As Commercial Real-Estate Prices Soar, Fed Weighs Consequences

Federal Reserve officials participating in a “war game” exercise this year came to a disturbing conclusion: Six years after the financial crisis ended, the central bank remained ill-equipped to quell the kind of dangerous asset bubbles that destabilized the savings-and-loan industry during the late 1980s, tech stocks in the 1990s and housing in the mid-2000s.

The five officials—gathered at a conference table in Charlotte, N. C.—had to determine if hypothetical booms in commercial real estate and corporate borrowing risked collapse and damaging fallout for the broader economy.

The group was asked what to do about it. Fed officials said afterward they saw they lacked clear-cut tools or a proper road map of regulatory measures to help stem the simulated booms. They also disagreed on whether to use higher interest rates to stop bubbles, a blunt instrument affecting the entire economy.

“I walked away more sure about the discomfort I originally had,” said Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and a participant in the June exercise. She and others believe the Fed’s low-rate policies might have played a role in booming asset prices.

The worry has turned more concrete. Commercial real-estate prices are soaring and Fed officials face the conundrum of what, if anything, to do.

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“Signs of valuation pressures are emerging in commercial real-estate markets, where prices have been rising at a solid clip and lending standards have deteriorated, although debt growth has not yet accelerated notably,” Stanley Fischer, vice chairman of the Fed, said in a speech Thursday.

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