by Michael Snyder

 But none of the economic hardships that we are experiencing at this moment should shock any of us.  The truth is that we were warned about all of these things well ahead of time.  Many independent voices have been warning us that there would be severe consequences for the exceedingly foolish economic decisions that our leaders were making, and now those severe consequences are starting to play out right in front of our eyes.  The following are 5 economic disasters we were warned about in advance that are happening right now…

#1 We were warned that a great commercial real estate crisis would be coming, and now it is here.  In fact, we just witnessed another massive default…

With recent stress in the regional banking sector, sentiment in US commercial real estate (CRE) – and especially the office sector – has turned negative as investors prepare for potential spillover effects (with JPM, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs all joining the gloom parade), especially as high-profile defaults continue to make headlines as borrowers face higher debt service costs and refinancing becomes much harder ahead of a $400 billion CRE debt maturities this year alone.

The latest headline fueling concerns about a potential CRE crisis involves a fund belonging to CRE giant Brookfield defaulting on a $161.4 million mortgage for twelve office buildings in Washington, DC.

According to Bloomberg, the loan was transferred to a special servicer working with “the borrower to execute a pre-negotiation agreement and to determine the path forward.”

#2 We were warned that there would be widespread layoffs as economic conditions in the United States deteriorated.  Sadly, that is now happening all around us.  For example, on Monday accounting firm Ernst & Young announced that they will be laying off thousands of highly paid workers…