The Decade of the Living Dead: How Zombie Companies Are Robbing Tomorrow’s Economy

Sep 15, 2020 at 19:00 UTCUpdated Sep 15, 2020 at 19:13 UTC

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The Decade of the Living Dead: How Zombie Companies Are Robbing Tomorrow’s Economy

The percentage of companies that can’t afford to pay the interest on their debt has reached a new all-time high in the wake of central bank intervention.

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This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.

Today on the Brief:

MicroStrategy increases its bitcoin reserves by $175 million
The Oracle-TikTok deal starts to smell fishy
The SEC is investigating claims of fraud involving Nikola Corp.

Our main discussion: The rise of zombie firms.

A zombie firm is a company that can’t afford to service its debt from operating income. These companies are made possible by artificially low interest rates, and they drain resources from the economy.

On today’s episode, NLW explains: