PAUL B. FARRELL, CBSMarketwatch

a massive new derivatives bubble is driving the domestic and global economies, a bubble that continues growing today parallel with the subprime-credit meltdown triggering a bear-recession.
Data on the five-fold growth of derivatives to $516 trillion in five years comes from the most recent survey by the Bank of International Settlements, the world's clearinghouse for central banks in Basel, Switzerland. The BIS is like the cashier's window at a racetrack or casino, where you'd place a bet or cash in chips, except on a massive scale: BIS is where the U.S. settles trade imbalances with Saudi Arabia for all that oil we guzzle and gives China IOUs for the tainted drugs and lead-based toys we buy.
To grasp how significant this five-fold bubble increase is, let's put that $516 trillion in the context of some other domestic and international monetary data:

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U.S. annual gross domestic product is about $15 trillion
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U.S. money supply is also about $15 trillion
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Current proposed U.S. federal budget is $3 trillion
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U.S. government's maximum legal debt is $9 trillion
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U.S. mutual fund companies manage about $12 trillion
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World's GDPs for all nations is approximately $50 trillion
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Unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits $50 trillion to $65 trillion
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Total value of the world's real estate is estimated at about $75 trillion
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Total value of world's stock and bond markets is more than $100 trillion
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BIS valuation of world's derivatives back in 2002 was about $100 trillion
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BIS 2007 valuation of the world's derivatives is now a whopping $516 trillion