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On the laziness front, we need an OTC counterparty (like a bank) to not care about giving us extreme off-exchange margin for a trade. Think Bill Hwang - Credit Suisse levels of margin on an equity total return swap, for example. If our OTC trade goes south we can lose billions.

Now, secrecy - we go to the clearinghouse (CME Clearing, for example) and open a futures position with max leverage. CME doesn't know about our OTC trade & we don't mention it. Leverage + leverage = the makings of a CH blowup.

Lastly, we need luck. A TON of luck. First, our OTC trade needs to go wrong & produce billions of losses in a single trading day. Then our CH position needs to go wrong AT THE SAME TIME, again in a single trading day. CME and our bank won't be able to settle in time.

So to bring CME's clearinghouse down we would need losses surpassing: Our clearing member's capital CME's $100M contribution A $5 billion Guaranty Fund The funds of every other member called by assessment powers Our loss would have to be MANY billions of dollars to do this.