COLUMNISTS As Alistair Darling produced his Budget goodies on Wednesday, he would have done well to peek at something which might be dubbed the “chocolate” metric.
This refers to a corner of finance known as the credit default swap – the derivatives market where investors buy protection against a debt default. In recent months the cost of insuring against a default on UK gilts has surged as investors have fretted about the ever-spiralling levels of British debt.
