You're right that it's probably not that a big deal for Amazon since it's all mainly financed by their own cash flow, but in general it can be a problem if ther

You're right that it's probably not that a big deal for Amazon since it's all mainly financed by their own cash flow, but in general it can be a problem if there is debt (that you took out to build the datacenters) to service. Also, those servers are depreciating (in the literal sense of becoming less valuable over time, not in the accounting sense of spreading their cost out over several fiscal years for tax purposes) while still not making them any money, so the "lifetime earnings" of their existing silicon will be less than they would otherwise have been without a slowdown. I'm not sure what the "accounting trick" is though, except in the sense that anything involving money or finance is an accounting trick. Can you elaborate?