supercat
Major
Guess when offshoring/deindustrialization and financialization in the US began in earnest.
American Economics Thread
- Thread starter Bernard
- Start date
vice chairman Charlie Munger sounded the alarm this weekend over the worrisome state of America’s commercial real estate, noting U.S. banks were saddled with “bad loans” amid falling property prices.
“It’s not nearly as bad as it was in 2008,” Warren Buffett’s right-hand man told the Financial Times in an published Sunday. “But trouble happens to banking just like trouble happens everywhere else. In the good times you get into bad habits…When bad times come they lose too much.”
Berkshire Hathaway in the past has backed banks in tough times, investing about $5 billion in both and in the 2007-08 crisis and 2011, respectively. But now, with a handful of bank failures being followed by possible commercial property crash, Berkshire Hathaway isn’t getting involved. One major concern is risk stemming from commercial property loans in bank portfolios.
The shift to remote work has hammered commercial real estate, leading to and .
“A lot of real estate isn’t so good any more,” Munger said. “We have a lot of troubled office buildings, a lot of troubled shopping centres, a lot of troubled other properties. There’s a lot of agony out there.”
Banks today, he noted, are hesitant to loan to commercial developers. “Every bank in the country is way tighter on real estate loans today than they were six months ago,” he told the British paper. “They all seem [to be] too much trouble.”
Last month, CEO Elon Musk that of all the economy’s looming threats, the state of the commercial real estate debt market is “by far the most serious.”
Munger acknowledged Berkshire Hathaway’s past success with bank investments. But he also referred to lessons learned. “We’ve had some disappointment in banks, too. It’s not that damned easy to run a bank intelligently, there are a lot of temptations to do the wrong thing.”
His comments come ahead of Berkshire Hathaway’s in Omaha next Saturday.
Is this a sign off there being problems when it comes to taxes (what I posted earlier about taxes being lower than estimated)?
The next one: Pacific Western Bank
Stock trading halted, citing volatility, after sinking 30% today. LOL.
Stock trading halted, citing volatility, after sinking 30% today. LOL.
The number of job openings in the United States dropped by 384,000 to 9.6 million in March 2023, the lowest level since April 2021 and below the market's expectation of 9.775 million, indicating that the labor market may be cooling off. Over the month, job openings decreased in transportation, warehousing, and utilities (-144,000) but increased in educational services (+28,000). Meanwhile, the number of hires and total separations remained relatively stable at 6.1 million and 5.9 million, respectively. Within separations, the number of quits (3.9 million) did not show significant changes, while layoffs and discharges (1.8 million) increased.
source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics