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"We're probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem," said Scott Tross, a real estate lawyer with Herrick Feinstein in New Jersey.

Companies have survived plenty of downturns, but economists see this one playing out like never before. In the past, when businesses hit rough patches, owners negotiated with banks or refinanced their loans. But many banks no longer hold the loans they made. Over the past decade, banks have increasingly bundled mortgages and sold them to investors. Pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds bought the seemingly safe securities and are now bracing for losses that could ripple through the financial system.

"It's a toxic drug and nobody knows how bad it's going to be," said Paul Miller, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, who was among the first to sound alarm bells in the residential market.

Unlike home mortgages, businesses don't pay their loans over 30 years. Commercial mortgages are usually written for five, seven or 10 years with big payments due at the end. About $20 billion will be due next year, covering everything from office and condo complexes to hotels and malls." source

look out for banks that have a lot of those loans in their portofolio and look also at shops that are closing branches or banks and other service companies that are laying off staff massively. If you find those things on a matrix than you can focus your research on these .... Maybe for this reason the US FDIC has said that 171 banks and financial institutions are in big trouble according to them. For the moment they count that 14% off them will go bust (that's around 25 for sure)

Also interesting for Belgians to see how the FISA (Kredietbank US) will be influenced by this news. Because if also the commercial mortages become toxic....