July 2019

Just a few short months ago we took on the breathtakingly ill-conceived Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standard that the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) proposed to implement starting in 2020.  CECL will require major shifts in the way lenders model, forecast and reserve for future losses.  It would materially drive up capital requirements, impair earnings and ultimately drive spreads higher to the borrowing community.  And by the way, it would be pro-cyclical.  If we were actually going to do these things (and we shouldn’t), an unelected financial standard setting committee is surely the wrong party to hold the pen.

The lending community screamed bloody murder, and for good reason.  Luckily, the small banking community was at the forefront on this cri de coeur.  While the money center banks may be one of our pols’ favorite whipping boys, everyone in politics loves the small banker (visions of Jimmy Stewart dancing in their reptilian brains) because those bankers made loans to their constituents, support their local community and, oh, by the way, made significant political contributions.Continue Reading Beany & CECL – Episode 2

In order to avoid burying the lead, let me tell you where I’m going here.  The CRE securitization business is in trouble.  We need to throw out what biologists call the punctuated equilibrium, where once a system initially stabilizes, it thereafter changes little and resists radical change.  Elsewise, our business is at very material risk of irrelevance.

But to give you some time to mull all that over, let me set the table first.  I’ve been worried…Continue Reading It’s Time to Fix Securitization: Are We Dinosaurs Staring Into the Tar Pit?