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???
There isn’t an easy statement that explains why things are getting worse.
The housing market, for instance, was being affected by low interest rates. Low rates make being a slum lord more profitable than other forms of investment. This caused a massive amount of investment in the housing market by rich people and corporations, and normal people were priced out.
The banks that failed did so because they either invested in dumb things (crypto) or in long-term bonds. Those bonds lose value as interest rates rise, and SVB invested far too much into them.
There’s all kinds of reasons
Yes economics is the study of how people determine what is valuable and how valuable things are divided. People are complex and irrational so it’s difficult to come up with a simple explanation of economic trends.