Politics and Money

[properlynumb]

There's a lot of welfare going on out there.
There's people who get government checks and then there's the banksters who take wealth away from the population.
Here's a look at where the Big Bucks are-----
('notional amounts' is dollar value that is leveraged with a smaller derivative cost)

OCC’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities
Third Quarter 2011
Executive Summary
Insured U.S. commercial banks reported trading revenues of $13.1 billion in the third quarter, 78% higher than in the second quarter, and 214% higher than $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2010. Revenues in the third quarter were a record, but overstate actual trading performance due to the inclusion of a significant amount of revenues that were unrelated to core trading activities.

Trading risk exposure, as measured by Value-at-Risk (VaR), decreased in the third quarter as dealers actively reduced risk in the face of increasing global financial risks. Aggregate average VaR at the 5 largest trading companies declined 6.1% from the second quarter to $673 million. VaR in the third quarter 2011 was 8.8% lower than a year ago.

Credit exposure from derivatives increased sharply in the third quarter. Net current credit exposure increased 39%, or $141 billion, to $504 billion, due to declining interest rates.

The notional amount of derivatives held by insured U.S. commercial banks decreased $1.4 trillion, or 0.6%, from the second quarter of 2011 to $248 trillion. Notional derivatives are 5.7% higher than at the same time last year.

Derivative contracts remain concentrated in interest rate products, which comprise 82% of total derivative notional amounts. Credit derivatives, which represent 6.3% of total derivatives notionals, rose 3% to $15.7 trillion.
http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivatives/dq311.pdf