Stop the Credit Default Swap Madness By Scott Rothbort About this article: Credit default swaps clearly were a culprit in the market move yesterday. Can someone tell me, who, after the American International Group (AIG) debacle, is left standing to sell these? Who in their right mind would want to engage in this business on the sell side? After we could link the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near bankruptcy of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch to runs on the banks through credit default swaps, why don't we have global regulatory crackdown on these instruments? Given another few weeks of that silliness in 2008, the credit default swap market would have wiped out Goldman Sachs (GS). It is like 2008 never occurred. Now we can let the credit default swap market destroy Greece and Portugal, just so someone can make their 20% performance bonus. Why is the CFTC still giving safe-harbor exemption status to credit default swaps? I... To read the rest of this article and sign up for a FREE trial click here...

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