As you say in your leader about growing commercial property trouble, which threatens to eclipse that of housing by a wide margin, “there is something comforting about investing in bricks and mortar” (“A Concrete Problem,” August 1, 2009). Very well put. As long as everything is hunky-dory, a solid, “real” asset is comforting, indeed. You can touch and feel it whenever you wish. But an economic crisis of today’s proportions changes all that. Immobile as such assets are, they tend to end up in wrong places. By the time most places turn out to be wrong, the trouble becomes painful beyond measure. And the hapless owners of immobile assets start bewailing bricks and mortar in any shape or form. Perhaps the current recession, soon to be renamed into another depression, will teach everyone that there is nothing comforting in solid, “real” assets after all. A good lesson, too.