This is just a short note, with little actual utility, but it’s about something that’s really bothering me. Why are we so calm? What has anesthetized us? … Continue Reading
Conspiracy theory fans, tin-foil hat wearers everywhere, Nostradamus wannabes, the broadly unhinged and, of course, our professional purveyors of doom and gloom roosting on evening cable news see patterns where there are none, embrace straight-line projections based on disparate and unrelated data and loudly and often shrilly bleat that the end is nigh. That’s all … Continue Reading
As is our tradition here at Crunched Credit, each year, about this time, we award our Golden Turkey Awards. Once again, I must say that we are utterly blessed with so many worthy candidates. The truly deserving have once again wrangled with vision and astounding persistence to earn a spot on our acclaimed list. To … Continue Reading
We’re all just back from CREFC and the mood was broadly constructive. (Don’t you love that word, “constructive”? When did “constructive” become a fancy way to say “good”?) We all went to South Beach this year wondering where the investors were, wondering whether the market was okay and wondering whether December was a blip or … Continue Reading
It’s that time again for Dechert’s CrunchedCredit Annual Golden Turkey Awards. In a year made most remarkable by the extraordinary performance of the US economy, idiocy, silliness, pigheadedness and stupidity have tended to be somewhat obscured by the economic good news machine. At the other end of the spectrum, the continued high volume of outrage … Continue Reading
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Papacy has denounced securitization characterizing it (in such an intellectually balanced way) as tainted by “predatory and speculative tendencies.” Good Lord! Now, I’m not perfect — I can’t remember the last time I participated in a black mass, inverted a crucifix or committed any of the more striking … Continue Reading
Maybe it’s because I have been in Europe this past week (Munich at Octoberfest actually – Men in way-too-short leather shorts, dirndls, beer steins the size of a politician’s ego, the most astonishing amount of drinking, etc. Good heavens.) I have been wondering: Has anyone been paying attention to what’s happening in Europe lately? You’ve read … 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
On June 6, 2016, the Rapporteur of the European Parliament released a draft legislative resolution to modify EU Risk Retention. The stated goal of this draft is to promote “Simple, Transparent and Standardized” (STS) securitization. Since STS securitization assets must be fully self-liquidating, commercial real estate (CRE) is again left out in this proposal; not including … Continue Reading
You know, there’s never a dull moment when one reports on the regulatory states’ endless and so often fruitless and wrong-headed tinkering with the global economy. So now… let’s talk bail-in. The bail-in regime, which was adopted by all European Union countries (other than Poland) and implemented on January 1, 2016 (European Economic Area (EEA) … Continue Reading
The referendum on whether the UK leaves the European Community is increasingly a Today issue. With a vote on June 23 the reality of a UK exit is getting harder to ignore.… Continue Reading
I was in New York with colleagues recently, answering clients’ questions about investing in UK real estate. As in the US, we in the UK have ridden a sustained period of strong capital growth in real estate, which continued into 2015. However, growth has slowed recently in certain areas and former hot-spots can now only … Continue Reading
Frequent subscribers of this blog may remember MiFID I coming into force on 1 November 2007, fundamentally revising the existing rules applicable to, amongst others, European firms providing portfolio management and broker dealer services in the EU.… Continue Reading
The Great Equity Correction of 2015 that is now being enjoyed by all of us is a correction, and not the beginning, of the Great Bear Market of 2015 (from my lips to God’s ears). It reminds me of just how little we know about how all complex systems, like the global financial market (and … 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
This month’s decisive, if unexpected, victory for the Tories has given a boost to the UK’s real estate markets. Following an already strong 2014 and now with even higher expectations for continued growth in 2015, the UK is an interesting play. In light of this amiable confluence of factors and the increasing difficulty of finding … 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
I’ve written about Europe a lot over the past couple of years and not out of just a Schadenfreude enjoyment of watching a slow motion disaster far from our shores but because it seems to me that really matters, both in terms of its impact on the global financial marketplace and the probable knock-on effect … Continue Reading
