OK. This statistic refers to notional value. Adding up notional values makes as much sense as adding apples, oranges, yen and dollars. Actually it makes less se

OK. This statistic refers to notional value. Adding up notional values makes as much sense as adding apples, oranges, yen and dollars. Actually it makes less sense than that. You cannot understand a bank's book without access to the individual line items. If you have the line items, you have everything. Without that you have to rely on high level financial statements and the opinions of bank examiners or other regulators. And as Lehman, Madoff, Enron and other cases show, it means you have nothing. It is time for banks, who operate a public trust, to offer continuous (lagged) line item disclosure to enable crowdsourcing of risk analysis. The markets are running on the informational equivalent of fumes. No wonder they sputter. I call this Real Transparency. It is no more intrusive than the fact that I can find out how much you paid for your house and how much you borrowed to buy it. Information like this is necessary for the functioning of a proper market and price system. These are worth preserving more than the privileges of banks. Real Transparency is the kind of regulatory reform that would make a difference. Not the kind which gives power hungry regulators more information to ignore.