Mungkin tidak ada yang lebih menggambarkan keterlaluan sistem kapitalis yang tak terkendali selain pasar derivatif. Warren Buffett, salah satu investor terkaya di dunia dan tokoh utama dana investasi Berkshire Hathaway senilai $196 miliar, terkenal menyebut derivatif sebagai "senjata finansial pemusnah massal". Dalam laporan tahunan Berkshire Hathaway kepada para pemegang saham pada tahun 2002, ia mengatakan, "Kecuali kontrak derivatif dijaminkan atau dijamin, nilai akhirnya juga bergantung pada kelayakan kredit pihak-pihak lawannya. Sementara itu, sebelum kontrak diselesaikan, pihak-pihak tersebut mencatat keuntungan dan kerugian, yang sering kali sangat besar, dalam laporan laba berjalan mereka tanpa sepeser pun uang berpindah tangan. Ragam kontrak derivatif hanya dibatasi oleh imajinasi manusia (atau kadang-kadang, begitulah kelihatannya, orang-orang gila)". Buffett berbicara berdasarkan pengalaman langsung, setelah membeli sebuah perusahaan asuransi kecil di AS yang memiliki portofolio derivatif dalam pembukuannya. Setelah menyatakan keraguan atas penilaiannya yang tampaknya digelembungkan, Buffett memerintahkan agar portofolio tersebut dilikuidasi. Setelah menanggung kerugian beberapa juta dolar dan menghadapi lebih dari 670 hubungan dengan pihak lawan (institusi di sisi lain transaksi), pekerjaan itu akhirnya selesai.

Perhaps nothing characterises better the excesses of a capitalist system out of control than the Derivatives market. Warren Buffett one of the wealthiest investors in the world and doyen of Berkshire Hathaway’s $196 billion investment fund famously described derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”. In Berkshire Hathaway's annual report to shareholders in 2002, he said, “Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counterparties to them. In the meantime, though, before a contract is settled, the counterparties record profits and losses - often huge in amount - in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen)”. Buffett was speaking from first hand experience having bought a small US Insurance company which had a derivatives portfolio on its books. After expressing scepticism over its seemingly inflated valuation, Buffett ordered the portfolio to be liquidated. After several million dollars of losses and wading through over 670 counterparty (the institution on the other side of the transaction) relationships the job was done.

Pasar derivatif telah berkembang hampir secara eksponensial selama 10 tahun terakhir dan kini diperkirakan berukuran antara $500 triliun dan $1.000 triliun (satu kuadriliun). Angka ini jauh melampaui ekonomi "riil", yang diperkirakan bernilai $50 triliun di seluruh dunia. Sebagian besar pasar derivatif tidak diatur dan ditandai oleh pasar OTC (over the counter), yang secara efektif dikelola oleh pihak-pihak yang berkontrak dalam transaksi tersebut, terutama bank, perusahaan investasi, dana lindung nilai (hedge fund), serta nasabah mereka yang meliputi badan-badan kota, dewan daerah, dana pensiun, dan individu kaya. Menurut Bank for International Settlements, per Desember 2007 pasar OTC bernilai $596 triliun dalam nilai nosional. Derivatif pada dasarnya adalah instrumen keuangan yang nilainya bergantung pada nilai instrumen keuangan yang mendasarinya. Derivatif merupakan kontrak yang bergantung pada kinerja atau pergerakan harga aset, bukan transaksi yang melibatkan aset itu sendiri, dan mencakup komoditas, ekuitas, hipotek, pinjaman real estat, obligasi, suku bunga, nilai tukar, atau indeks (indeks pasar saham, indeks harga konsumen, dan sebagainya). Derivatif meliputi futures, forward, opsi, dan swap.

The derivatives market has grown almost exponentially over the past 10 years and is now estimated at between $500 trillion and $1,000 trillion (a quadrillion) in size. A level that dwarfs the “real” economy which is estimated at $50 trillion worldwide. Most of the derivatives market is un-regulated and is characterised by the OTC (over the counter) market which is effectively managed by contracting parties to the transactions, mostly banks, investment firms, hedge funds and their customers which include municipal bodies, councils, pension funds and wealthy individuals. According to the Bank for International Settlements as of December 2007 the OTC market was worth $596 trillion in notional value. Derivatives are in essence financial instruments whose value depends on the value of underlying financial instruments. They are contracts which depend on the performance or movement in prices of assets rather than transactions involving the actual assets themselves, and include commodities, equities, mortgages, real estate loans, bonds, interest rates, exchange rates, or indices (stock market indexes, consumer price index, etc.). Derivatives include futures, forwards, options and swaps.

Penggunaan derivatif yang paling sering dipublikasikan adalah untuk mengurangi risiko. Namun pada kenyataannya, karena sifat derivatif yang dikembangkan dan keterputusannya dari dunia nyata, skalanya yang sangat besar, serta fakta bahwa derivatif dipegang oleh begitu banyak lembaga melalui hubungan kontraparti yang rumit, patut dipertanyakan apakah derivatif benar-benar mencapai sesuatu selain menjadi sarana perjudian yang sangat terkendali dalam skala yang benar-benar bencana. Untuk memperjelas rincian transaksi ini, tiga bentuk derivatif yang populer, yaitu CDO, Credit Default Swap, dan Currency Swap, disajikan dalam Lampiran makalah ini.

The main publicised use for derivatives is to reduce risk. But in fact due to the nature of the derivatives developed and their disconnect from the real world, their sheer scale, and the fact that they are held by such a multitude of institutions via complex counterparty relations, it is questionable as to whether they are achieving anything other than a highly tuned means to gamble on a simply catastrophic scale. To amplify on to the detail of these transactions three popular forms of derivatives; CDOs, Credit Default Swaps and Currency Swaps are presented in the Appendix of this paper.