Jerome Corsi explains derivatives thusly :
One of the original ideas behind derivatives was the realization that professional money managers, including those in banks, investment companies and hedge funds, needed to make bets to offset the possibility of taking losses.
A popular form of derivative contracts was developed to permit one money manager to “swap” a stream of variable interest payments with another money manager for a stream of fixed interest payments.
The idea was to use derivative bets on interest rates to “hedge” or balance off the risks taken on interest-rate investments owned in the underlying portfolio.
If an institutional investment manager held $100 million in fixed-rate bonds, for example, to hedge the risk, should interest rates rise or fall in a manner different than projections, a purchase of a $100 million variable interest rate derivative could be constructed to cover the risk.
Whichever way interest rates went, one side to the swap might win and the other might lose.
The money manager losing the bet could expect to get paid on the derivative to compensate for some or all of the losses.
In the strong stock and mortgage markets experienced beginning in the historically low 1-percent interest rate environments of 2003 through 2004, the number of hedge funds soared, just as the volume of derivative contracts soared from a mere $300 trillion in 2005 to the more than $600 trillion today.
Sounds similar to a bookie balancing his bets so he wins anyway on his 10% fee.