but I am concerned that he throws out the $600 trillion derivative number, calling them 'credit derivatives' but waits seven pages to differentiate Credit Default Swaps.

He doesn't establish a number on CDS. I doubt anyone knows for sure since they are unregulated but the number has been put at $50-60 trillion.

He waits ten pages to clarify the $600 trillion number as including benign instruments.

Not all derivatives are going bust and not all CDS will be triggered. Here Gretchen Morgenson puts the non offset CDS number at $15 trillion. That would be on top of the broken CDOs and enough to swamp our canoe but not $600 trillion. Bloomberg puts the worldwide derivative market at $683 trillion and I would think this would include every sort of futures contract there is.

This doesn't say that Lieber has got it wrong but he does himself a disservice by not taking greater care with these numbers.

Here is I comment I made about his article BEFORE I read it carefully. I link some other sources on these numbers.

I still think the article tends to be problematic because of this lack of clarity.

Let us hope his assessment of Holder's resume is incorrect as he states it thus:

He doesn't exactly have the sort of résumé that startles robber barons.

Let us hope the robber barons ARE startled.

And that the public comes understand what James Lieber meant when he said:

As staggering as the Madoff meltdown was, it had a refreshing side—the funds
were frozen. In the bailout, on the other hand, the government often seems to be completing the scam by quietly passing the proceeds to counterparties.

The Government is quietly completing the scam!

That is what I said from day one.