``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.''
The bailout of the fund would be the largest since Long- Term Capital Management LP, which received $3.625 billion from 14 lenders in 1998.