How banks play Russian Roulette with our financial security

(Part 4 of a series)
The next major threat to Canadian and international financial systems is very likely to come from reckless investors gambling with derivatives, the dangerous betting vehicles that contributed to the 2008 collapse of financial services firm Lehman Brothers and the start of the Great Recession.

Used properly, simple derivatives (literally: a financial asset that "derives" its value from that of an underlying asset) can reduce the risk of some financial transactions. To use a simple example, they can help bakers guarantee what price they’ll have to pay for wheat two years from now. (Click here for an explanation on how derivatives work.)

But big-money gamblers can invest in any of a number of highly risky, extremely complicated kinds of derivatives for purely speculative purposes. When this happens, derivatives are just a form of very dangerous, virtually no-limit, betting.

The problem is that derivatives can blow up!

The problem is that derivatives can blow up. Two former JPMorgan Chase employees are facing criminal charges related to a derivatives trading scandal last year in London that cost the bank $6.2 billion -- enough money to run the City of Vancouver for more than five years. The traders also tried to hide losses from investors and federal regulators.

Cocky JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon dismissed  its $6.2-billion loss as "a complete tempest in a teapot." Nonetheless, the image of the bank has suffered in the wake of the outrageous caper.

Hair-trigger derivatives, along with laissez-faire deregulation, greed, and poor homeownership policies in the United States, caused the 2008 economic crisis.