A credit default swap is a type of swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed-income products. It can reference either a single name or an index of names. For the duration of the contract, ...

Certainly not. And that was part of the problem we had. Did the buyers of credit default swaps in many cases -- I mean, how many of them actually understood the products they were buying?

The institution, which is the protection buyer in the contract, agrees to make periodic premium payments to the dealer (the protection seller), much like in a single-name credit default swap. In ...