Commentary on the Commercial Real Estate Debt Markets, Economics, Politics and More.
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?
I’ve had numerous conversations with market-makers in and around our business and many, not all, but many, seem very relaxed about the here and now. I hear: Spreads…
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…
On October 26, 2022, Dechert partners Laura Swihart and Stewart McQueen attended the CREFC Capital Markets Conference in New York City. Stewart gave opening remarks and Laura moderated a panel on the current housing market and its intersection with multi-family, single-family and build-to-rent properties. Laura and Stewart sat down with Law Clerks Jared Goldstein and…
Let me first apologize to my readership. I have been very dilatory in getting this commentary done and this topic is… a bit daunting. In my defense, working for a living can get in the way of thinking and writing. In any event, I have been doing some considerable reading about Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues recently. It had not really been on my screen, in a big way, but has been bubbling along as a thing, important to some, but not so much for us denizens of the commercial real estate finance space.
Continue Reading We All Need Practice Spelling ESG
Crunched Credit’s own Rick Jones spoke with the TreppWire team for their latest podcast. Covering everything from the future of CMBS to the Great Recession, the conversation was wide reaching. Be sure to tune in for more on Rick’s interview with Sam Zell, how we’re headed for a “square root” recovery and why…
My last commentary, Playing with Broken Toys in Coronavirus Land, touched on the notion that sometimes following rules can guarantee a bad outcome. I’ll leave more important musings about ethics and morality aside here (I still don’t have a clue about what Kant was nattering on about) and focus on the more mundane question of whether one should do what a contract says when the contract conflicts with the exercise of good judgment.
Continue Reading “I Was Just Following Orders”
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 popular tourist destination in the world, Spain, has ordered all its hotels and other tourist accommodations to be closed.
Continue Reading Beds without Heads: Hotels in the Era of the Coronavirus
Long ago, I read a book by a man named Herman Kahn, one of the founders of the Hudson Institute and a well-known public intellectual. The book was entitled On The Year 2000. (He was more famous for that truly uplifting missive, On Thermonuclear War.) I suspect I didn’t understand a lot of it, but I was jazzed by this apparently serious effort to peer into the future. How cool! Mr. Kahn was an interesting character; think of a banal-looking, rotund academician, who talked about nuclear annihilation like I discuss box scores. He was, in fact, an inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and for General Jack D. Ripper’s famous line in that wonderfully dark comedy, “Casualties? 50 million…tops!” A father of US nuclear deterrent strategy and a considerable intellect, he actually got much of what he thought of the Year 2000 wrong, but in a fun way.
Continue Reading Welcome to the Future
I’m a great admirer of Jack Cohen and his periodic market commentary. I answered his last one and then after the two of us talked, we decided we’d publish them together as a duet. So here you go.
Continue Reading The Jack and Rick Show: Point and Counterpoint
Beany & Cecil was a cartoon. The Current Expected Credit Loss accounting rules, better known as CECL, which the FASB is insisting will go into effect at the beginning of next year for publicly traded banks and lenders and a year later for all other GAAP reporting entities is not. Now, heaven forfend that I suggest that the work of the Financial Accounting Standards Board is cartoonish, but there’s a parallel in this pairing of harmless and obscured menace worth noting.
Continue Reading Beany & CECL
