Ethan Penner, who pioneered commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) on Wall Street, explains how bond market capital was historically disconnected from commercial real estate before securitization.
Insight
Penner: Repetitive Operators Accumulate More Wealth Than Problem-Solving Pioneers
“The pioneers, like I am, who create solutions to problems and then get bored as soon as they've kind of solved the problem, they get rich enough, but they're not really the richest people in the world.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Penner: Office building finance is desolate with no lenders active
“And the other one is the office building finance business is desolate. There are no lenders for office. At any level, at any attachment.”
Insight
Penner: Self-Pity in Adversity Weakens People and Prevents Rebounding
“In moments of challenge and failure, you could react in many different ways, and one of them is you could feel victim. You could feel sorry for yourself, like, oh man, this bad thing happened to me, or this person did this bad thing to me, or just bad luck, or…”
Opinion
Penner: Post-1950s economic thinking built an unhappy, envy-based society
“One of the things that I think has been underscoring what's wrong in American society, which I discovered was rooted in some economic, bad economic thinking since the 19 fifties, Is this envy-based society, where we prize materialism as kind of the be-all and …”
Opinion
Penner: Major societal systems like healthcare and finance are collapsing
“We are now in this period of time when most systems in our world are literally collapsing around us, whether it be, I think, our healthcare system our social security system, how we care for the elderly our education system, our financial system, almost every …”
Assertion Contradicted
Penner: In 1991, Regulated Lenders Completely Stopped Quoting Commercial Real Estate Loans
“In 1991, when the light switch went off for real estate, The real estate industry found itself completely without a lending community to service it. All commercial real estate. So it didn't matter whether you had an apartment, a shopping center, a hotel, an of…”