Brisance's question wasn't relevant to what I'd said, or this thread, and that's why I didn't respond.

How is his question not relevant?

You claim that there is a significant risk of going to jail for "Selling insurance against massive fluctuations".

That's a bit strange because these insurances (CDS) have been sold on a massive scale over the past years and are considered to be one of the main reasons for the crash. I did not hear about anyone going to jail for it, or did I just miss that part?

No, my claim was that the following would put you in jail: (1) shorting markets and then (2) deliberately creating the sort of fluctuation we saw in the last week.

That's all I was commenting on in this thread.

(Selling "insurance" and it was wrongly labelled above wouldn't be profitable even if there weren't jail problems. The sell side loses money on a CDS when the market goes down. You'd want to buy CDSs for that eventuality, and CDSs are not insurance.)