Sinking Feeling for Citi, JPMorgan

But, hedged or not, "banks are working with their working capital," says Stracke. "They can't be buy-and-hold investors."

Last week, the brokerage sector suffered losses amid news of the true losses incurred by two Bear Stearns hedge funds. Punk Ziegel analyst Richard Bove said the debt market has grown too fast, exposing firms to risks that are both huge and difficult to calculate.

So, for the private-equity sponsors and the sellers involved in Chrysler and Boots, the deal is done, and they can get back to business. For the banks taking on the debt, they now have $20 billion of speculative-grade debt on their balance sheets. And for the leveraged loan market, which has already seen deals postponed and banks hanging on to extra paper, it means those securities will one day get dropped onto the market, most likely at a huge discount to the price at which the banks originally bought them.

"There is a sense that there is a forced seller out there," says Stracke.

So, if and when the banks sell all the loans they're collecting, the discount will surely drag down prices in the rest of the loan market, too.

Chrysler and Boots aren't the first and they're unlikely to be the last loans to get stuck at the banks, either. Citigroup and JPMorgan made a point on their recent earnings conference calls to note that they expect their revenues will be somewhat stifled in the third quarter from being stuck with these loan commitments.