Sizing and categorizing the problem

Maybe this is neither here nor there, but I'm interested in understanding how much of the crisis is about the failed mortgages themselves and how much is about making bad bets about the mortgages (the derivatives).

Devilstower writing at dKos has numbers (but I don't know where s/he got them, unless it's all from the Jt Center for Housing that's cited) that show that the mortages currently in default amount to $111 billion. Extrapolating for expected defaults (X3) and then subtracting for remaining value (50%) in the properties (admittedly making assumptions through these calculations), s/he gets to $175 billion. To provide a sense of scale for that number, s/he also notes that Wall Street payed out $120 billion in bonuses alone between 2000 and 2006. In other words, the defaulted mortgages themselves are not so big a loss that the economy can't absorb it.

Further, his numbers suggest that the lion's share of the requested $700 billion is attributable to the derivatives, and not to people who defaulted on their mortgages.