Want something else to worry about? Read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in this morning’s Telegraph. This caught my eye: “8,000 unregulated hedge funds with $1.3 trillion at hand, and derivative contracts now worth $370 trillion.”

370 trillion? I guess pretty soon the word ”quadrillion” will be a vocabulary item in the daily work of financial journalists.

(Though that number should be taken with a big pinch of salt. I spent a fair chunk of my time on Wall St arguing about the correct way to price exotic derivatives for reporting purposes. The arguments usually ended with an MD saying: “Oh, just come up with some damn number the auditors will accept.”)