The leveraged loan market seems to be in danger of seizing up — largely because the investors who buy the paper issued by Collateralized Debt Obligations — are suddenly unwilling to do so.

An early victim is Expedia.com, the travel service controlled by Barry Diller. It announced today that it is scaling back its share buyback. Now it will buy 25 million shares, about 8 percent of the outstanding shares. It was tendering for up to 116.7 million shares. The price will be $27.50 to $30.

The share price plunged $2.54 to $26.85 in early trading. That means the price will be at the bottom of the range, and the offering is likely to be oversubscribed.

“While we remain confident in Expedia’s long-term prospects and will continue to be net buyers of our shares, the terms available to us in the current debt market environment were simply unacceptable,” Mr. Diller said.

“The magnitude of today’s virtually default-free unraveling is without precedent in the 20-year history of the modern leveraged loan market,” Standard & Poor’s Leveraged Commentary and Data department said today.

It is not only the C.D.O. buyers who have fled. S.&P. says the hedge funds that were providing money to leveraged loans are now out of the market — or trying to sell what they have.

There are worse things than not being able to repurchase shares. We’ll see who gets left with paper from deals that began but could not be completed.