Germany has finally turned on the “wolf pack”. Its financial regulator, BaFin, has imposed a temporary ban on naked sovereign default swaps and the short selling of eurozone government bonds and some German financial stocks. The stated purpose is to stop speculators from “threatening the stability of the entire financial system”.

For all the apocalyptic language, this feels like displacement activity. True, European politicians have excoriated “speculators” that destabilise the market in sovereign debt. By pushing up CDS prices (a CDS insures against sovereign default), it is alleged that they jack up the yield that countries must pay for their bonds.

The snag is that there is scant evidence that this has been happening. This was BaFin's own conclusion in relation to the Greek debt crisis. It found that net volumes of CDS on Greek sovereign debt barely changed as Greek bonds plunged. At about €9bn, they were a drop in the ocean anyway compared to the €300bn of debt outstanding. If there was no wolf pack savaging Greece, it is hard to see one emerging capable of denting the €1,800bn German government bond market.