Curiosidade do dia

Nas últimas semanas tenho aproveitado os almoços, algumas caminhadas e até substituo a TV pelo youtube à noite para me deliciar com a audição de uma série de podcasts. O tema é a queda das civilizações e os podcasts são de uma qualidade invulgar. Comecei com este impressionante, "The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities" e não tenho parado.

O início ou o fim de cada podcast põe-nos a viver, sob o ponte de vista de alguém que assistiu ao fim do império, normalmente através de um poema. Em várias das civilizações pressente-se o fim quando se instala um ciclo vicioso, não é a morte das pessoas que mata as civilizações, é a falta de energia, é a perda de força vital, é o descalabro económico. Impressiona que várias vezes (no caso dos Khmers, dos Vikings e da Suméria, por exemplo) é o clima: é a mudança do padrão das chuvas, ou o arrefecimento que destroem a economia baseada na agricultura.

Lembrei-me disto ao ler "The corporate zombies stalking Europe":

"What we do know, but are not treating urgently enough, is the serious damage that has already been done to Europe’s corporate economy. Many companies’ balance sheets have been hurt so badly as to put in doubt their ability to return to normal, let alone contribute to renewed growth. Even an unrealistically best-case scenario — where the virus recedes and activity bounces back — leaves serious problems.
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Welcome to the zombie economy. The steepest downturn in generations forced many European companies to run down cash reserves and increase debt to the point where their solvency is threadbare.
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A large number of undercapitalised companies will hold back Europe’s economic performance in two ways.
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First, they do not invest.
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Second, many businesses whose revenues largely go to debt service can, at best, hope to delay their inevitable insolvency. The wider economy’s interest in what happens to such companies is mixed. Keep them alive for too long and you stop workers and capital from moving to more productive activities — the process optimistically known as “creative destruction”. But a wave of insolvencies could also bring destruction without the creation..
As employer-employee relationships are severed, accumulated company-specific knowledge is lost; machines and skills atrophy as they wait to find new uses. In addition, the financially weakest companies are not always the same as the least productive ones."