Helping to survey--and make sense of--this post-meltdownlandscape was a power panel of five commercial real estate expertsconvened by Salustri for the latest in the series of webinarsproduced by GlobeSt.com. Titled "Wall Street in a Freefall: TheWinners and Losers," the hour-long discussion held Sept. 26 chartedthe differences between now and a month ago as well as a year ago,how this capital markets crisis differs from previous downturns andhow savvy operators could make the most of the opportunities itwill present. (Listen to a replay of the event, available throughDec. 26, here.)

Among the Wall Street downturns seen over the past couple ofdecades, the current one looms as "the most severe and the mostdangerous," in the words of Anthony LoPinto, CEO of EquinoxPartners and a regular blogger onGlobeSt.com. However, fellow panelist Robert White Jr., presidentof Real Capital Analytics, pointed out, "it's absolutely correct tomake the distinction between what's going on in the capital marketsand what's going on in the space markets." One thing distinguishingthis downturn from others, panelists said, is that real estatefundamentals are better able to withstand the shocks.

Those shocks, however, will start rippling down from Wall Streetto Main Street, panelists agreed. Even so, said Bruce Mosler,president and CEO of Cushman & Wakefield, "we don't havedouble-digit vacancy." Nor does Mosler envision vacancy ratesclimbing into the teens and 20s as in down markets of the past.