A quarterday has just passed - the second quarterday that commercial rents have gone uncollected. Businesses now owe half their rent for the year.
Commercial landlords are prevented from evicting their tenants during this time, but that debt does not go away, magically.
Neither does the VAT that businesses owe. Payments are suspended until next April, at which point a lot of VAT will be owed.
Your landlord is the only person who can take out a CCJ against you without notifying you, because that way they can seize your assets one morning and try and claw back some money from a tenant in default.
Commercial rents are high. Far higher than domestic.
Debt is easily available if you have turnover. Because the turnover can service the debt. But without turnover you cannot service the debt. And that debt rises.
Every week that passes is a bigger crisis. You think that a restaurant with its half capacity can generate four times the turnover? It simply cannot. And thus the high street bleeds out.
Every cafe
Every restaurant
Every game store
Every bar
Every gym
Every boutique, fire selling its Spring Season at half price to clear the shelves for the summer season fire sale
Every cinema where you watched Avengers Endgame
Every theatre
Every museum
Every art gallery
Every shopping mall
Every department store
You think for a second the economy bounces back to TWICE what it was, to pay down the incurred debt? Building even now?
At some point the Tories shout TOUGH LOVE and pulls the rug from underneath. And the city, as you knew it, ends.
No businesses generate the level of margin needed to soak up a lost quarter. They can mitigate it by taking on even more debt. But like Toys r Us, that just means they bleed out slower. And sooner or later, that mountain of debt is defaulted upon.
And that's the secret to zombie capitalism. The businesses you are seeing go now are the ones who had overextended on easy credit. The casual dining experience that nobody wanted. But make no mistake - behind every single business right now there is a wall of debt. And every day it gets closer.
Maybe pubs survive. Maybe Wetherspoons survives. It's fitting that the only one of the UK Top 100 businesses to back Brexit is the only one Boris Johnson listens to, because Tim is a Tory donor.
If there is one thing the last three months have taught me, it's that I need other people. I need third spaces. I crave the sound of others talking. I long for the big screen sensation and to eat at my favourite restaurant. I do not believe in the solipsism of Jeff Bezos' dream of a box for everyone.
And I don't think you do either.
I believe that all commercial rents should be frozen. That all the debts on those rents should be frozen. Yes, that includes the debts owed to the banks by the landlords.
I believe that all contracts should be then extended, so that nobody loses out. We just pretend 2020 never happened. Financially.
I know you think that retail doesn't matter. It's other peoples jobs, and those jobs were low paid. But over 3 million people work DIRECTLY in retail. Over 3 million work in hospitality.
And then people work in supply chains. Those six million people pay rents and buy goods and services. They pay tax. The ripple effect of losing entire sectors of the economy are unfathomable.
So yeah. this is the tip of the iceberg and we are sailing on the Titanic.