Battipaglia also anticipates roughly a five-year workout program for the troubled assets.

FORBES: Intelligent Investing Panel

Kramer gave high scores to JPMorgan for marking down its troubled assets right away and having good risk management and leadership.

FORBES: Intelligent Investing Panel

Ross has risen up our list of the World's Richest People in recent years by buying up assets in troubled companies, slashing costs and then selling for big profits.

FORBES: Billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross

"One continuing uncertainty is whether the troubled assets that remain on bank balance sheets can again become the trigger for instability, " the report says.

FORBES: Intelligent Investing Panel

This is especially true for the banking systems in the troubled Eurozone periphery, whose banks are loaded up with impaired assets.

FORBES: Cyprus, Anything But Unique and Why to Worry

The financial institutions with assets that they could not price can now maintain that the mere existence of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) means that there is a potential market for the securities that they could not sell previously.

FORBES: Briefing Book: A. Michael Lipper

The original idea was for the government to buy up bad mortgages and other assets and to take them off the hands of troubled banks.

NPR: Treasury Secretary Redefines Bailout

The outlines of the plan call for the creation of either a branch of the Treasury Department or an independent agency to buy or take on troubled assets, with the goal of either selling them at a profit later or working them off.

FORBES: Magazine Article