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‘Zombie Offices’ Spell Trouble for Some Banks - The New York Times
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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You do know if that sector fails, so does your pension, and probably a whole load of the economy.
Price of doing business. :)
No but seriously, it's a bit annoying that these guys are holding everyone hostage in a way. If they don't make bank, we all suffer? Seems wrong.
It is bullshit that they want to hurt the masses instead of the bottom line taking a hit
Pension, lol. What is this, the fifties?
In the U.K. every employee have to have a pension by law.
When were you born, 1950? Who the fuck has a pension at this point?
I work IT on a union contract. I'm building a pension. My cousin retired at 48 from his union mechanic job and now makes 50% pay until he dies.
You should consider a union.
Where are you that it is unionized? Around me, any talk of unionization among my peers is always dismissed as something that would upset the gravy train and cause all our jobs to be offshored.
You have to have those uncomfortable conversations.
$20 days he doesn’t answer.
That's a great conversation starter! "Hey, isn't it interesting that talking about improving our working conditions is so offensive to the boss? Why do you think that is?"
If you're interested in learning how to form a union at work, you can pick any big union and contact them with questions. It might help if they're related to your field, but it's not a requirement. I worked with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) and they were incredibly supportive. Organizing a union at work is the best decision I've ever made.
I have a pension through work, and through the government.
So you work for the government? One of the few to only sectors left in the USA with a pension.
Not in the US. North of that. Canada Pension Plan through the government. If you work, you have a pension. It’s not great, but it’s something.
The one from work is because I am part of a union.
When I got my first proper job at the turn of the century, it was the first thing I signed up to... A shitty stakeholder pension as my company was paying 8% into it
Not really. The office market is not that huge and the vacancies overall are also not that bad. It's not like every single office is suddenly empty.
On the flip side: where these offices are located, housing is extremely expensive, so you could transform some offices to apartments, pivot projects currently in construction and maybe even demolish some older buildings.
These headlines are just a sign that the current management class is utterly incapable of reacting to anything but "line go up". They can't understand that they can't exploit their way out of this for once.
Turning office space into living space is often mentioned in discussions like this. It should be noted that converting the space is not as easy as it seems. In particular, moving the plumbing infrastructure to support individual bathrooms and kitchens is extremely challenging and it makes some projects impracticable.
Some.
We're not talking about total conversion of all office spaces. Even if just 5% of the vacant offices can be converted, that's already 5% less office space to worry about. Let the market decide.
It's also not even a valid talking point. Sure, SOME work will need to be done, but office buildings are built to be modular by design, and are much easier to retrofit than these bloviating idiots online love to yap about without evidence. Buildings have plumbing and electricity for a number of people that will be vastly different than if it was apartments. Think about a bathroom with 10 stalls and 4 sinks being reduced to one with a shower.
Didn’t you and I already debate this?
Your argument is no different than saying the stone chipping business will collapse because pesky bronze smelters are making swords.
A broad portfolio doesn’t have a particularly heavy real estate position. Maybe some state pension schemes are - I think you mentioned the Canadian one last one - but it’s not like the office buildings become worthless from one day to then other. Some will remain occupied offices, some will convert into residential accommodation. Others will get torn down and redeveloped. The economy will adapt.
Most probably... I don't know, but if we did, good shout and good memory 👍
A collapse of the commercial real estate market would spill over to the larger market and most certainly impact any investments you have. We don’t really want banks to go under in big ways, it always ends up hurting the poor and middle class the most.
Given the overwhelming amount of debt the general public has, having the rich share the load and lose their shirts too would be nice. At this point there isn't much left for us unmoneyed people and watching the system they rely on burn them as much as it hurts is is fine. Let the rich lose.
The really rich can loose more shirts than any of the rest of is will own in 10 lifetimes and not be meaningfully impacted. Not only do they have other shirts, when the fire gets put out they still have the capital from other places that they will use to buy up the pieces at rock bottom prices and profit throughout the rebuild. Outside of situations like the whole GameStop situation from a bit ago, you're not going to screw over ultra rich people by having markets fail. Everyone else will suffer why they are mildly inconvenienced.
It's not really a 'could' spill over, it definitely would.
A very high proportion of institutional investment is tied up in CRE. If enough defaults happen it might even be worse than 2008.
Doesn't mean we should tip the scales in favor of CRE or the banks, though. If it comes to pass, we should nationalize the assets and socialize retirement (more). If we didn't have all our retirement accounts in private markets our exposure to this kind of error wouldn't be so high.
Yea I was being as neutral as possible in my answer. I agree it absolutely would be worse than 2008. I don't think nationalizing the assets are going to work in this environment. The best we can hope for is regulation, but in the specific situation no one really did anything wrong. A Global pandemic flipped norms on their head.
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.
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.
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.
It really depends on what you mean. TARP, from the end of the Bush Administration and early Obama Administrations turned a profit for the Government. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/us-signals-end-of-bailouts-of-automakers-and-wall-street.html