by Bespoke Invest­ment Group

Below we high­light the cur­rent 5-year CDS (credit default swap) prices for the sov­er­eign debt of 44 coun­tries.  The list is sorted by the least to most risky coun­tries, and we also include the year-to-date change for each coun­try.  As shown, Nor­way cur­rently has the low­est default risk, fol­lowed closely behind by the USA.  Switzer­land, Fin­land, Swe­den and Aus­tralia are the only other coun­tries with CDS prices that are lower than 100 basis points.

At the bot­tom of the list is Greece, which has astro­nom­i­cal default risk.  Por­tu­gal, Argentina and Venezuela rank 2nd, 3rd and 4th worst and all have CDS prices of more than 1,000 basis points.

G7 coun­tries are shaded in light blue (unfor­tu­nately we do not have CDS prices for Canada).  Italy has extremely high default risk for a G7 coun­try at 571 basis points, which is why investors are so con­cerned about Europe.  And France, which is sup­pos­edly a AAA coun­try, also has very high default risk with its CDS trad­ing at 261 basis points.  France default risk is up 142% year to date.

We've been hear­ing a lot recently about how the US is the best place for investors to be right now, and this analy­sis buoys that claim.

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