“We got a very shocking sense of the staggering numbers involved in the existential, crippling European crisis earlier today when Norwegian energy giant Equinor echoed what Zoltan Pozsar said in March, warning that ‘European energy trading risks grinding to a halt unless governments extend liquidity to cover margin calls of at least $1.5 trillion.‘ As Bloomberg put it, in its best non-Zoltan imitation, ‘aside from inflating bills and fanning inflation, the biggest energy crisis in decades is sucking up capital to guarantee trades amid wild price swings. That’s putting pressure on European Union officials to intervene to prevent energy markets from stalling.’ ‘Liquidity support is going to be needed,’ Helge Haugane, Equinor’s senior vice president for gas and power, said in an interview. The issue is focused on derivatives trading, while the physical market is functioning, he said, adding that the company’s estimate for $1.5 trillion to prop up so-called paper trading is ‘conservative.’”