Direct and indirect exposure to European peripherals is huge!

It is assumed that banks that hold Greek debt will have write downs.

But what if they bought CDS's? Who wrote the CDS will suffer the lose from a restructuring! It is hard to know who wrote the CDS, so libor rates will increase due to the mystery!

Majority of the debt is from retail/commercial loans (75%). Then interbank lending and soveriegn debt.

Insurance companies only really have exposure to the sovereign debt side. Hence are less at risk then the banks - unless they were the ones that wrote the CDS's!

What is a safe haven currency? A country that has favourable macroeconomic features in difficult times. But Switzerland has a banking sector considerably larger than its total GDP. Hence, though Swiss bank exposure to peripherals is small, it is over 100% of GDP to other European sovereign. Do you think German banks would be immune from restructuring of debt in Spain or Italy? There will be blood! And even a 10% haircut for Swiss banks would be huge in absolute terms.

Is the NOK safer? What is there pension fund invested in? How would oil react in such circumstances? The advantage is that there is likely to be slightly less damage to the Norweigian banking system. But there would be little money moving around if oil is not increasing! There are bad, and more bad! Gold would see a chunk of money momve towards it I suppose?