Credit default swaps (CDSs) provide protection for investors in the event that the borrower defaults on their debt or loan. Here's what you need to know.

Credit default swaps are a way for investors and traders to buy insurance against a default by a bond issuer. The cost of that insurance on California’s general obligation bonds had surged early ...

A credit default swap (CDS) is a contract that allows one party (an investor) to transfer some or all risk to a third party for a period of time. The investor who's buying the CDS pays protection ...

Contracts like credit-default swaps can indeed bring benefits. However, with rising connectivity -- as webs of CDS contracts grow more dense, for example -- things change dramatically.

But of course a credit default swap is not a security, it's a derivative. The $45.5 trillion is a notional amount; the size of the stock market is a hard valuation. There's an enormous difference.

The biggest Wall Street story most Americans haven’t yet heard of is the $62 trillion unregulated credit default swaps market. Here is one scenario: A hedge fund buys insurance in case a company ...

Market regulators agreed yesterday to collaborate on the oversight of credit default swaps, the insurance-like derivative contracts that got American International Group into trouble, and said ...

WASHINGTON — It can be a fine line between investing and gambling. But in Las Vegas, you know the odds. On Wall Street, that's not always the case. Especially when it comes to the $62 trillion ...

Question/Comment: If the amount of 62 trillion dollars is owed for credit default swaps, who or what entity eventually pays that? Not even the U.S. government can make up for an amount which is 13 ...

Mr. STRUPP: For example, if you have a company that wants to hedge a credit exposure in an odd amount of money, $156,217.25, they can enter into a credit default swap that covers exactly that ...