Tuesday, September 27, 2011

A Trillion Here, A Trillion There

The world of derivatives does not deal in small amounts of money. Looking at the top 25 commercial banks, they have $250 trillion in derivatives outstanding. And, this $250 trillion is largely held by 4 banks; the banks with 96% of the $250 market are JP Morgan, Citicorp, BofA and Goldman Sachs. In the latest quarter they increased their holdings of these truly scary securities by $5 trillion.

If one of these banks fail - let's say BofA with $53 trillion in derivatives - you might want to move to your bomb shelter as systemic collapse will be upon us. 

It's good that Tim is on the case. He will prevent anything bad from happening.

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