Going, Going, Gone?

Europroperty reports that DTZ’s view of the European funding gap has changed materially. 6 months ago it was $86 billion, now it’s $50 billion. Isn’t that fantastic? Perhaps in 6 months’ time it will be down another $36 billion and at $14 billion, it will scarcely be worth mentioning. Indeed why has it been mentioned in the past? It’s got no intellectual validity – it’s a gap between two numbers that don’t relate directly to each other. It’s attracted attention because it’s big and appears to show that banks aren’t doing their stuff. But it could equally well have been said that bust owners were failing to put up enough equity. Now it’s a small number no-one will care:  small numbers aren’t very newsworthy. It’s a bit sad that the property industry can’t or won’t discriminate between meaningless and meaningful numbers and sadder still that sloppy thinking was publicized for all the world to see. But as Boris Becker might have said, no-one died and indeed, apart from the noise, no-one inside or outside the industry took much notice.