Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Some facts for your consideration:

Fact 1: If you trade stocks based on insider knowledge (for example, maybe you know that next week’s earnings announcement will be disappointing), that’s illegal.

Fact 2: Ditto for bonds.

Fact 3: Credit default swaps are basically insurance on bonds. So buying or selling CDS coverage based on insider knowledge is illegal too. Right?

Well hold on there pardner! You’re assuming that credit default swaps are securities. Because insider trading laws only apply to securities. But swaps are — well, they’re just private contracts between two consenting adults. Nothing security-ish about them. Capiche? So forget this whole insider trading thing.

Felix Salmon explains further here and then says maybe we ought to do something about this:

The first obvious thing that needs to be done here is to give the SEC formal jurisdiction over single-name CDS….The second thing which ought to be considered is moving CDS trading onto an exchange, where it can be regulated. And it’s almost certain, at this point, that that’s not going to happen. In fact, I asked Craig Donohue, the CEO of CME Group, about this at yesterday’s Reuters Global Exchanges and Trading Summit. He’s very keen on clearing over-the-counter CDS trades, but he said that he’s come to the decision over the past couple of years that he’s not interested in listing CDS on any of his exchanges directly. The big CDS players are his clients, they make lots of money from their OTC trading, and he seems to have no appetite to start competing with them on that front, rather than simply facilitating the clearing of their trades.

Financial regulatory reform is looking better all the time, isn’t it? No serious capital or leverage requirements. A consumer protection agency housed at the Fed and barely worth the paper it’s implemented on. And no exchange trading of CDS because the exchanges don’t want to do it and Congress probably won’t force them to. I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to say we should just scrap the whole thing and admit that we’re OK with Wall Street plutocrats continuing to run the country for their own benefit until they destroy the country properly. At least that would have the virtue of honesty.

And by the way: Felix will shoot me for saying this, but I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that credit default swaps should simply be banned. Their benefits are actually pretty minimal, while their vulnerability to abuse seems almost unlimited. I’m having a harder and harder time these days buying the case that we can regulate them into submission.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate