‘Crisis of Confidence’: Markets Short on Clarity (from the San Diego Business Journal)

At the center of the problem is the volume of bad loans that are contained in the billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities, and how many of those mortgages will eventually sour, said analysts.

"The uncertainty here is really deep," said Charlene Davidson, an investment banker with McGladrey Capital Markets in Costa Mesa. "There’s a significant amount of private and public balance sheets that are holding some form of these derivative securities."