Commercial Real Estate

Here comes the (re)crash and the search for shortable stock is on! The good thing about bankruptcy is that despite silly manilly market, bankrupt is bankrupt and the stock will act accordingly. Ask GGP/LEH investors.

GGP part deux, as the hopium high sold by US regulators that allowed banks and borrowers to pretend bad loans were good wears off and reality sets in..

Back In May 2009 Zero Hedge was the only website to post (following a NYT Dealbook takedown for reasons unknown) the lament of one, now former, Deutsche Bank employee and whistleblower, Deepak Moorjani, who made it very clear that going all the way back to 2006, Deutsche Bank was allegedly fabricating data, and misleading investors about its commercial real estate holdings, courtesy of a lax regulatory strcuture and the "lack of a system of checks and balances". To wit: "At Deutsche Bank, I consider our poor results to be a “management debacle,” a natural outcome of unfettered risk-taking, poor incentive structures and the lack of a system of checks and balances. In my opinion, we took too much risk, failed to manage this risk and broke too many laws and regulations. For more than two years, I have been working internally to improve the inadequate governance structures and lax internal controls within Deutsche Bank. I joined the firm in 2006 in one of its foreign subsidiaries, and my due diligence revealed management failures as well as inconsistencies between our internal actions and our external statements. Beginning in late 2006, my conclusions were disseminated internally on a number of occasions, and while not always eloquently stated, my concerns were honest. Unfortunately, raising concerns internally is like trying to clap with one hand. The firm retaliated, and this raises the question: Is it possible to question management’s performance without being marginalized, even when this marginalization might be a violation of law?" The story was promptly drowned, despite our attempts to make it very clear just what practices the bank was engaging in in the follow up exclusive titled "One Whistleblower's Fight Against Goliath Over the Definition of Risk." Today, the questionably legal practices by Deutsche Bank are once again brought to the forefront with the Propublica article of former WSJ journalist Carrick Mollenkamp titled "Deutsche Analyst Sounded Alarm When Asked to Alter Numbers." This is the second time a pseudo-whistleblower has spoken out against an endemic culture of fraud at the German bank in two years. And nobody cares of course, for obvious reasons - the Zen-like tranquility of the status quo may never be disturbed, or else the endless crime and corruption lurking in the shadows will be exposed for all to see.

A down day in the US on Tuesday could begin to trigger intermediate sell signals...~ Lee Adler

Imagine pensions not paying retiree funds, insurers not paying claims, and banks collapsing everywhere. Sounds like fun? I will be discussing this live on RT's Capital Account with the lusciously locquacious Lauryn Lyster at 4:30pm.

Have we set the MSM on FIRE! Let's see if a trend was created. 18 hours after warning on the insurance sector, record losses were announced!!!

Many still fail to understand the typical Wall Street bank business model! I have laid it bare in BoomBustBlog many a time, which is probably the reason why my blog is banned from more than half of the big bank intranets!!!

In this interview we had a chance to discuss Paul Krugman’s  latest bearish article on China, the linkage between the European crisis and Chinese and Japanese bubbles.  We revisited sideways markets, profit margins (I picked a bone with Apple’s high margins), and concluded with Microsoft.

I was a little early, but I was right about the department store chain ran by a hedge fund manager...

The fact of the matter is that there is a very fundamental, and sparsely recognized reason for overbuilt retail commercial real estate to take a tumble - in addition to the more recognized massive headwinds.

Many don't understand how connected the financial fates of the US and the EU actually are. Those that don't have another think coming.

This white paper is a thorough analysis of the current economic situation and what are the most likely outcomes. The result is that the U.S. will be joining the rest of the world in an economic decline. This is not a new recession but a continuation of the existing one. Many of the data reports from the government, especially GDP, are grossly misleading and paint a hopeful but false picture of what is happening. We give our forecast for the next six months.

Time to start stocking up on those long term, OTM armageddon puts yet?

When was the last time a politician prevented a crash by causing his/her car to instantly freeze in mid-collision? Exactly! Expect the same amount of success with these multiple, financially engineered schemes to get around recognizing the only true solution - DEBT DESTRUCTION - and by the boat loads!

This collapse will come in waves, and the CRE wave hasn't even started yet. When it does come, it will crash against the Sovereign defaults and rate storms to combine with a derivative malaise that will collapse much of the banking system. Ok, now for the bad news...