Hedge Funds: Maybe The Safest Place To Play?

Nicholas Vause at the Bank of International Settlements released a paper this week which highlights some interesting activity in the credit default swap markets.  The graphs below are from said paper.

What do supposedly smart risk managers know about the future of select financial vehicles that the common man does not?  Have hedge funds become less risky over the past year-and-a-half?  In reality risk is not being eliminated but just shifted from one counter-party to the next; they in turn will shift their risk to another counter-party until we make a complete circle and realize that everyone is so interconnected that systemic risk has actually been magnified instead of diminished... just like last time.