March 3, 2010

So How’s the Economy Doing?

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Email from a friend involved in the legal end of the commercial real estate market:

We just had yet another lender pull the plug on a commercial real estate deal that was set to go.  The stated reason was minor and technical.  The real reason we’re guessing is that it has too many underwater loans on its books and simply doesn’t have the resources.

So what is happening now?  Remember the doom and gloom scenario of mass foreclosures by banks to get the bad commercial real estate loans off their books?  Well, if my purely anecdotal experience with the first few months of 2010 are any indication, that scenario will not be happening any time soon — which is a bad thing.  It will not be a dramatic cascade but a slow tentative process with limited positive impact on the economy.

Instead, it appears that banks are continuing to grant very long deferments rather than take the loans down.  The logic here is bizarre, but understandable I guess.  They are punting on the issue until the economy improves, which they are betting is next year or so.  But if they don’t get the bad loans off their books, they can’t free up their resources to provide the necessary new financing to recharge the economy.  Then next year they’ll punt again.  And the vicious circle continues. I’m not sure what the government can do here, but I sure hope there is some creative thinking going on in D.C.

It’s just a single data point, but I’ll bet there’s a lot of similar stories out there. We may have saved the banking system last year, but it’s still in pretty fragile shape.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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