Covering Gambling Debts

Look at this OCC website.  If you look at the reports on the web site, you can see several things.  The first is that as of the third quarter of 2009, the banks had exercised a total of 204 trillion dollars worth of derivatives.  Say what?  How can the banks, mostly JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America have exercised that much in derivative contracts?  The second is that these banks continued to play the derivative game that got them into trouble in the first place requiring the US taxpayer to bail them out.  Third, their risk to capital ratio is greater than 1, with Goldman Sachs at 8.5.

Now take a look at the TARP legislation.  Under the subsection of Crisis Management, there is a provision to facilitate a blank check from the government to cover the next crisis that they see coming.  (Okay, it is only $4 trillion dollars, almost 2x last year's tax receipts.) 

When the next banking crisis hits, I want to see the banks go under.  If they don't it will be the biggest bank robbery in world history.