For frustrated investors looking to justify the ban of credit default swaps (CDS), look no further than last week’s corporate bankruptcies of Canadian newsprint producer AbitibiBowater Inc. (ABWTQ) and U.S. shopping center developer General Growth Properties Inc. (GGP).

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced yesterday that they are looking very hard at possibly closing a regulatory loophole that allowed some extremely large commodity index funds to get around position limits.

Falling confidence, weak dollar, wasting employment, backtracking GDP… many things point to a recession, but it’s certainly an odd one.

You’ve probably heard the talking heads on CNBC chattering about this currency play. You’ve probably read about this investment “unwinding” or “being back on” in the Wall Street Journal, or in Bloomberg.

About a year ago, my father asked if the Merrill Lynch bond he was thinking of investing in was okay. I looked it over … noted its high rating … and said sure. A little less than a year ago, I was speaking to a vice president of Bank of Nova Scotia. I was asking him about the bank’s exposure to the subprime crisis. He said it was negligible.