Wall Street's Next Big Cash Cow……..anon
“After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they
may have found one.
The bankers plan to buy ‘life settlements,’ life-insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash.
Then they plan to ‘securitize’ these policies, in Wall
Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds.
They will then resell those bonds to investors, such as big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.”
A whole new meaning to the term “cashing out”.
(from the Seattle Times)
September 10th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Oh my God! It never fails, The Greedy bunch of Loobies up there have found another way to Bilk the elderly fixed income people out of their savings and leave them with nothing. What I see coming out of this plan is more people being wards of the state and buried in Potters Field.
September 10th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I don’t know that it would lead to Potter’s Field…directly. The article explained the pit falls of investing in life settlement bonds. Like when investors bought life settlement stuff from people with AIDs and then new drugs came along and prolonged life. (you dont get paid until some one kicks off) What if Health Care passes and we all live longer?
And then there is credit-default swaps, structured-investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations….all betting on death. The industry is thinking in terms of 500 billion. Goldman Sachs has developed a tradable index of life settlements that allows you to bet on wether people will live longer or die sooner than expected.
Then there is the other end of it where life insurance companies sell policies with the purpose of selling them back to brokers, raise premiums(if they have to pay out more death claims than anticipated), bid rigging,etc.
And if you are the policy holder and want to sell your life insurance,you will get a “cash-surrender value” of a small fraction of the death benefit even after paying large premiums for years.
“It’s an interesting asset class because it’s less correlated to the rest of the market”. ” Some financial firms are moving to out pace their rivals. Credit Suisse, for example, is building a financial assembley line to buy large numbers of life-insurance policies, package and resell them, just as Wall Street firms did with subprime securities.”
The new golden calf. Something about this seems perverse.
September 10th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
What I was leading toward is persons like me who have not set up burial plans yet, and am counting on my Life Insurance benefit to bury what’s left.
September 11th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
J., at some point probably won’t have to worry about burial expenses. That will be taken care of by the global government via incinerator. Will cut down on natural resource useage, insurance costs, etc.
BTW, this is in no way an endorsement for the behavior at the Health Care town hall meetings.
This is a post to make light of the recent allegations against health insurance reform.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
No, no, no Sunn. The incinerator has too large a carbon footprint. Remains will be disposed of via a caustic chemical solution, dissolving the body into a thick ooze, which can be poured down the drain:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004402374_dissolve09.html
I was thinking that whoever bought these bonds/securities would employ the character from “No Country for Old Men” as an “adjuster.”
September 11th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
So, after Grandma flunks the Death Panel its down the drain.
This blog sure took off in another direction.
( didn’t you guys ever see “Soylent Geen”)
September 14th, 2009 at 12:30 am
HS, this sheds new light on the Zappa tune “I Am The Slime”. Frank was truly a visionary.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I guess you never saw the movie “Soylent Green” where nothing, I mean nothing, is wasted….not even slime.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Actually, I did see the movie, although it has been many years ago & the details are embedded my brain tomb. I think I have it on an old Beta tape.
Was Bruce Dern in that movie?
September 16th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Sunn,
Don’t remember the actors. I remember everything and everybody went into the pot. No incinerator, no chemicals. End product was a Big Mac I think.