From Oxbury Publishing:
“While the Bernanke hearings were underway, CNBC decided to take a break in the coverage and shoot over to America’s most recent gladiator for free markets: Rick Santelli; the bringer of truth (only in the past couple of weeks) and tea parties.
“Santelli had an interesting bit of news to share with the world’s viewers of cable television. He reported that for the first time the cost to insure U.S. debt with credit default swaps had risen to 100 BP. In other words, it will now cost you $100,000 to insure $10 million worth of Treasury debt for 5 years against default. That figure has increased 5-fold since shoes started dropping in September of 2008. Prior to financial markets going from beauty to beast after the collapse of Bear Stearns, the cost to insure government debt against default was near 1 BP; what can you say about a 10,000% increase in a few short years?”
