Think isn't too much new stuff, lot's of people have been saying it years regarding the bailouts. What stuck out for me was the quote about Zombie companies. I'

Think isn't too much new stuff, lot's of people have been saying it years regarding the bailouts. What stuck out for me was the quote about Zombie companies. I've heard it mention before but seemingly 19%(!!!) of all listed companies are now zombie companies. Is this true? Is it because of Covid-19 this year or was it always this bad? How can this go on? For instance, Sharma wrote in July in a Wall Street Journal essay [0] titled “The Rescues Ruining Capitalism,” that easy money and increasingly generous bailouts fuel the rise of monopolies and keep “alive heavily indebted ‘zombie’ firms, at the expense of start-ups, which drive innovation.” And all of that is contributing to lower productivity, which means slower economic growth and “a shrinking of the pie for everyone.” [...] In the 1980s, “only 2 percent of publicly traded companies in the U.S. were considered ‘zombies,’ a term used by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) for companies that, over the previous three years, had not earned enough profit to make even the interest payments on their debt,” Sharma wrote. “The zombie minority started to grow rapidly in the early 2000s, and by the eve of the pandemic, accounted for 19 percent [1] of U.S.-listed companies.” It’s happening in Europe, China and Japan, too. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rescues-ruining-capitalism-11595603720 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rescues-ruining-capitalism-... [1] https://www.axios.com/zombie-companies-us-e2c8be18-6786-484e-8fbe-4b56cf3800ac.html https://www.axios.com/zombie-companies-us-e2c8be18-6786-484e...