In What Order will Asset Values Fail in the Next Financial Crisis? As posted to LesJones.com on September 9, 2009 Reproduced from the article: "Word of the Day: Exter's Inverted Pyramid of Assets" John Exter’s inverted pyramid. The idea is that things high on the pyramid are derivatives of asset classes further down the pyramid. From FOFOA. Note that in FOFOA’s expanded version of Exter’s inverted pyramid there are all sorts of derivatives at the top of the inverse pyramid. Those derivatives were wildly inflated and at one pointed passed the one quadrillion mark, which is greater than the value of all physical, privately-owned assets on Earth.  How is that possible? It’s possible because derivatives and paper markets are often larger than the underlying physical markets. In a nutshell, the...