Steve Jobs, Cash | featured news

Apple, one of the world’s richest companies, will reward investors with a dividend- and share-purchase program totaling $45 billion over three years, the company said Monday. In a departure from the direction of late chief executive Steve Jobs, Apple will significantly draw from its massive $98 billion cash war chest to initiate a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime in the fiscal quarter beginning July 1.

Maybe the cash-strapped U.S. government should start selling iPads. According to the latest statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance Wednesday of $73.8 billion. That's still a lot of money, but it's less than what Steve Jobs has lying around.