Real Estate Forum 'Real Estate's Perfect Storm: Institutional Investors Weather the Crisis'

Pumper noted how "this has been a year of the pretend and extend, or as Bill [Carlson] told me a couple of weeks ago, 'a rolling loan gathers no loss.' And so everybody is trying to kick the can down the road and kind of push things off a little bit" until the industry starts "to see some permanence occurring within the economy."

The government has tried its hand at stabilizing the economy, but the general consensus was that these programs were not working in the long-term. "What we have seen is a progression of different small shops, generally new groups coming through with all sorts of ideas of how we could make money taking advantage of TARP or TALF or PPIP," Marcus explained. "And thus far, at the end of each of these meetings, we've all sort of come to the conclusion that they just don't work, and that we really can't think of any way that we could reasonably do something with any of these programs." She noted that there were too many restrictions and "bureaucratic overlay."

Wallace, however, made a point on the importance of the programs' existence, despite their long-term efficacy. "There certainly was a psychological benefit to having something out there that you could [use], [an] any port in a storm kind of thing," he said. "However, I think now that things have calmed down a bit, I think people are now focusing more on the future…" Companies that don't need the money now, don't have to use it, he pointed out, but companies that might need it to buttress their business have it available, if they meet the programs qualifications.