‘Zombie Offices’ Spell Trouble for Some Banks
www.nytimes.com
Bank tremors serve as a reminder: Just because a crisis hasn’t hit immediately doesn’t mean commercial real estate pain isn’t coming.

This is the real reason for companies wanting people back to the office.

All this talk about collaboration and team spirit is just the publicly given reason for wanting people back to the office.

The real reason is that now the owners of the buildings are losing money.

Cry me a river.

  • archomrade [he/him]English
    1•9 months ago

    but in the specific situation no one really did anything wrong

    Banks invested in over-leveraged positions and lost liquidity, loosing their client’s savings. If they want the benefit of privatized banking and reap the profits, they should be prepared to accept the losses. I don’t think that’s a controversial opinion.

    • phillaholicEnglish
      1•9 months ago

      There could be individual banks over-leveraged in commercial real estate, but those aren’t important. At this scale it’s large enough to cause a a major recession or crash. We’ve seen smaller banks fail recently.

      • archomrade [he/him]English
        1•9 months ago

        No, I’m making a generalized statement about privatized banking. If we are constantly socializing the losses when private banking makes a critical error, then we should be socializing the profit, too.

        If they end up causing a crash, I think it’s time we socialize the assets left over rather than ‘bailing them out’ for continued private operation. You suggested that nationalizing the assets would be too controversial in this environment, but I actually think intervening on behalf of private financial institutions and commercial real estate landlords would be more so.