How bad is this mess, #1

Finally, a good article on credit default swaps. From DailyKos, of all places. Not the first place I go to for my economic news, but that's a virtue in this case. Writing for a broad audience, Devilstower valiantly takes a stab at explaining just how they work and why they're so nasty right about now: no one knows exactly how much they're worth. Bringing the debate down to earth, he contrasts it with gambling. One of the few times people at a craps table look like the cautious types:

In article after article, credit default swaps are referred to as "gambling." I take that as an insult. I'm strictly an amateur gambler, but before I sit down to a blackjack table, I can tell you the odds the house has over me to the tenth of a percent. A halfway decent poker player knows the odds at almost any given moment. . . What the banks are doing isn't gambling. It's worse.

This is going to get worse before it gets better. We don't even know how much of a mess we're in. We ain't seen nothing yet.