Was just trying to explain to someone why everything is going to shit, specifically companies, and realized, I don’t fully get it either.

I’ve got the following explanation. The sentences marked with “???” are were I’m lost. Anyone mind telling me, if they’re correct and if so, why?

The past few years, central banks were giving out interest rates of 0% or even negative percentages. Regular banks would not quite pass this on, but you could still loan money and give it back later with no real interest payments.

This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn’t have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???

This has stopped being the case, as central banks are hiking interest rates again, to combat inflation???

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
    71·
    11 months ago

    Based on what you’ve posted here alone:

    Companies that don’t have to be profitable is not quite the case to make. They have to either provide a service valuable enough to gather continual revenue from investors or subsidies to exist… or they have to have a plausible promise of becoming profitable. Easy money really lowers the bar on how plausible that promise needs to be.

    Ripping up on that E brake by hiking interest rates has a twofold effect: first it raises back the bar on how useful a service or profitable a company is or aims to be for investors. Secondly it has an overall effect on the economy, including profitable companies with strong investments since all loans are subject to the interest rates. So while that can produce the intended deflationary effect, the whole economy has to recalibrate.

    And that’s where things tend to feel like they’re going to shit.

    • KerPop47
      1·
      11 months ago

      Yeah. Raising the bar on how profitable a company has to be is the middle step here that connects raising interest rates to shittier stuff for us.

      Before, in the era of free money, you just had to be good at looking shiny to stay afloat, and companies that didn’t look shiny got left behind. Now you have to be actually functional.

      We’ve arrived at the future we were borrowing from for the last 15 years.