Quote from gnome:
How's this for a plan...
Let everyone who's involved in CDS's take their lumps. If in doing so, the effects spill over to innocents (who did not participate in CDSs), support them and bail out as necessary.
I agree. Although I agree that central clearing of CDS's is a big step in the right direction, why should CME firms (and by extension, the traders who use them) suddenly be on the hook for the toxic garbage of CDS's? Separating the clearing of CDS's is a much better way to go, in my opinion.