Fed extends a helping hand to Hilton Hotels and takes over malls across the country – The Federal Reserve clandestine bailout of the $3 trillion commercial real estate industry. South Florida apartment building prices down 52 percent from peak.
If you think residential real estate is having problems, you should shift your gaze to the mammoth issues confronting commercial real estate. Little is mentioned about commercial real estate (CRE) in the mainstream media yet this is a $3 trillion market (or twice the annual GDP of Texas). Much of the problems in CRE are […]
The hidden gigantic risk of derivatives – Top 77 U.S. banks have their hand in $225 trillion in derivatives. The top 5 banks hold $7.8 trillion of all banking assets growing their asset base by $1.7 trillion from 2007.
The concentration of banking risk in the United States is immense. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury like to convey a pretense that we have a very diverse banking system with over 7,800 banking institutions. In the mind of most of the public, this seems like a very diverse industry. Imagine having 7,800 different kinds […]
Bank of America has $2.3 trillion in assets but $956 billion of that is made up in loans. Think those loans are valued at current market levels? The FDIC would have a challenge even breaking up one too big to fail bank.
The FDIC has a herculean challenge in confronting the too big to fail banks. There is little doubt that having institutions that are too big is part of the reason for the current systemic crisis. Yet through the last few years the solution has been to make these banks even bigger allowing their web to […]
Wealth inequality rivals the months prior to the Great Depression – Americans would prefer a more evenly distributed wealth system. Over 80 percent of Americans still feel we are in a recession.
The official announcement that the recession is over underscores the massive disconnect between Wall Street and the rest of America. Wealth inequality in America is at levels last seen right before the Great Depression ravaged our economy. Yet the inequality has grown even more intense as this crisis has gone forward. 43 million Americans are […]