Read today where somebody estimates that the commercial office real estate problem could exceed $1 trillion.
And that may not scratch the surface because you got a lot of pensions and retirement funds wrapped up in commercial real estate investments.
To make matters worse, some of those investments are secured by insurance contracts.
We talking potentially massive losses whch could tank re-insurers and ultimately more banks.
So you got the convergence of problems in banking, finance and insurance.
If we get to that point we might see cascading failures.
Any major event could trigger a mass conflagration.
We might see cascading failures which take a long time to stabilize.
After 2008, rules and check stops were put in place to try and prevent a more serious global meltdown. Do a controlled decent if things ever got bad again. And that's probably what is happening now, to some extent we just don't understand that, or aren't willing to admit that.
So we about to see if any of the check stops in the system work. No one knows what might happen if things go south. It's all theoretical. No one knows what will happen if trading is ever halted and the problem is widespread. You might have a situation where people are locked out of trading on a wide scale. If that happens all hell breaks loose and it could take a long time to stabilize.
If the controlled decent and the check stops don't work as designed, and we go full meltdown, we might start to see the first signs of problems with global currencies. It might be the case that some countries will have to choose a a BRICS v. CBDC economy. Conference realignment, but there are only two conferences. Smaller countries will be forced to pick a side. Tide or Gain? Newports or KOOL. SEC or B1G Choose your brand.
In any event, we might see a consolidation of the world currencies under a 'new' common regime. For example, it may be the case that we see the USD and Euro merge 1:1.
In banking we might see a consolidation to 6-major banks. We might see a situation where regional banks and local banks are in name only.
So there's a chance this all burns to the ground. I hope not, but we'll see how this all shakes out.