The collateral damage from the housing market is already baked in the cake: Expect a continued slump in residential construction activity and employment, lower house prices that will force more subprime lenders to the wall and put strains on the most leveraged parts of the financial system and a slowdown in consumption expenditures.
Analysts worry that some of the money going into these products has been used to make high-interest loans to risky private businesses shunned by the banks themselves, a phenomenon critics say could exaggerate loan and investment losses in China's financial system if an economic slowdown led to widespread defaults.