today

Bear Stearns is caught in subprime mortgages slime, so far assuming 3.2 billion $ in bad mortgage debt.. ``The problem is not what we see happening, but what we don't see,'' said Joseph Mason, associate professor of finance at Drexel University in Philadelphia and co-author of an 84-page study this year on the CDO market. ``We don't know the price of these assets. We don't know which banks are exposed to this sector. These conditions are the classic conditions for financial crises across history.''

For a start we know one such bank. Barclay's allegedly has at least 300 million $ Bear Stearns exposure. “The big worry is: Are there other funds like this out there? Are whole markets going to seize up?” said James Ellman, who says (or hopes) it is not so.