I was surfing this morning and found this piece of information on CNN/Money:
A congressional watchdog panel warned on Thursday that mounting commercial real estate losses could endanger the banking system and thwart economic recovery.A total of $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans will require refinancing in the next four years, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report. More than half of those loans are underwater, written for properties whose value has dropped like a rock.
The expected losses when loans go bad could hit between $200 billion to $300 billion and threaten 3,000 small and mid-size banks with a disproportionate share of commercial real estate assets on their books, according to the panel.
The panel’s research found that 2,988 banks are heavily invested — with more than three times their assets tied up — in commercial real estate loans. Of that number, 2,500 banks each have less than $1 billion in assets.
The first thought that comes to mind is…”YA THINK?”
Gee if only we had more informed people that could have seen this coming….WAIT!……we DO!
On 6 January 2010 the great blog, “Info Ink” (okay I am biased), had a good post along these lines, but yet it took over a month for the Washington insiders to come up with this conclusion…check it out:
My point is….apparently, we bloggers are a bit more perceptive than our counterparts that work for corporate media or the Washington machine…..maybe instead of putting all yoiur faith in the “media” you should read more and then you would NOT be so surprised when stuff bites you in the ass….Just a thought….