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by SeanAnderson 244 days ago
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCLACBS consumer loan delinquencies up a lot in the last couple of years, tapered over the last year, low relative to historic norms

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS credit card delinquencies are similar

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS home loans delinquencies look amazing right now, to the surprise of noone, since everyone is sitting happy having locked in their 3% rates a few years back.

My understanding is that Tricolor went under due to systemic fraud ("The core of the fraud allegations is that Tricolor illegally used the same loan portfolios as collateral for separate credit lines with multiple banks" to the tune of ~$200M)

First Brands also went under due to fraud ("First Brands had relied on billions of dollars in undisclosed debt, primarily from the private credit market, by borrowing against its invoices. This practice, known as factoring, kept the debt off the company's official balance sheet")

Yes, things feel tighter than they did in the years immediately post-Covid because there was a lot of free $ in the system, a lot of debt collections were paused, and Covid went on long enough for people to start treating that as the new normal when that was never going to be the case.

No, I don't see these as canaries for a 2008-esque event.

The scary thing to keep an eye on is commercial office space debt (e.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPP/) which is likely to cause a cascade of fire sales as 5/10 yr debt obligations come due and how that will have cascading effects on commercial bank loans. That will be a hairy situation, but, fortunately, once it passes, rents in downtown areas will plummet and there will be a huge surge in growth in response to more favorable rents. Right now, commercial rents are locked into untenable rates because the loans are contingent on those rates which is resulting in 30%+ unused commercial space in areas like downtown SF.

1 comments

> Right now, commercial rents are locked into untenable rates because the loans are contingent on those rates

Let me get this straight.

A landlord cannot lower the rent, because they took out a loan on the property which promised to the lender that the rent is a particular amount?

> which is resulting in 30%+ unused commercial space in areas like downtown SF.

The loan prevents the landlord from lowering the rent, so the landlord realizes rental income of $0 on the property.

Oh, that's just great.

Yeah loan covenants lock you in like that. But banks don’t want to manage or sell big commercial properties. If it gets dicey for property owners, they’ll work out a deal with their bank.

Remember Getty:

If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem.

If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.