Credit crisis over? Not likely

...it's not just losses on current holdings that are the problem. Das wishes to remind investors of the $1 trillion to $3 trillion that's still in the process of moving onto the banks' balance sheets from related entities where they were hidden. These off-balance-sheet units were created to permit banks to buy vast sums of credit derivatives that they had designed in exchange for big fees. The holdings of the units, called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, were then used as collateral to do more borrowing from money market funds, again generating more fees.

* Keeping these highly leveraged units off the books meant banks did not have to counterbalance them with any permanent capital, or equity. This was a crucial link in the global liquidity factory that provided funds for this decade's credit bubble.