I wrote a week or two back about my expectation that significant economic dislocation awaits us. I still think that. The morning after I published, hordes (ok, maybe not hordes) of PhD Villeins were outside my house with pitchforks and burning torches, loudly asserting that I had wildly overstated the likelihood of material distress in … Continue Reading
As I was saying in my last commentary, it’s time to stay calm and carry on in a market that is flashing green, red and yellow signals simultaneously. These are market conditions in which nimbleness will be rewarded. Whether the economy is going to continue to grow, albeit in a very low gear, or whether … Continue Reading
I had the opportunity to interview Sam Zell last week on an iGlobal podcast. You can see it here. Fascinating. Okay, Mr. Zell might not be the undisputed master of 1.4 billion souls whose thoughts are obligatory reading, but his Thoughts should be accorded considerable weight by us denizens of the US economy. There’s a … Continue Reading
The spread of COVID-19 has created a new reality for the hospitality industry. As of March 25, the CDC reported 54,453 confirmed cases in the U.S., and the number is expected to grow exponentially. In the hopes of slashing infection rates, governments have implemented international travel bans, shelter-in-place orders and other restrictive measures. The second-most … Continue Reading
We seem all atwitter about the notion that a recession is about to happen; almost aroused by the prospect. A NASCAR crowd just waiting for a crash? Or is this a Waiting for Godot thing, as the chattering class bloviates excitedly, pointlessly and largely cluelessly? Maybe it’s the 24/7 news cycle at work… Did we … Continue Reading
A new OnPoint from Dechert’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation team discusses a recent ruling from a federal court in the Southern District of New York. There, a pension plan that had acquired notes issued by a vehicle invested in a pool of sub-prime residential mortgage-backed securities is arguing that the vehicle’s assets are “plan assets” … Continue Reading
After an evening checking out my various high school and college yearbooks for any troublesome content, and checking Mom’s photo albums (I’m good on the yearbooks, but there were a couple cowboy and Indian pics from when I was about 7, that could be troublesome), it got me thinking hard about the power of words, … Continue Reading
My, my, what a couple of weeks. People, don’t you understand that I’m trying to run a business here? Is a recession on the doorstep or is that a 2022 thing? Are things really bad, or really good? How am I supposed to stay dispassionate and analytic when the stock market gyrates and the drumbeat … Continue Reading
The Wall Street Journal reminded us this month that it was ten years ago, August 9, 2007, that the first regulatory domino in The Great Recession fell as BNP Paribas froze a series of resi investment funds for lack of a functioning market to value the securities. One could quibble about whether The Great Recession could … Continue Reading
This is all about the difficulty of taking the punch bowl away from a roaring good party. Over the past several weeks a number of major banks folded under enormous pressure from the US DOJ to settle fraud claims resulting from the sale of bonds prior to the financial crisis of 2008. The allegations here … Continue Reading
I’d like everyone to go out and buy a copy of Professor Paul Mahoney’s slender new book, Wasting a Crisis – Why Securities Regulation Fails. Paul is a brilliant guy. Until this spring, he was the dean of the University of Virginia School of Law where he is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor … Continue Reading
And now to return to our commentary a few weeks back about the stultifying impact of ill-thought through rules and regulations (at best) (Brexit has intervened). This is our Regulatory State which broadly attempted to pick winners and losers and modify market behavior, to get an engineered outcome by using the blunderbuss of proscriptive rules … Continue Reading
The slow start to 2016 did not dampen the enthusiasm at CREFC’s Annual Conference, held last week in New York City. The conference saw record attendance, with standing-room-only crowds at virtually every panel. As with the Industry Leaders Conference in January, the hot topics on people’s minds were risk retention (and the rest of the … Continue Reading
With apologies to George Dangerfield, who published The Strange Death of Liberal England in 1935 chronicling the collapse of the British Liberal Party prior to World War I, I’m borrowing his title for this commentary. Okay, bear with me. Regrettably, we may be witnessing something happening to our banking system which is somewhat reminiscent of … Continue Reading
We may be approaching a tipping point where the burden of the new federal regulatory state, purportedly designed to make our economy stronger by making the banking system safer, will begin to demonstrably become a cure that’s worse than the disease. To my eye, much of the new regulatory apparatus feels like political theatre designed … Continue Reading
MERSCORP, Inc. (“MERS”) has been under fire for years. We wrote about it a while back when residential mortgage borrowers challenged the ability of MERS to foreclose on mortgages it held on the theory that MERS, as a mere nominee to the lender, was not a real party in interest. More recently, local recording offices … Continue Reading
After years of delays, changes and significant debate, the Volcker Rule is now, largely, in full effect. Sold to a sometimes intellectually incurious Congress and the electorate as a central piece of legislation to limit systemic risks to the financial system, the Volcker Rule, among other things, prohibits “banking entities” from engaging in proprietary trading … Continue Reading
For want of a baker, a job was lost. For want of a job, the economy was lost. For want of an economy, the banking system collapsed. For want of a banking system – well, ultimately Grexit. Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, (China), Grexit, Grexit. The Greeks will be fine, right? There is no … Continue Reading
Or perhaps Prometheus had it right in its original form. “Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.” Look at what we are doing to construction lending in the name of our seemingly endless safety and soundness crusade. Under the new regulatory capital rules, we have a new asset class; HVCRE or High Volatility … Continue Reading
You know, as an economist, I am a pretty good piano player. I struggle every morning, marinating in the news cycle, to try to understand what’s happened to the US economy and what its impact will be or might be upon the business of commercial real estate finance. We apparently are inching up on the … Continue Reading
In Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers District Council Construction Industry Pension Fund, 575 U. S. ____ (2015), the Supreme Court clarified issuer liability under §11 of the Securities Act. Section 11 provides that issuers are liable for registration statements that contain “an untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact required … Continue Reading
A securitization community coming off of record issuances in 2014 has entered the new year with a mixture of nerves and optimism. An estimated 6,500 finance professionals and attorneys converged for the 2015 ABS Las Vegas conference. The new risk retention rules, and their impact on CLOs in particular, were on everyone’s lips – to … Continue Reading
I saw the movie Imitation Game last weekend, which is the story of Alan Turing and his role in breaking the Enigma Code which shortened World War II and saved millions of lives. (Spoiler Alert: He did it, we won.) Turing, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, was terrific, even if you’re not a certified “Cumberbitch.” It … Continue Reading
With apologies to Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, and in the afterglow of a relatively amiable final AB Rule, we are reminded this week that our business remains hogtied to a regulatory establishment that can’t seem to stop regulating. When a member of the regulatory apparatchiki hears someone observe, “Well, if I don’t get out … Continue Reading
