Nobody Lending...Not so say the bankers...

I don't envy anyone in commercial banking these days. From one side comes the hue and cry "we bailed you out - but you aren't lending any money" while the other side is screaming about the "lax lending and bad loans" that got us into this mess in the first place.

According to a reuters.com story this week, lenders surveyed at the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association conference in Washington, agreed that there was "plenty of cash for office, retail and apartment buildings with solid cash flow and low debt..." However, "lenders were not willing to extend billions of dollars for maturing loans made at the top of the market..." In other words, we have plenty of money for projects that look great, but we aren't lending to those poor suckers who bought at the top (who are the ones screaming that no one will lend to them).

Is this such a bad thing? I know it means pain and suffering for those who won't be able to roll their financing over, however we have recently seen that the foreclosure timeline from notice (death) to auction (re-birth) is about 6 months. Forget "extend and pretend" - take your medicine and let the market work, so the rest of us can get back to business.