Level 2 & 3

When you add up all the Level II assets by just the eight largest holders in the U.S: JP Morgan (JPM), Citibank (C), Bank of America (BAC), Merrill Lynch (MER), Goldman Sachs (GS), Bear, Morgan Stanley (MS) and Lehman Brothers (LEH), it comes to a staggering $5 trillion - nearly half the size of the economy. Level III assets are nearly $600 billion.

Is the Fed big enough to bail out all these assets? My best guess is probably not, and more firms will fail. If the loans and economy both don’t start performing, these failures will happen more quickly, which is why my firm continues to avoid credit risk. It's not hard to envision an acceleration of this process if the market starts to believe the special loan facilities and other funding processes artificially created to deal with this mess cease to work.

The Fed is slowly becoming the dumping ground for dealers and banks - members of the ‘Moral Hazard Club.’ It's is running out of capital, and quickly.

The problem assets (at least the ones we know about) are way too large for the Fed to completely absorb. It's waiting and hoping the economy and credit markets stabilize before it runs out of ammunition.