Quote from Trader5287:
Why do you say no?
And why aren't they an illegal insurance contract?
Because not being able to meet your financial obligations, in and of itself, does not constitute fraud. Although the legal definition for fraud will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, most legal definitions of fraud require "deliberate misrepresentation or concealment" or some degree of "trickery with intent to deceive." So in order to prove fraud, you'd have to prove that at the time they wrote the contracts, that they either made material misrepresentations or that they never had any intent to make good on their obligations. However unfortunate it may be, being a bad businessman and making bad business decisions is not against the law in this country.
In regards to why they aren't illegal insurance contracts... the answer is simple... in order for something to be illegal you need laws, regulations, and/or statutes that make it illegal... and so far there aren't hardly any laws dealing at all with CDS's... therefore, not illegal.
Another reason that they have had a hard time deciding whether or not it should be regulated as insurance is because a lot of the people who were on the buy side of the CDS's (the policy holders so to speak), didn't necessarily have an insurable interest, which is a component and requirement of insurance. I can't just go over to the old age home down the street, take out insurance policies on 10 complete strangers, and hope that a couple of them die so that I can get rich. If I want to take out insurance on someone I have to have an "insurable interest"... Now if you are a bondholder and buy a CDS then technically its functioning the same way an insurance policy would, and it might be construed as insurance (although really its just a covered bond), however if I'm not a bondholder and I purchase a CDS then technically I'm not insuring anything... I'm actually just establishing a short position on some corporation's debt.
Now I'm not saying that the whole situation doesn't make me ill... but what you really should be angry about is that the $65 trillion CDS market is the largest unregulated market ever in the history of the world... so the solution would be to push for laws, regulation, and oversight... and a little transparency wouldn't hurt either.