> Accepting the conceit that these are options,
In theory, a financial derivative is like prose -- we may speak in prose even if we don't know what prose is.
I have said this before: Even the most elementary legal contract, title or deed of ownership over any lasting good can be regarded as a financial derivative, since its value is always contingent upon the benefits expected to flow from the eventual use or consumption of the good. All is required is private possession and, to make such possession socially stable, a given political and legal apparatus to codify and enforce private ownership rights. To paraphrase Marx, if something doesn't have a use value, then it won't have a value either.
In the jargon of finance theory, use values are the ultimate "underlying" of the superstructure of "derivatives." Financial wealth is the legal, fictional superstructure taken by the institution of private ownership over actual wealth (use values) -- whatever particular societies over given periods of time, may deem "actual wealth" (use values).
In any case, actual wealth can only be produced the hard way, by combining the productive power of labor and means of production (produced means of production and natural resources). Financial wealth only shuffles and reshuffles the legal claims over the benefits that flow from the use or consumption of that wealth. On the surface of capitalist life, things appear inverted, mystified. So people, even those in very high places, get frequently under the illusion that wealth can be produced the easy way, by mere legal forgery or financial sorcery. This does not mean that, say, Keynesian policies "don't work." It only means that they work because of reasons the Keynesians do not understand. For more on this, see my forthcoming review of Paul Davidson's book, The Keynes Solution, in the RRPE.