The world consumes 85 million barrels of oil per day, but it’s not uncommon to trade 1 billion barrels per day on the various commodities exchanges… So you’ve got 12 paper barrels trading for every physical barrel… up to a third of all notes for mortgage-backed securities may have been “misplaced or lost” — meaning they’re backed by IOUs instead of actual mortgages.

Wall Street’s Naked Swindle from Rolling Stone