At long last the powers that be have taken decisive action to head of a certain catastrophe.

No I don’t mean the co-ordinated actions of the central banks to provide unlimited dollar liquidity silly, no, Sunderland have sacked Steve Bruce.

Some media pundits (largely former team mates) will say he deserved more time and that the team he assembled in the summer needed time to gel, but any poor season ticket holder who has seen only two home wins in the calendar year, will tell you enough is enough.  Its not as if the the new chairman has been trigger happy (despite being from Texas), in the last two season Sunderland have had two major slumps in form that would have had Abramovich calling for the Spanish archer.

The publicity shy American that owns SAFC is called Ellis Short and he made his fortune as a partner at our friends Lone Star, the major property equity fund managers.

His pragmatic, but ultimately ruthless decision making was no doubt honed turning around defaulting loan portfolios of the kind that desperately need sorting out now.

“Newcastle United needs to be filled with people who love this club”, so spoke, Alan Shrearer, yesterday.

For any right minded follower of football, and at this stage I must declare an interest as a life long Sunderland fan, this is plainly the last thing that The Geordie Nation need.  Newcastle have already been through more messiahs in the last twelve months than the average middle eastern suicide cult and look where it has got them.

What has this got to do with property and finance? I hear you ask.

Adimittedly not a lot, however what I think it does is illustrate how not to turn around a hopeless situation, such as many of the defaulting loans banks now find themselves with.  What is needed is a dispassionate, un-loving hand of an outsider, who is able to take clinical or even cynical view in how to make the best of a lost cause.

To resource their workout teams, many banks have co-opted their origination bankers en masse, who, like Mary Poppins, might actually be a little too close to the problem to offer a subjective solution. 

I have given this all of five minutes deliberation and have come up with a solution that could remove the current impasse and keep all of Morgan and my lovely banker friends in work:

The banks all swap loan books with each other.

This could executed in a number of ways; bankers in Canary Wharf could move to the building immediatley to the right, for example.

This would facilitate closure on their current pain and allow them to get tucked into sorting out problems that were, genuinely, not of their own making.  

Genius.

By the way, I also appreciate that as a Sunderland supporter, I do not qualify as a “right minded follower of football.”