OCC Derivatives Data : $231 trillion

Things appear to be going badly for the banks too. According to the latest quarterly report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities in the US banking sector from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) which monitors activity in the US banking industry, "the notional amount of derivatives held by insured U.S. commercial banks fell $17 trillion from the third quarter of 2011, to $231 trillion".

The full report, which can be downloaded here makes for eye-watering reading.  Here is table 1 which lists the gory details for the 25 largest US banks.

With over $70 trillion of derivatives, and total assets of over $1.8 trillion, something tells me that J.P. Morgan will not be too worried by the recent admission that one of their traders in their London office managed to lose the bank $2 billion. A flea bite.

When I think of all that money being used for pointless speculation, I am more and more convinced that it is high time that we took the money creation monopoly away from the commercial banks and transfered it to central banks where the money creation mechanism can be used for the good of humanity.