WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "60 Minutes," the popular CBS news program, normally doesn't deal with global finance, but last Sunday (Oct. 5) its lead story tried to isolate the cause of the current global financial meltdown. It selected a financial derivative: credit default swaps.

A credit default swap is nothing more than insurance that a bond transaction will be repaid. The problem is that this has developed into a massive market estimated in the United States by participants in the mark ...

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