Quando acaba o dinheiro barato

Muitas vezes ao longo dos anos tenho referido aqui no blog esta figura que criei em 2008:

Por exemplo:

• em 2022 -  We're not in Kansas anymore
• em 2017 - Antecipar a próxima jogada

Quando o preço do dinheiro desce, a rentabilidade necessária para um projecto sobreviver baixa, e vice versa. Vivemos mais de uma década de dinheiro barato... quais as implicações para os negócios habituados a baixo rentabilidade?

O NYT de ontem chama a atenção para o tema em "Corporate Debt Was Cheap, But Economy May Pay Price":

"Companies loaded up on cheap debt during an era of superlow borrowing costs to help finance their operations. The Fed has since lifted interest rates to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent from near zero, where they were as recently as March 2022.

The fear is that as debt comes due and businesses still in need of cash are forced to renew their financing at much higher interest rates, bankruptcies and defaults could accelerate. That risk is especially pronounced if the Fed keeps borrowing costs higher for longer - a possibility that investors have slowly come to expect.

...

The bankruptcies that have happened this year haven't seriously dented the economy so far. But analysts have warned they are symptomatic of the excesses that developed during a decade of historically low interest rates. And financial stress is unpredictable, so it poses a wild-card risk for the Fed as it tries to tame inflation. It hopes to do that without causing a recession.

...

As higher rates last, “more and more corporations will need to refinance into a higher-rate environment,”

...

But in a sign of the uncertainty over the severity of debt distress on the horizon, the Moody’s forecast also suggested that in a “severely pessimistic” scenario defaults on risky debt could jump to 13.7 percent in a year, higher than the 13.4 peak reached during the 2008 financial crisis."