How bad is the credit crisis Part 2

Warren Buffet has come to my aid (how very fitting)

The conclusion he was at in 2002 was that

"derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction"

I thought the numbers in the last post were big - this just blows them away.The total value of all the derivatives in the market is $500 trillion
or
500,000 bn
 or

200 times all the tax raised in the US in 2007
or

38 times US GDP

or 

9 times the Global GDP   (55,000bn)

Scary numbers when you start to read what derivatives are and how they work.

There is a good article on wikipeadia on this

Once you understand how they work in practice it starts to look like  great big pyramid scheme. Its a house of cards what it does is amplify any problem massively. The spark that set fire to the trillion dollar crisis was 200 million bad loans and because of all of these derivatives based on these 200 billions can magnify into trillions of dollars in losses. 

I think I now understand how this whole thing has come about and how bad it will be.

The answer to my origonal question 

"How bad is the credit crisis"

• Very bad 
  
• Very high inflation
• Not sure on when it will get really bad though

 I am unsure of how to deal with it. I have holdings in cash and shares (although most of mine were bought after the first large dip and are holding quite well). I also ave other investments and am continuing to contribute to my superannuation (which is currently 100% cash). The question is ...

Now I think I can see the future how do I use this information to assist me in my financial planning over the next 5-10 years?

If anyone has some good ideas I would love to hear from you

Reference

The World and US GDP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

The value of derivatives

http://www.bis.org/statistics/derstats.htm