Gimme Culture

Credit default swaps [financial insurance policies] are to “hedging” credit exposure what nuclear weapons are to “hedging” a nation’s defense requirements. Yes, you pay less money than equipping a huge army, but if you use the nukes, everything blows up. Much the same applies with credit default swaps.

In the old days, bankers basically didn’t bet against their clients. If the borrower was successful, the banker was successful as the loan made money. If you thought the credit risk was bad, you didn’t hedge it by buying a credit default swap; you simply refused to extend the loan (or demanded a lot of collateral against which the loan was secured). Nowadays, no credit analysis is done and “hedging” is done through these toxic instruments which have no social value and create a hugely destabilizing financial system.