So not out of the woods yet

Do not believe them when they tell you its getting better, it's not.

Strange, Stranger, Opaque

I recently received an Email from John Hempton at the Bronte Capital Blog. John is writing Barclays - strange, stranger and truly opaque. I have not had time to go through all of his analysis but these snips caught my eye.
In four years our derivative exposure (total face) has gone from 5.9 trillion pounds to 29.2 trillion pounds. Our credit derivative exposures have gone from 43 billion pounds to 2.4 trillion pounds.

It is not just the derivatives that they grew. The on balance sheet exposures grew to astronomical size too.