Depending on your starting point, dividends have made up as much as 60% of the total return of the S&P 500 in the last 100 years.
Mr. Obama is widely expected to give ground on the main sticking point, the dividends tax.
But year-to-date through June, he points out, dividend payers outperformed non-dividend payers by a 2-to-1 margin.
They reckon the shares have been massively oversold at Friday's close of 374p and point out that dividend yield is 6.4percentnt and the company has excess capital of about $1.5bn.
That extra point is the dividend paid by asset allocation.
Our results demonstrate that a steady state can be a saddle point when the dividend rate is low and the bank's lending reaction to the net worth ratio is more elastic than investment reaction.
According to Dhaval Joshi of RAB Capital, pharmaceutical firms' dividends have grown at an average of 12% a year over the past 40 years, five percentage points above general dividend growth rates and eight percentage points above inflation.
Markit's health care analysts aren't too concerned that federal health care reform will stifle profits to the point of harming dividends, projecting the sector will see the biggest dividend increase in the S&P 500 in 2010, more than 10% thanks to projected increases from 12 of 22 components.
Janjigian Jeff's points about generous dividend yields and boring stocks are good ones.
Many analysts think a fair price lies up around 240p-250p – they see better cash generation next year and point to a 6% dividend yield.
"A 15% uplift in pre-tax profits, an 18% reduction in net debt and a significant increase in dividend all point to good progress being made in positioning the company for the upturn".
