Any piece of debt, anywhere in the world, can be insured with a credit default swap. The contracts are originated and traded by houses like Goldman, insurance companies like AIG and hedge funds like J.P. Morgan. CDSs are used to hedge debt, while capitalizing on the volatility of the market-place and it is a fact that although the world presently sits in crisis-mode almost all government bonds have CDS through some entity. Had AIG defaulted on its obligations, if they hadnt been bailed out by the taxpayers, Goldman Sachs would have received about $2 billion in payments from credit-default swaps, primarily from Citigroup & Credit Suisse, who together sold over $700 million in protection to Goldman, who, as we all know, went bankrupt, and AIG, of course, was bailed out by the government.

When a company, or country, has what they term as a credit event, usually a bankruptcy, which gives way to payment obligations by them, think Goldman here, think Ireland here, many firms wish to try restructuring but ever since a firm I worked for in Atlanta, Conseco, a huge insurance giant who also ran several subprime lending operations, began restructuring, sometime around 2001 and that credit event was removed from the high yield trades, restructuring has given way to bankruptcy or bailout.

The fact is that these CDOs & CDSs affect everyone, not just Wall Street, and I mean small investors, almost all pensions, 401ks, etc. that are in the publicly traded markets. The over the counter derivatives market usually only involves Wall Street, the banks and hedge funds, the Goldmans and the AIGs, and the general public, including us, and even many accountants and lawyers, are left in the dark. Why is that? Why, when this could not only bankrupt us but the country and eventually, maybe the entire worlds economy?

The only plausible answer appears to be that Wall Street cares for Wall Streetperiod. AndtheyWall Streetaint talkin.

Oh, and we just swore in a Governor whose hospital company, or rather whose hospital companys insurance company, paid $1.7 billion dollars in Medicare fraud fines and this same Rick Scott spent (bought) the election with $70 million of his own, thanks to his hospital company, money.

Why dont we just sell these elections to the highest bidder and use that money to solve the unemployment problem? Just a suggestion.