The countdown to the global economy has begun, with the two largest real estate markets on the planet, China and the United States, cracking at the seams and bringing about a new 2008-style financial crisis.
We are no longer talking about just a “bubble” that is ready to burst, but about a systemic disintegration.
In China, there are entire ghost towns, projects that will never be completed, debts that defy all logic. The numbers say it all: for the first time in 20 years, bank loans have recorded a negative flow.
Evergrande, once a symbol of growth, is being delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange — a monstrous $300 billion debt pile is collapsing publicly. And it is not alone: China South City, with state support, has been forced into liquidation by the court. Road King, the iconic construction company, is disappearing.
Even government injections of liquidity — state-owned property purchases, subsidized loans, site revivals — have done nothing. People are no longer buying the fairy tale. Prices are falling, demand has disappeared, and confidence has evaporated. A ticking time bomb.
The US will do it again, like in 2008
On the other side of the world, the United States is experiencing a déjà vu with nightmarish precision.
$2 trillion in commercial real estate bonds mature by 2026. In 2025, $929 billion is needed to refinance — and there’s no money.
Offices are emptying, rents are suffocating, malls are dying quietly. The default rate is already at 6.5% — and rising.
Sales have plummeted: -52% in hotels, -34% in warehouses. Commercial real estate is slowly rotting away, with banks sitting on toxic debt bombs.
Homeownership? A distant dream with prices at record highs and rising non-performing loans. 70% of Americans can’t afford to buy a home. It takes 8 to 19 years of saving for a down payment. Incomes aren’t keeping up.
Young people are renting — or living with their parents. An entire economic model is collapsing before our eyes.
Trust Economics warns: Real estate is now operating at negative returns in the U.S. Forget real estate. It’s a deadly debt trap.
The West will be swept away
The global economy cannot absorb two mega-crashes at the same time, the Chinese and the American real estate markets.
This crisis will be even more violent because this time there is not only Lehman Brothers. There is Evergrande, South City, Road King, JP Morgan, Blackstone, and a whole generation of people who cannot even buy a studio apartment…
It will not be “just” a banking crisis. It will be a crisis of confidence. A crisis of social cohesion. A crisis of political stability. When people are homeless, when loans are not serviced, when cities are emptying and young people are left homeless or with their parents at 35, then we are not talking about a “business cycle” — we are talking about the end of an era of the current economic system.
