TEN banks slipped out from under the TARP last week, striking deals with the Treasury Department to repay taxpayer money they received last fall. Many bailout-weary investors and taxpayers welcomed this sign that government intervention in the financial sector may finally be receding.

It has been a long slog through the credit morass, and investors are understandably eager to think they are emerging onto higher ground. Still, the bad debt that was amassed by consumers and companies in recent years hasn’t been fully purged, even with the help of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. And the debt on financial companies’ balance sheets must do a lot more shrinking before we can move on from this ugly chapter in financial history.

To get a fix on how much work remains to be done, consider the substantial amount of short-term debt coming due at financial companies in the next year or two. As you absorb these figures, keep in mind that many of the entities that bought this debt when it was issued aren’t around now  they’ve either left the market or are gone, casualties of the crisis.

As a result, they’re not around to step up and buy the debt again. So issuers can’t roll it over. They’ll be forced to buy back the debt, at a time when they’re already wallowing in other forms of troublesome debt and short on liquidity.