So Credit Default swaps or buying Subprime Mortgage derivatives had nothing to do with it?
http://www.insidersstrategygroup.com/tpg/taipan-daily/taipan-daily-062211.html
The Greek Debt Crisis
The generally understood fear is that a Greek default could lead to a "domino chain" of other defaults. If Greece goes down, so does Portugal. Then Ireland, then Spain and so on, until it is "game over" for the eurozone.
That path of events could certainly unfold. But it is not the only way disaster could strike. What is frightening is that, as with Lehman, there are other ways the whole financial system could melt down -- thanks to our old friend complexity.
Take, for example, the "Credit Default Swap," or CDS. A credit default swap is a form of insurance against a debt obligation going bad. It was the indiscriminate selling of CDS that blew up AIG in the 2008 financial crisis.
AIG was happy to collect tiny premiums (pennies on the dollar) selling insurance on the subprime mortgage market, thinking it was "free money" because disaster would never happen. Wall Street banks, meanwhile, were dumping CDS obligations on AIG as fast as they could.
Now we have a repeat situation with European sovereign debt. Just as AIG sold CDS insurance on subprime, American banks have been selling hundreds of billions in default insurance to European banks, in the form of CDS on various periphery countries like Greece.
Here is some more information how Wall Street was involved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_sovereign_debt_crisis
From late 2009, fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed among fiscally conservative investors concerning some European states, with the situation becoming particularly tense in early 2010.[1][2] This included eurozone members Greece,[3] Ireland, Spain and Portugal and also some EU countries outside the area.[4] Iceland, the country which experienced the largest crisis in 2008 when its entire international banking system collapsed has emerged less affected by the sovereign debt crisis as the government was unable to bail the banks out. In the EU, especially in countries where sovereign debts have increased sharply due to bank bailouts, a crisis of confidence has emerged with the widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps between these countries and other EU members, most importantly Germany.[5][6]
There are valid reasons why people are protesting Wall Street greed that almost brought down the World's Financial markets.
