A US Government Rescue for Commercial Real Estate?
• Emacs Stock WatchThe $3.5 tn commercial real estate market is eroding, defaults are doubling on loans for apartment buildings, office buildings, housing complexes, strip malls, hotels, hospitals, and a staggering amount of loans must be rolled over this year into refinancings, or else go bellyup. The problem now is, the US government, meaning taxpayers, may be called upon once again for even more bailout help for this struggling sector, beyond the $23.7 tn in gross exposures already in the bailout programs to date (gross exposures are an Armageddon scenario, although they do show what the government has committed, according to the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Neil Barofsky).
