Recently I wrote that everyone in financial stress would be looking for a piece of the bailout pie.  Damn looks like I was right yet again!

Some of the nation’s biggest property developers are asking the government for assistance as a record amount of commercial real-estate debt comes due, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The industry is reportedly asking to be included in a new $200 billion loan program initially created by the government to assist the market for student loans, car loans and credit-card debt. The industry is warning that thousands of office complexes, hotels, shopping centers and other commercial buildings are headed for defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies, owing to some $530 million of commercial mortgages that will be coming due for refinancing in the next three years. They say that this poses another major threat to the global financial system, already severely weakened. In a recent letter to Henry Paulson, signed by a dozen real-estate trade groups, the scenario was described as grim. “Right now, we believe there is insufficient systemic capacity to refinance expiring, performing commercial real-estate loans. For many borrowers, [credit] simply is not available.”

But did not Pres Bush say that we were not going to bailout speculators?  The what would you call a real estate developer?  Land speculation can be traced back to most of the bad economic times in the US and now they want the taxpayer to help them out.

I say tell them to piss off!