What makes this possibility the financial nightmare of choice, worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, is the fear that many sovereign states have already shot all their bullets and would thus be powerless to intervene. Credit default swaps (CDS) of major southern European banks trade slightly lower than the CDS of their sovereign states, indicating that the market does not perceive the latter as able to support the former.
而这一比2008年雷曼倒闭更糟的经济噩梦之所以成为可能，就是因为人们担心许多主权国家已经耗尽了所有的资源，因此无力再采取介入行动。我们看到南欧地区各主要银行的信用违约互换（Credit default swaps ，CDS）交易价格都比其所属国家的CDS价格还要稍低一点，意味着市场预期政府将无法对银行予以支撑。