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Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by drawkbox on Saturday May 16, 2020 @04:37AM (#23201587)
> move into retail finance

Whistleblower: Wall Street Has Engaged in Widespread Manipulation of Mortgage Funds [1].

Commercial real-estate was already going to absolutely hammered.

> Some of the world’s biggest banks — including Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank — as well as other lenders have engaged in a systematic fraud that allowed them to award borrowers bigger loans than were supported by their true financials, according to a previously unreported whistleblower complaint submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission last year.

> Whereas the fraud during the last crisis was in residential mortgages, the complaint claims this time it’s happening in commercial properties like office buildings, apartment complexes and retail centers. The complaint focuses on the loans that are gathered into pools whose worth can exceed $1 billion and turned into bonds sold to investors, known as CMBS (for commercial mortgage-backed securities).

> Lenders and securities issuers have regularly altered financial data for commercial properties “without justification,” the complaint asserts, in ways that make the properties appear more valuable, and borrowers more creditworthy, than they actually are. As a result, it alleges, borrowers have qualified for commercial loans they normally would not have, with the investors who bought securities birthed from those loans none the wiser.

> ProPublica closely examined six loans that were part of CMBS in recent years to see if their data resembles the pattern described by the whistleblower. What we found matched the allegations: The historical profits reported for some buildings were listed as much as 30% higher than the profits previously reported for the same buildings and same years when the property was part of an earlier CMBS. As a rough analogy, imagine a homeowner having stated in a mortgage application that his 2017 income was $100,000 only to claim during a later refinancing that his 2017 income was $130,000 — without acknowledging or explaining the change.

> It’s “highly questionable” to alter past profits with no apparent explanation, said John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert in securities regulation. “I don’t understand why you can do that.”

Exact same trick as last time, just last time residential and this time commercial.

Time to start anti-trust breaking up the 'too big to fail' banks, they are a national security issue and ultimately a bad actor in fair markets.

Commercial mortgage backed securities are severely overvalued since deregulation after the Great Recession largely because people weren't watching commercial as much and there was a hypernormalization of the idea that the economy was somehow good. All it was was over leveraging, opportunities zones that have less tax revenues if any, that led to stagnation in other areas, so other loans were taken out on future good economic conditions that will not exist for years if not a decade now.

The carnage is going to be immense with the attack vectors of less retail, restaurants going under, less consumers buying physical places, less people and retail/restaurants able to pay rents to landlords that then owe these commercial real estate entities, less office need with more remote, etc etc.

Retail was already on a downtrend but valuations and loans were going up in commercial real estate. This is going to be a problem.

The only area that might be possible is more commercial real estate that is more about moving products back to the US but that really is a fantasy in many areas.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-wall-street...

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by arcticbull on Saturday May 16, 2020 @12:33PM (#23204879)
So this was a solved problem with the Glass–Steagall Act (1933) brought in after the, you guessed it, great depression [1]. It was of course repealed (by Bill Clinton), as we'd learned our lesson thoroughly and completely. This led to 2008. And 2020.

So naturally, given the broad-based success of the repeal, there's no interest in reviving it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_legislation

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by lonelappde on Saturday May 16, 2020 @06:21PM (#23207677)
Congress passes laws, not the President.

The repeal passed the Senate on a near party line vote (R over D), sponsored by 3 Republicans, and passed the House will nearly all R and 2/3 of D.

Clinton could have vetoed it, though, since the Senate didn't have a two-thirds majority.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93...

Of course, looking to the future from the future, a veto would likely be irrelevant since Bush took over a year and a half later.

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by GeekyBear on Saturday May 16, 2020 @08:54PM (#23208451)
Clinton did not oppose the repeal at all. He was a cheerleader for the process.

Here's a snippet from his signing speech.

>You heard Senator Gramm characterize this bill as a victory for freedom and free markets. And Congressman LaFalce characterized this bill as a victory for consumer protection. And both of them are right. And I have always believed that one required the other. It is true that the Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriate for the economy in which we live.

https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/l...

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by arcticbull on Saturday May 16, 2020 @09:01PM (#23208491)
> Congress passes laws, not the President.

Indeed, what I meant to say was "under" and not "by". My bad. Too late to edit.

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by cmurf on Saturday May 16, 2020 @06:44PM (#23207827)
The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act had bi-partisan support. Following 2008, Dodd-Frank Act was passed by Democrats, opposed by Republicans, signed into law by Obama in 2010. After multiple attempts by Republicans to repeal it, they succeeded in 2017 and 2018, without bi-partisan support, both partial repeals signed into law by Trump.
Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by GeekyBear on Saturday May 16, 2020 @09:00PM (#23208487)
>they succeeded in 2017 and 2018,without bi-partisan support

You might want to do a little reading on the repeal of sections of Dodd Frank.

>The measure’s framework is expected to eventually pass the Senate thanks to a dozen finance-friendly and swing-state Democrats who have openly announced their co-sponsorship. With Republicans in control of the House, the bill seems destined to reach President Donald Trump’s desk this year.

https://newrepublic.com/article/147247/democrats-helping-tru...

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by logicchains on Saturday May 16, 2020 @05:21AM (#23201862)
>Time to start anti-trust breaking up the 'too big to fail' banks, they are a national security issue and ultimately a bad actor in fair markets.

More like time to stop propping them up. If the government hadn't stepped in to save them during the last crisis, a bunch of those banks would have gone the way of Lehman Brothers.

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by lefstathiou on Saturday May 16, 2020 @10:37AM (#23203704)
I think the parent post is recommending an orderly breakup as opposed to a collapse where society is left to pick up the pieces.

The issue comes back to foreign competition. As much as Glass-Steagall made sense to some, it was repealed because US banks faced increasing competition from European banks that were able to bundle advisory with retail bank deposits. Unless everyone takes similar position globally (or we block foreign bank access to our markets) it’s hard to justify a handicap on the home team.

Re:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire dumps most of Goldman Sachs stake by lumost on Saturday May 16, 2020 @12:03PM (#23204561)
Banking is a sector where it's easy to win on a short term (10year) horizon and lose everything on a 20 year horizon. Ultimately if the taxpayer is going to foot the bill on the 20 year horizon then they should be able to ensure that only players obeying the guardrails are allowed to play.