Synthic CDOs were just one example of the problem we didn’t learn. There’s a whole logic, risk and visibility problem around derivatives of derivatives. The fact that the CFTC has suspended swap reporting, and that we have a derivatives markets that is so massive and then we have derivatives (like swaps) based on those derivatives is a system designed to fail.
The derivatives market is over $1 quadrillion dollars large.
Not talking about the housing market here, talking about the Real Estate market, which the housing market is certainly a subset of, but not what is going to be as big of a player in this issue.
The issue at hand in this case are massive, but vacant, skyrise business focused buildings. And of course the countless giant concrete cubes all over the place in every major city that used to house hundreds of employees and now largely… dont need to. At least not as many, and now 1 of those cubes could be plenty to house several entire businesses, instead of 1.
Hell a company I used to work at was in a giant building and even though it was growing, it was only using maybe 1/5th of its total rooms. Half the hallways were completely vacant and you could walk down rows and rows and rows of dark closed off rooms with just a table and chair in them, lights out.
And that was before the pandemic, post pandemic the entire building had like 3 people in it for a long while, and even when some people filtered back it largely stayed a ghost town. I dunno if they cut their losses and moved to a much much cheaper option to save tonnes of money (I hope they did, it would be a smart choice), but last I saw the place was super empty.
And when this happens, suddenly the property values of an uncountable amount of real estate will plummet. And a LOT of people have a LOT of money banked on that not happening.
Im not entirely sure this specific issue has much to do with Synthetic CDOs.
Synthic CDOs were just one example of the problem we didn’t learn. There’s a whole logic, risk and visibility problem around derivatives of derivatives. The fact that the CFTC has suspended swap reporting, and that we have a derivatives markets that is so massive and then we have derivatives (like swaps) based on those derivatives is a system designed to fail.
The derivatives market is over $1 quadrillion dollars large.
Probably not too much but a key lesson was that the housing market is pretty fucked up
Not talking about the housing market here, talking about the Real Estate market, which the housing market is certainly a subset of, but not what is going to be as big of a player in this issue.
The issue at hand in this case are massive, but vacant, skyrise business focused buildings. And of course the countless giant concrete cubes all over the place in every major city that used to house hundreds of employees and now largely… dont need to. At least not as many, and now 1 of those cubes could be plenty to house several entire businesses, instead of 1.
Hell a company I used to work at was in a giant building and even though it was growing, it was only using maybe 1/5th of its total rooms. Half the hallways were completely vacant and you could walk down rows and rows and rows of dark closed off rooms with just a table and chair in them, lights out.
And that was before the pandemic, post pandemic the entire building had like 3 people in it for a long while, and even when some people filtered back it largely stayed a ghost town. I dunno if they cut their losses and moved to a much much cheaper option to save tonnes of money (I hope they did, it would be a smart choice), but last I saw the place was super empty.
And when this happens, suddenly the property values of an uncountable amount of real estate will plummet. And a LOT of people have a LOT of money banked on that not happening.