Zombie Companies

You may have noticed this phrase pop up in your feed. It's become popular recently, in part because there's a significant school of thought that argues we're past due for a recession. If you want a more weighty, scholarly definition of the term, hie thee to Bis, but the short version is:

A zombie company is at least ten years old, burdened by debt it is unable to pay off, and only exists because banks allow it to pile on more debt, rather than die. In recent years banks have been weak because their balance sheets suck every kind of rectal cavity, and as a consequence they'd much rather roll over debt - thus keeping it on the sheet - than terminate it, and the company.

This is problematic. Zombie companies employ people and pay tax, which is great. However, because they have no money they have no hope of doing anything economically useful. They just consume resources, which might have been better used by another, more vigorous company. Zombies stifle expansion by eating all the brains, essentially.

If you're wondering whether this has happened before, it has. Economic growth in Japan came to an abrupt halt in the 1990s, ushering in what's now called the Lost Decade, from about 1995 to 2007. Corporations had guaranteed credit from the banks, discouraging them from making any reforms or trying to save the company from the consequences of its debt burden. It was easier just to let things slide. Nobody invested - after all, why would you? You'd never get your money back, never mind a profit, since every Yen that came in was eaten by the company's debt burden. Anything that might have saved the situation would have had negative short-term consequences, and nobody wanted that.

It's been argued that one of the best ways of clearing out the zombies, preparing the ground for new growth, is to have a recession. A nice, stiff, painful recession, that puts a lot of people out of work. One in which nobody's too big to fail. As with Japan, that's going to be very unpopular politically and socially, which means central governments are going to do everything in their power to prevent it. Which in turn encourages more zombies, stifling growth and initiative.

What does this mean? Apart from cardboard box homes in about five to ten years?

Let's talk gaming, which is somewhat less depressing.

In Night's Black Agents, this could be a whole new endgame for your global Conspiracy. If the vampires fix it so a colossal economic crash brings about a new world order, one in which they can operate freely rather than skulk in the shadows, that's a big win for them. So their best bet is to encourage zombies. Let those brain-dead, shuffling nonentities eat the economy alive, making the crash all the more painful when it comes. This has been done before on much smaller scales; only this week, Ken and Robin discussed the career of William Playfair, who among other things attempted to ruin the French economy to benefit British interests. This is precisely the same game, played on a much larger scale. This kind of campaign best fits Dust or Mirror, some setting where betrayal and political infighting is commonplace. The soldiers on the battlefield are bankers, executives, Wall Street high-fliers, and the great thing about this kind of soldier, from the Vampires' perspective, is that they don't even need to be promised eternal life. Just bigger and better year-end bonuses.  

Of course, the agents' role is slightly less angelic than usual. If they win, either there's an economic collapse anyway, killing all those zombies, or the zombies continue to devour the economy, ruining things long-term.

An Esoterrorists pitch is slightly different. In this version, zombie companies look shiny and bright on the outside - but behind those closed doors, something awful lurks. Executives desperate to keep their company going in spite of everything fall prey to all kinds of promises from the Outer Dark. High-level Esoterrorists know that economic instability and poverty are breeding grounds for new Esoterrors. Occult beliefs and odd religious groups profligate and prosper when everything else fails - the Great Depression proved that. The Dollarmen from the main book are the obvious actors in this timeline, but there could be plenty of others working behind the scenes. Hotsetter Marcus could be sending off prize execs to be CEOs and CFOs at select zombie firms, whose sole purpose is either to perpetuate the zombie disease or to bring an otherwise healthy company to zombie status. Of course, people at that level have plenty of resources at their disposal and can hire other cells, like the Infernalists, to do their grunt work for them. Also, they could be working towards literal zombification, which drives the theme home. How many good little employees stuffed in their cubicles, like slaves in a galley, are still human? How many just exist to keep the zombie company afloat, and what happens if their conditioning breaks? Does that cause an actual zombie outbreak?

Enjoy! If you dare ...