Frozen assets

Ace of Spades:

Currently these assets are temporarily worthless as no one will buy them.

Except Uncle Sam. How come when I'm temporarily worthless, I can't get the government to bail me out?

"Hello, Mr. President? We're in the midst of a crisis that threatens the collapse of the market economy as we know it. I'm behind on my car payment, as well as my cable bill, and if I don't pay up ... well, sir, obviously this could be the first domino that tips the entire global financial structure into a complete meltdown. So what I need is about $700 billion . . . Hello? hello?"

Some institutions are "too big to fail." On the other hand, I'm "too small to succeed."