Comment by TuringNYC

>> I 100% guarantee you that the CME or Goldman will not let you "ride things out".

That is indeed generally the case. There are, however, monthly collateral agreements in some cases where you can ride it out for a month before getting margin called. Also, there are sometimes credit-rating based collateral calls. The most famous would be AIG's -- they eventually had margin calls of over $100B when their credit rating fell and the housing market also fell and liquidity dried up.

Funny thing in such cases -- when the borrower owes banks those sums of money, it ceases to be the borrower's issue and becomes the bank's issue