Yes, you're left high-and-dry if your counterparty goes bust, and since this would be such a cataclysmic event in the case of Deutsche Bank, the authorities wou

Yes, you're left high-and-dry if your counterparty goes bust, and since this would be such a cataclysmic event in the case of Deutsche Bank, the authorities would be forced to step in (at ginormous cost) to prevent it. It's worth noting that on derivatives, your loss if your counterparty goes bust is not the notional. It's a fraction of the notional. But even a small fraction of 65 trillion is a very, very large number. In fact the number in DBK's case is so large that it might endanger the credibility of the authorities themselves.