Robert,
No. That is incorrect. The gross notional amounts do not give any indication of how much capital is actually at play because there are redundancies in the accounting. For example: A sells protection to B who then sells protection to C. The gross notional would count each trade when in reality, the net economic effect is a trade between A and C. B is just a middleman.
People are certainly speculating in the CDS market. But the notional amounts are not how we show that is the case.Erdosfan (talk) 15:07, 18 March 2009 (UTC)