Lenders, investors vulnerable

The Detroit automakers owe more than $100 billion to their bankers and bondholders, and Wall Street is starting to wonder how much of that will be paid back.

With Congress balking at a rescue for the auto industry, and Chrysler and General Motors warning they could face bankruptcy without one, investors worry about financial companies' exposure to the Big Three, as well as to suppliers and dealers.

Over the past three years, as the auto industry's fortunes darkened, big banks like Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase helped the companies sell more than $56 billion of new debt securities, according to Dealogic.

Most of those securities were bought by investors such as insurers, pension funds and hedge funds, many of which have been staggered by losses on other investments.

That figure does not include $47 billion of risky loans made to various affiliates of Chrysler, Ford and GM that are backed by auto leases and car loans to individual car buyers, some of whom are struggling to pay their own bills as the economy craters.

Many of these auto bonds and loans have plummeted in value as things have gone from bad to worse.

A $7 billion term loan that Ford issued in 2006, for instance, was trading for 32 cents on the dollar late last week in the secondary, or resale, market.

But businesses and ordinary people all the way down the automotive food chain are shouldering a lot of debt, too. That includes autoworkers, but also everyone from makers of car stereos to dealerships to parts suppliers, as well as the people who work for those companies.

Many of these borrowers could run into trouble if the automakers implode.