Malls from Michigan to Georgia are entering foreclosure, commercial victims of the same events poisoning the housing market.

Hotels in Tucson, Ariz., and Hilton Head, S.C., also are about to default on their mortgages.

That pace is expected to quicken. The number of late payments and defaults will double, if not triple, by the end of next year, according to analysts from Fitch Ratings Ltd., which evaluates companies' credit.

"We're probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem," said Scott Tross, a real estate lawyer with Herrick Feinstein in New Jersey. [...]

... Pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds bought the seemingly safe securities and are now bracing for losses that could ripple through the financial system.

"It's a toxic drug and nobody knows how bad it's going to be," said Paul Miller, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, who was among the first to sound alarm bells in the residential market.

Of course, this is all good news for bankruptcy lawyers, but not many other folks. It means laid off retail workers, more supposedly solid bank assets and collateralized debt securities turning into part of the big shitpile, and an extended real estate slump that could last for a decade or more. It also means more banks and institutional investors in need of bailout cash. At this point it sort of makes you wonder if the only solution that will be left to us in the end will be the complete (or nearly complete) nationalization of our financial sector. From banks, Wall Street investment firms, Insurance companies and pension funds the rot runs so deep, and the downward spiral appears so unstoppable that I don't know what can be done to salvage the situation absent the Government taking over the mess which our grand free marketeers (from the DLC to the RNC to Greenspan to Paulson) have created. It's a collapse so complete that I'm sure that right wing conspiracy theorists will be imagining secret Jewish Islamic Marxist deep cover terrorist cells embedded within the Federal Reserve System for a good part of the next century as the primary cause for the collapse of global capitalism.

When really, however, it was simply ideological hubris and the stupidity of greedy assholes on Wall Street and K Street to blame. They made their fortunes, enjoyed their high stakes poker games and high class hookers, shot partridge and quail by the bucket load at private resorts while downing pallet loads of $1000 bottles of wine and champagne and eating the most expensive meals expense accounts would allow. And , of course, now that the bill has come due they've left repayment for all their destruction to the rest of us. Greed isn't good, but I guess it can be fun while it lasts.