- “These borrowers have $8 of debt for every $1 of cash,” wrote Andrew Chang, primary credit analyst at S&P Global. “We note these borrowers, many sponsor-owned, borrowed significant amounts under extremely favourable terms in a benign credit market to finance their buyouts at an ever-increasing purchase multiple without effectively improving their liquidity profiles.”
This round it is the companies that had cheap credit and overbought. No blaming homeowners on this one, people are just going to be laid off. I imagine that will affect the psychology of the recession. Also, student debt holders are going to take it really hard.
Doesn't the government own all the student loans? The corporate debt unraveling will be nasty though I think that will be fuel for the next financial crisis. If corporate bankruptcy courts get clogged up and become unable to clear the backlog that will become really nasty really quickly. Think about that... people living paycheck to paycheck suddenly not getting a paycheck. People who dont have $500 of float would loose 1-2 weeks of salary and wouldn't even be able to file and collect unemployment fast enough to soften the blow. Having that happen in mass is downright scary. The thing about the housing crisis is that it was really slow to happen and people who were affected by foreclosure actually ended up with a short term income boost due to not having to pay rent. If companies go bankrupt suddenly accounts just get frozen, employees abruptly loose income, and it sends shock waves though the entire system.
Non-financial corporations went the way of the buffalo long ago. What they make no longer matters compared to how they finance what they make.And the riskiest borrowers are more leveraged than they were even during the financial crisis, according to S&P's analysis, which looked at 2017 year-end balance sheets for non-financial corporations.