 In the early 1990s, a number of central banks around the world began to survey the amount of derivative market activity and report the results to the Bank for International Settlements.In the past few years, the number and types of financial derivatives have grown enormously.In November 2007, commenting on the financial crisis sparked by the subprime mortgage collapse in the United States, Doug Noland's "Credit Bubble Bulletin", on Asia Times Online, noted,

The scale of the Credit "insurance" problem is astounding.