USA government debt ceiling

[Georgi Guninski]

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 01:31:26PM +0200, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
> > http://english.pravda.ru/business/finance/08-10-2015/132278-us_treasury_swap-0/
> > >
> > > "There are $630 trillion in outstanding derivatives globally according
> > > to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland. That
> > > is, about $630 trillion in bets placed on about $100 trillion in
> > > stocks and bonds."
> > >
> >
> > Interesting (but doesn't seem citable reference to me).
> >
> > How the financial market is still working?
> >
> > And how such bets survived so far?
> 
> 
> Counting derivatives as debt is definitely 100% misguided. They're also

Maybe "Counting derivatives as debt" is indeed not correct.

But gambling with something you don't have is serious potential debt
problem.

Especially, as you note, if the shit is amplified (which is likely in a
ponzi scheme like this).

Somewhat related (I don't claim it is the same):

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barings_Bank&oldid=684442660
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The bank collapsed in 1995 after suffering losses of £827 million ($1.3
billion) resulting from poor speculative investments, primarily in
futures contracts, conducted by an employee named Nick Leeson working at
its office in Singapore.
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