Still another unknown for Citigroup is its exposure to loans provided to buyout firms, which paid what now seem like high prices to privatize publicly traded companies.
The FSA noted that the corporate division took on risk by taking on 100% exposure to loans which it then sold down rather than trying to join in a club with other banks to reduce the risk.
While there is no shortage of credit in Germany, banks like HSH Nordbank in Hamburg and Commerzbank in Frankfurt remain burdened by exposure to loans to the troubled shipping industry and other problems.
And the banks – the banks that are still with us after the shotgun mergers of 2008 – they are haunted still by exposure to loans and homes values and other banks and leverage and all of the old bogeymen that once forced investors to rip money away for fear of utter dissolution.
But the banks have a keen interest in minimizing their exposure to loan buybacks, and you can be sure they are asserting their rights to say no to these demands just as aggressively.
According to the S.E.C.'s complaint, the two executives "engaged in a disclosure and accounting fraud that misled investors about Franklin's financial condition and concealed the extent of its exposure to loan delinquencies".
New transparency rules for banks, to clarify exposures to bad loans against building-land or unsold property, are in place.
While households and small businesses struggle, a gulf is widening even between the top investment banks like Goldman Sachs and the retail lenders that carry heavy exposures to commercial loans.
Federal bank regulators seized the savings and loan, which had excessive exposure to subprime loans, and sold it off to JPMorgan Chase.
Mr. Frank, a longtime utility industry executive, had served on the board of Washington Mutual for more than a decade when the savings and loan - buffeted by excessive exposure to subprime loans - was seized by the government in September 2008 and sold off to JPMorgan Chase.
