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
Each year about this time, I sit down and try to cobble together predictions for the performance of the economy and the performance of the CRE market in the coming year. Of course, I’m wrong every time. It’s not for lack of trying. I do try to think hard about where we’ve come, what things … Continue Reading
Why don’t enough investors like CRE CLO securities? They all really should, and it would be terrifically helpful to the market if more of them did so. (Okay, terrifically helpful to me.)… Continue Reading
I am trying to figure out how much I care, as a businessman (as opposed to an actual living, breathing human being), about the chaos swirling around us. Every day’s news seems more the stuff of a dramatic conceit of someone’s next thriller than reality. Throw in a car chase and some sex, and we’ve … Continue Reading
We have virtually no bandwidth to deal with anything other than the pandemic, do we? The marches of every conversation begin with “you’re okay, I trust” and end with “take care” and now we really mean that. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? It’s hard to even remember the “time before.”… 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
As we continue to do business in this new world, we have been working with clients to address some of the impacts of COVID-19 on their industries. One point of consideration that comes up is the unprecedented nature of the ensuing economic crisis on the real economy. As part of Dechert’s COVID-19 Coronavirus Business Impact Broadcast … Continue Reading
I’ve been offline for a bit. An amalgam of writer’s block caused by the enormity of the Coronavirus mess – what can be said that’s useful – and the consequence of being wildly busy as everyone across financial markets tries to pivot to the new reality. Unburdened by any knowledge of science, medicine or epidemiology, … Continue Reading
‘Tis the season and I think it’s way overdue to put in a good word for sunny optimism. It’s been a while since the Golden Turkeys, and I apologize for being offline. This having to work for a living gets in the way of serious bloviating. Here is what is bothering me. The overall tone … Continue Reading
Just when you thought the regulators had forgotten about HVCRE ADC, they issued a new notice of proposed rulemaking like they were Beyoncé surprise-dropping a new album. And then…they disappeared again! We were waiting for more news before alerting our readers but nothing has come to date. To bring those not in the HVCRE ADC-hive … 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 shear complexity of the modern world makes fools of us all. It’s no wonder that conspiracy theories, just plain weird ideas and deeply counterfactual views abound these days. We don’t like to be bewildered or shocked by unexplainable events, and, regrettably we confront plenty of these every day. Confronted with the inexplicable, it is … Continue Reading
Did you know that the District of Columbia has assigned officers to enforce its police-your-dog laws? The Poop Police. How low do you have to go, how badly do you have to screw up to be assigned in the District of Columbia to the Poop Police? Do they go under cover? Do they pack heat? … Continue Reading
As we look back each November to bestow the year’s crop of Golden Turkeys to the silliest and most annoying instances of regulatory overreach, legislative inanity, governmental misfeasance or the mere idiotic behavior of people without any help from the government apparatchiki, there’s always a glorious excess of candidates. This whole commentary thing would be … Continue Reading
On September 27, 2017, the Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) that they describe as simplifying compliance with certain aspects of the agencies’ risk based capital (RBC) rules to, among other things, replace the standardized approach’s (SA) treatment of HVCRE loans with a simpler treatment for most acquisition, development … Continue Reading
As an industry, we remain in high dudgeon over the inanity of much of Dodd-Frank, the ideological and often unhinged regulatory instincts of our various governments and the vast amount of effort, time and money it takes to comply with the mind-numbing complexity of rules and regulations that seem to be largely untethered from the … Continue Reading
Last week, an article written by Mr. Frank Partnoy, professor of law at the University of San Diego, appeared in the Financial Times and was subsequently picked up by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Partnoy argues that the next global financial crisis will be found inside the CLO industry and that past is prologue. I think … Continue Reading
What in the world have we done to ourselves? Our CRE Securitization business, or at least the conduit part of our business, continues to shrink: $800 billion in outstanding principal balance in 2007 and now, $400 billion? Maybe, right now, we’re at a run rate of $50 billion per year. Is that enough? Does that … Continue Reading
Well, we’ve had the big reveal and the administration’s new tax plan is out. This plan, announced with a great deal of fanfare, feels more like a campaign promise than an actual executable plan. At two hundred forty-six words from end to end (four different typesets, three different fonts, three colors, weird spacing and a … Continue Reading
CREFC has surveyed some of its attendees—all major participants in the commercial real estate finance industry—at the 2017 CRE Finance Council January Conference in Miami. CREFC’s 2017 market outlook survey confirmed what we observed at the conference this year, that for the most part survey respondents were cautiously optimistic in the face of the Trump Administration, … Continue Reading
This commentary is not customarily about politics, although those with a subtle cast of mind might get an inkling of some my personal views from my always dry and balanced language. However, right now, it’s hard not to think explicitly about politics and the new Trump administration.… Continue Reading
Your correspondent is fresh from the front-lines of the risk retention wars where great armies of lawyers, bankers and advisers are fixedly staring at each other, staring out of the redoubts of their respective defensive crouches in a complex, multidimensional chess game. All are fervently hoping against hope that something or someone does something to … 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
