Why would anyone LONG the stock market with these out there. There is $45 Trillion of CDS, and there not worth $45 Trillion. Why are these not getting headline news...with revaluations downwards... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap .."Warren Buffett famously described derivatives bought speculatively as "financial weapons of mass destruction." In Berkshire Hathaway's annual report to shareholders in 2002, he said "Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counterparties to them. In the meantime, though, before a contract is settled, the counterparties record profits and losses -often huge in amount- in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen)." ...