Two More Important Numbers To Understand

The blog, Economic Collapse, has a long list of amazing facts, but here are two that I think are closely connected. What do you think?

1)The richest fifty members of the Senate have a combined new worth of $1.4 Billion. To see what a billion $100 bills actually looks like, go to Section One of The Great Recession Conspiracy.

2) Derivatives have absolutely no value backing them up. They are side bets on somebody else's actions. They are the most profitable "work" of investment banks.

The derivative business is conducted in private and nobody keeps a total count, but the best estimates are that the total value of derivatives in place right now is somewhere between $600 Billion and $1.5 Quadrillion.

To put that into perspective:

The total U.S. GDP this year is $14 Trillion.
All it took to bring down AIG was $18 Billion in derivatives.

The next time the world economy starts to unravel, there will not be enough money in all the world to save us.

But that is O.K. since all the Wall Street bankers have told us to trust them because they would never let such a thing happen.

How does that work for you??