In case you have not heard the news, China has announced that it will be instructing its state-owned enterprises to potentially default on their derivatives contracts. As I have written extensively in the past, the derivatives market is a massive time bomb just waiting to go off. China's latest move may be the match that lights the fuse.

All told, US Commercial banks own $202 trillion in derivatives in notional value. To put that number into perspective, it's roughly four times the global GDP. And 96% of this exposure sits on five banks' balance sheets. I've shown the below chart before, but it's worth re-visiting (chart is denominated in TRILLIONS).

Of course, not ALL of the $202 trillion these guys own is "at risk." As their name implies, derivatives are "derived" from underlying assets (homes, debt, etc). The actual "at risk" money can be far FAR smaller than the "notional" value of derivatives outstanding.

However, when you're talking about $200+ trillion, even a marginal amount of "at risk" money can mean ENORMOUS losses. Consider, if 1% of that $200 trillion were at risk, you're talking about $2 trillion in capital. Now, if even 10% of those bets go bad, you're talking about $200 billion in losses.

Now consider that, combined, the top five banks (JP Morgan, Goldman, BofA, Citi, and HSBC) have roughly $700 billion in equity.

And that's it only 1% of the derivatives outstanding are actually "at risk." Given the over-leveraged, stupid plays Wall Street made on mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps (both investments that had SOME degree of oversight, even if it were paltry), as well as the fact that derivatives are COMPLETELY unregulated, I would argue it's quite possible that as much as 5% or even 10% of the derivatives outstanding could be "at risk."

In that case, we're talking about $10-$20 trillion in "at risk" capital. If even 10% of these bets go wrong, you've wiped out ALL the equity at all five banks AND THEN SOME.

As I mentioned just now (and before many times), the primary problem with derivatives is that they are COMPLETELY TOTALLY unregulated. NO ONE has any idea what's "at risk" or who owns what or who's betting against who.

But we may be about to find out.

I've detailed the ongoing conflict between China and the US regarding monetary policies on these pages before. The brief overview is that China owns $800+ billion (by some accounts $1.3 trillion or more) of our Treasuries (debt) and is not too happy about Ben Bernanke and other US monetary figures throwing trillions around in bailouts and emergency measures to counteract the financial crisis.

China has fired a couple of "warning" shots already, mainly in the form of various Chinese diplomats expressing concern and frustration with the US's monetary policies. They even flew China's Vice Premiere to an unscheduled talk with US monetary officials back in July.

No one knows what was said during the talks, but given that Ben Bernanke is extended Quantitative Easing to October and has shown little signs of reversing his current "anti-dollar" policies, it's pretty clear China didn't get what they wanted.

I've often wondered what China would do if push came to shove.