Bill’s Commentary:
“You do understand that NATO is toast?”
NATO Has to Change. Here’s How.
What would Ike say now?
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, NATO’s first supreme allied commander Europe, felt strongly that his mission was to get Europeans “back on their military feet” — not for American troops to become the permanent bodyguard for Brussels and Berlin.
“If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States,” he wrote of NATO in 1951, “then this whole project will have failed.”
Our pal Grizzly checks in –
“Bill, Check this out?
I’m claiming an uneducated pig farmer in Iowa is much more intelligent than the supposed big wigs of investment. Wonder if they ride a short bus to the closings of deals like this?”
Who Made or Lost What between Brookfield, Starwood, MetLife? An Office CRE Deal of the Low-Interest-Rate Era Gets Shredded in Foreclosure
We have been discussing here for a while how the massive losses in commercial real estate, particularly in the office sector, have been spread far and wide, spread over equity and debt, landlords and lenders. And those lenders are spread across several big investor classes globally, and they hold the majority of the debt, not banks, thankfully (in multifamily CRE, US government entities hold the majority of the debt). And those losses originated from the crazy deal-making, reckless lending, and ridiculous valuations during the era of ultra-low interest rates. So this here is a deal that went kaputt where the debt was held by a life insurer.
BillHolter.com 
Thank you pamelamoves@gmail.com
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