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Imagine you walked into a Las Vegas casino and you brought all the money you had, let’s say $1 million, and the casino gave you $154 million to gamble with. How smart do you think that would be for that casino? Well, right now Goldman Sachs Bank USA has 154 times their assets in total gross derivatives!
A number of other giant financial banks are also leveraging up using credit default swaps and similar derivative contracts:
Credit default swaps were at the heart of the financial crisis in 2008 that brought down AIG. The insurance giant AIG had been selling credit default swaps for years, collecting tiny premiums, confident that the mortgage market wouldn’t collapse, and that they’d never have to pay out a claim.