Trillion Dollar Ticking Derivatives Time Bomb to Explode Under Bankrupt Banks

Companies / Credit Crisis 2009
Oct 29, 2009 - 08:44 AM

By: Graham_Summers

At Gains, Pains, & Capital I’ve been warning about the Trillion Dollar Ticking Time Bomb of derivatives for months now. As a brief recap, let’s consider the following:

The current notional value of derivatives on US commercial banks’ balance sheets is $203 trillion.

97% of these ($196 trillion) sit on FIVE banks’ balance sheets (more on this shortly)

If even 1% of this $203 trillion is “at riskâ€