Simpler WeWork version: 1. Borrow short. 2. Lend long. It works until it doesn't. Normally, though, the people who do this are banks, so we regulate with ca

Simpler WeWork version: 1. Borrow short. 2. Lend long. It works until it doesn't. Normally, though, the people who do this are banks, so we regulate with capital requirements and protect smallholders with deposit insurance. When the people doing it are a massively leveraged real estate investment pool, masquerading as a disruptive tech startup, it's a lot less clear what happens when the music stops... (For those not intimate with the finance side: WeWork is making super-long-term commitments of big dollars, and then microchunking them into super-short-term commitments. This is like a bank making long-term big loans by aggregating short-term demand deposits. In both cases, as long as there's a ton of short-term players to work with, you're safe. When there's a "run on the bank" the short-timers all leave quickly, but the institution's long-term obligations can't be unwound, leading to insolvency.)