What's a "partial default"? In general, there's a set of events that are supposed to legally trigger CDS. Restructuring, re-denomination, missed coupon, etc... However, ultimately the decision falls to ISDA/committee of mkt participants and, finally, courts. That's what makes sov CDS into such a sh1tty scam product.
thanks for the link. But when I click that link, it says http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/GRCD5 5286 under Greece 5 yr. CDS what is 5286? Don't tell me it's $5286 to buy a 5 yr. Greece CDS? That's not possible
Maybe you should realize in virtually all of history, political union always comes before monetary union and inevitably this always meant violence and war. Look at China, today we think of it as a homogeneous nation but it fact 2000 years ago, it was made up of 14 countries which all had their own language often mutually unintelligible, currency, customs, units of measurement,etc. It took 500 years of horrific warfare before the first emperor of China wiped out everybody else, standardized everything and another few centuries to mold it into a homogeneous whole. Arguably it is today the longest lasting supranational entity in human history. How many people are you willing to see killed to achieve this kind of integration?
Huh? How much do you know about the history of Europe? What is it, if not hundreds of years of horrific warfare, culminating in the two World Wars of the 20th century? How many people killed during all those conflicts? To prevent more of the same is the whole point of the Euro, but maybe, as you say, more blood needs to be spilled and the idea is far ahead of its time.
I think jrkob explained earlier in this thread... It's in basis points, not dollars and forget the whole upfront/running thing. So, according to CNBC, it's 5286bps or roughly 53 points. The number applies to the notional of the trade to give you the total cost.
The political part is the only reason I think it'll hold together, since no one in Europe wants a repeat of 1914-1945 (for the eastern half, that end date would be 1990 or so).
Continuing on the whole Greek debt being under Greek rather than foreign law I brought up way back (http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3276656#post3276656), another bit from the FT on this subject, which gets into the whole contagion thing and then gets into the interesting effect the legal stuff is having: Also, a point I hadn't really thought of is how the domestic banking system is affected because of the lack of sovereignty over one's own currency. Really, the more I think about it the more I think the ceding of sovereignty is behind a large part of this mess: The Governance of a Fragile Eurozone
You're mis-reading the quote. $5286 is in thousands and the underlying value to insure is 10 million. So right now it would cost roughly 5.3 mil to insure 10 mil of Greek debt for 5 years. :eek: