BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The $28 trillion credit default swaps market came under investigation on Friday by the European Union, adding to official pressures bearing down on a huge and opaque business that is widely blamed for aggravating the recent banking and euro zone debt crises.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said it is probing whether major investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, colluded in their operations in a market that is already under scrutiny by U.S. authorities and being subjected to broad, new regulations.
Credit default swaps, or CDS, are derivatives that let a buyer transfer loan default risk to a seller, making them a kind of insurance against default. CDS can also be bought by speculators without direct interest in the debts involved.
CDS played a central role in the near collapse of AIG in 2008, which led to a massive U.S. taxpayer bailout of the former insurance
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