Word: zero
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...hold insurance on the house; on the other side are insurance companies and the like making an opposite bet. If the house is destroyed, one group of institutions wins and the other group loses. Considering all institutions together, no money was truly lost - it's what economists call a zero-sum game. In good times, risk-hungry banks loved this game, but now they have become risk-averse, and the game seems to have changed. So how can many of the banks simultaneously claim enormous swap losses without a single bank claiming significant profit...
Here are two possibilities: either the vast majority of all swaps - not just AIG's - are held by investment banks, or a significant portion is held by other financial institutions like hedge funds. Suppose all swaps are held by banks. Since swaps are a zero-sum game, the banking industry as a whole cannot lose money on swaps. Then there is no need for a bailout. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...China, you don't have the real estate equivalent of "dine and dash": people don't abandon houses the minute they think the price level is lower than what they paid, leaving it to the mortgage company or the banks to sort out. There's no sub-prime, zero-percent-down U.S.-style debacle here...
...coast through with moderately sized (walk-thru) singles for three years, though don't expect to be overwhelmed by large common rooms. That said, this House boasts excellent senior party suites. If you game the system right your group will get the Cockpit or Ground Zero senior year, otherwise you've failed to grasp the intricacies of Eliot's arcane housing lottery...
...moment, there are few buyers for the toxic assets that are poisoning Citigroup, Bank of America and other major financial players. The unsellable loans sit on the banks' balance sheets at a huge loss, priced from zero to an optimistic 60% of what they might have sold for before the crash...