Ditto! 

I would add that this could be one of those highly unusual situations, where a relatively new market is giving off clear signals that many / most market participants do not yet know how to utilize. 

I am sure the bright boys at the I-banks are all crunching away, to see about correlations in time between equity / CDS markets, etc.  But if they are getting any good ideas from it, they aren't going to share it.  So the vast majority of everyday investors, the buy side in general, and most people outside of that tight circle, are not taking exploding CDS spreads in their market decision-making. 

Frankly, its kind of an exciting time.  Could all of this be one big "false-positive"?  Sure, but it did not work out that way for Countrywide or the monolines.  I don't know by how much the CDS spreads led the drop in stock prices, but it sure did flag that these companies all had very deep and long lasting problems. 

So maybe another way to look at the spreads is they are your red / green light on whether to buy on dips. 

Now I am sure CapeCod is aware of this stuff, but as a quick background, one of the things that make CDS spreads so intriguing is the supposedly very high level of "insider trading" in these markets.  But that is a whole 'nother story.