<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class=""><b class="">Russian Roulette: Taxpayers Could Be on the Hook for Trillions in Oil Derivatives<br class=""></b><b class="">By Ellen Brown</b></span><div class=""><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">A fraction, but a critical fraction, as it included the banks’ bets on commodities. Five percent of $280 trillion is $14 trillion in derivatives exposure – close to the size of the existing federal debt. </span><a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/plummeting-oil-prices-destroy-banks-holding-trillions-commodity-derivatives" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">And as financial blogger Michael Snyder points out</a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class="">, $3.9 trillion of this speculation is on the price of commodities.</span><font face="Times New Roman" class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></font><div class=""><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class=""><b class="">Full story here: </b></span><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';" class=""><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40528.htm" class="">www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40528.htm</a></b></div><div class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="5" class=""><br class=""></font></div></div></body></html>