Things don't look well..

...at least to Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley. His starting point is "Since the end of the recession, the economy has grown at about 2 percent a year in the United States and 3 percent worldwide — both nearly a point below the average for postwar recoveries." This is the longest, weakest recovery on record. The basic problem, he feels, is that central banks have printed a lot of easy money and given it to inefficient and big companies. These are no longer the times of the entrepreneur. The National Bureau of Economic Research shows that low rates gave big companies an incentive and means to grow bigger. As their power grows, workers’ share of national income has been shrinking, fueling inequality.

The economy is being dominated by big companies; for example, four airlines and three rental car companies account for more than 80 percent of the American travel markets. One company owns just about all major jewelers. It looks as though tech companies sell to Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. rather than try to unseat them. Start-ups represent a declining share of all companies in Britain, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the United States and many other industrialized economies. The United States is generating start-ups — and shutting down established companies — at the slowest rates since at least the 1970s.

Then, there are the “zombie firms,” which don’t earn enough profit to cover their interest payments and survive by repeatedly refinancing their loans. They account for 12 percent of the companies listed on stock exchanges in advanced economies and 16 percent in the United States, up from 2 percent in the 1980s. Companies are surviving in the “zombie state” for longer, depleting the productivity of healthy companies by competing with them for capital, materials and labor.