... is that there is literally no bid out there. assume there are only a dozen people in the world who would buy a ferrari gto of 1965, you have one and all of a sudden the other eleven buyers are busy with something else and do not bid for the car, is it worth 0 then? from a market perspective definitely YES. but there is more to it if those other eleven buyers would love to buy at a certain price, but are not allowed to. this is what is currently happening. nasty stuff was written off and that was quite right. but in the course of that it happens with too much stuff that everybody knows is not as bad as it is priced (if it is priced at all ...). that is why this crisis is a liquidity crisis. i think it is about time to think of going long the banking sector. if we have eight weeks with no news like bear the crisis could well be over. since liquidity will return all of a sudden and books will clean up immediately.
the whole credit business sees very few bids. all the potential bidders have the same problem. with many instruments not really related to the initial crisis ...