Companies are surviving in the “zombie state” for longer, depleting the productivity of healthy companies by competing with them for capital, materials and labor. These, then, are the trademarks of the fat and slow world: larger corporations, declining competition and fewer start-ups, which together undermine and slow economies already hindered by falling growth in the working-age population. A global economy ruled by big, indebted companies looks sluggish but, in the view of many commentators, also very stable. A world without recessions may sound like progress, but recessions can be like forest fires, purging the economy of dead brush so that new shoots can grow. Until then, we are in a fat and slow world.

Source: International New York Times June 15, 2019 18:45 UTC