Thanks for this Andrew it does help although the paper trail as you say does make one dizzy. My main point of interest and indignation remains though that behind all the debt and interbank circuitous relationships lies the notion of what is the extent of the stuff backing this all up. there is existing stuff our stock of tools , there is also a known future potential for outputs from productive stuff the things we eat and the fuel that keeps us warm and the buildings that keep a roof over our head. Futures contracts to hedge against risk and mutualise it makes perfect sense and to this extent I can see that there are potentially markets that do not relate to the real stuff but augment the people adding their expertise and sweat to produce future potential in these enterprises and endeavours shit will happen and a safety net will be sought that has gone on as far as we know ever since humans formed into societies. Banks have gone well beyond the stuff there is derivatives markets perhaps being the most extreme example of Value going way beyond any useful reckoning of what useful stuff is available to back up issuing an IOU to get some sort of enterprise underway. Banking seems unproductive and in a sense failing government seems unproductive why is it then that these two fairly useless in practical terms are issuing the metric by which those engaged in doing real stuff rely on to facilitate their exchanges even to the extent that the agencies charged with producing the tokens so clearly have their eye off the ball from the real practical stuff that feeds clothes and keeps us warm and builds our shelter and produces tools to create further potential for further stuff. Real stuff earned by sweat and taking risk is the point that Caleb makes about entrepreneurs creating wealth, Bankers and Politicians are neither of these things and their custodianship of peoples savings from doing real things makes up a minuscule fraction of the debt they do create and profit from. I just want to know how much of their own real stuff that they do not wish to lose goes into the risk decisions bankers make at there geo political levels, my intuition is telling me its a hell of a lot less than would leave us feeling comfortable, by Talebs argument it would be nothing at all by the extent of failure we witness we can certainly intuit that it is clearly not enough. As a believer in reasoned argument though I would appreciate Taleb or someone else producing their analysis of exactly how much skin these Guys mostly guys but I see its a female Goldman Banker that helped create the right set of numbers for Greece to get into the EURO in the first place. Mostly guys though Merkel and Lagarde excepted in the extant Greek question. This is really in the nature of a how or more precisely how much question than a how does it work after the initial how of what happens when the balances are placed in the various balance sheets. With Central bank settlements at the international bank of settlements I understand that the final basis of printed money is Dollars even though there are now more EUROS than Dollars but regardless of physical cash and coin and even from that broader measures of money we still get back to the real stuff work that people expect to be paid for and produce from that work that is traded for other real work and time , its this time which is our lives that people equate with the value of money and debt in its current abundance does not have the same value as our finite time when we are alive. SO the question remains open how much Skin do these guys really have in the game and is it so little that we might conclude that they have been taking the piss rather?