Just imagine the following scenario. I go to Las Vegas and I place a million dollar bet on who will win the Super Bowl this year. If I am correct, I keep all of the winnings. If I lose, federal law requires you to bail me out and give me the million dollars that I just lost. Does that sound fair? Of course not! In fact, it is utter insanity. But through their influence in Congress, this is exactly what the big Wall Street banks are attempting to pull off. And according to the Huffington Post, there is a very good chance that this provision will be in the final bill that will soon be voted on… And commodity derivatives are just part of the story. Over the past couple of decades, Wall Street has been transformed into the largest casino in the history of the world. At this point, the amounts of money that these “too big to fail” banks are potentially on the hook for are absolutely mind blowing. As you read this, there are five Wall Street banks that each have more than 40 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives. The following numbers come from the OCC’s most recent quarterly report (see Table 2)… JPMorgan Chase Total Assets: $2,520,336,000,000 (about 2.5 trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $68,326,075,000,000 (more than 68 trillion dollars) Citibank Total Assets: $1,909,715,000,000 (slightly more than 1.9 trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $61,753,462,000,000 (more than 61 trillion dollars) Goldman Sachs Total Assets: $860,008,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $57,695,156,000,000 (more than 57 trillion dollars) Bank Of America Total Assets: $2,172,001,000,000 (a bit more than 2.1 trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $55,472,434,000,000 (more than 55 trillion dollars) Morgan Stanley Total Assets: $826,568,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars) Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,134,518,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 17:46:52 +0000
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