[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Breeze: Did you read what you wrote about the derivatives market being only a few tens of trillions of dollars? You do realize the ENTIRE U.S. GDP clocks in at around $14.5Trn, right?
[/quote]

Did you read what I wrote? I said that the value of STOCKS (as in the stock market; as in the DJIA or the S&P or the Nikkei) is only worth a few tens of trillions. So obviously the stock market does not believe that these derivatives are worth anything near $600 trillion.

GDP is essentially a measure of revenue, not net income. Net income may be negative on that GDP number as the value of goods may be dropping below the cost of production. Do you value companies based on their revenues or their net incomes?