Oslo Børs; PwC Tax Summaries
🔥 Dividend Streak
Buffett's Coca-Cola Bet Now Yields 20% on Original Cost
Warren Buffett assembled 400 million shares of Coca-Cola by 1994 for roughly $1.3 billion, at a starting yield of just 1.65%. After 63 consecutive annual dividend increases stretching back to 1963, that position now yields nearly 20% on his original cost — throwing off more than $800 million a year from a single holding. It is a quiet, almost humbling illustration of what dividend growth compounding can do when patience is the only tool required.
KO's 63-year raise streak turns a modest starting yield into a yield-on-cost story that defies easy belief.
KO — The Coca-Cola Company
Source: 247wallst.com, Feb 2026
💡 Did You Know
Regulators, Not Romance, Made Banks the Home of Preferred Stock
Preferred stock's center of gravity shifted from railroads and utilities to banks and financial firms because of a regulatory quirk: certain preferred shares could count toward Tier 1 capital requirements, letting banks shore up their balance sheets without diluting common shareholders. The instrument became a tool of capital management as much as fundraising. Today, financial-sector preferreds dominate the market — meaning income investors hunting preferred yield are, whether they realize it or not, making a concentrated wager on the health of banks.
Hunt for preferred-stock yield long enough and you'll find yourself, almost inevitably, deep in bank balance sheets.
US
Source: Federal Reserve; FDIC