Hoy me ha llegado por e-mail, una definición, que podría considerarse como la explicación de la actual crisis financiera:

What are CDS

Let’s say you just bought a shiny new sports car for $100k. You can buy insurance on the car by paying an insurance company $500 a year.
The insurance company promises to buy you a new sports car if you total your car. The insurance is like a CDS, except CDSs insure corporate bonds in the event that a corporation goes bust.
However, with a CDS, you can buy insurance even if you don’t own the bond; this is called speculation. When you buy a CDS w/o owning the underlying bond, you are essentially betting that the corporation will go bankrupt. This is like buying car insurance for your friends shiny new Ferrari, hoping to collect in the event that he crashes. Some hedge funds even allegedly speculate in CDS while sabotaging their underlying corporate stocks to increase the chances of bankruptcy.
This is the equivalent of cutting the brakes on your friend’s Ferrari.

Esto, resumiéndolo un poco viene a decir que hay hijos de puta que se están dedicando a conspirar para que los grandes bancos se declaren en bancarrota para ellos poder forrarse.