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 — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. 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, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.
Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them. But some who have studied life settlements warn that insurers might have to raise premiums in the short term if they end up having to pay out more death claims than they had anticipated.
Imagine an investment bank creating a virus that wipes out all of ‘life settlement’ sellers?
Maybe they could infect the paper the contract is printed on!
SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!
WOW!
Investment Bankers Betting On When Sick & Elderly Will Die
Investment bankers don’t need to create a virus that wipes out the elderly, their collapsed 401k investments and abject poverty will do that for them.
It’s a sure bet for Investment Bankers as long as republicans have any public office.
Just another example of how Wall Street is working hard to break the back of the American Spirit.
Once Wall Street has picked all the meat of the America carcass, where do they go from there.
All ready China and EU have a very healthy distrust of Wall Street.
No doubt about it, this will cause premiums to rise.
#17
Nonsense. The Democrats control both houses and the Presidency. All they need to do is get their own people on board and they’ll get something passed without the Republicans. The real question is why they cannot convince their own people.
#24–Thomas==is your reference to the mostly correct posting at #17 correct? You say nonsense and then make the opposite argument actually supporting what #17 said. Depends on what part of your post you think nonsense applies to?
Actually, most Bankers are Demoncrats as are most Lawyers and most of the rich. I’ve never seen a rich person give anything to the people without a hook, just like the Demoncrats.
All Demoncrats:
Rockefeller, Kennedys, Richard Dean Parsons (Chairman of Citigroup}, Lloyd Blankfein{Goldman Sachs},James L. “Jamie” Dimon{CEO at
JP Morgan Chase}, John J. Mack {CEO and Chairman of the Board of the investment bank Morgan Stanley).
Find a Demoncrat elite and you’ll find a rich person.
pfffhhhhh, there you go again Uncle Dave, was it not the republicans in the audiences that brought up death panels???
Or are you trying to have it both ways while stirring the pot??
Please tell me, I’m fascinated.
#28,
I’d like to take the Death Panel issue head on. Cold hard facts.
The private insurance you have now has some type of lifetime limit to it. Basically, when you get cancer, they will pay for about a year of chemotherapy, then they boot you off the plan, and it is then impossible for you to get on another insurance plan after that. So you go bankrupt then you end up on medicare (if you are old enough) or medicade (if you are poor enough) and they will only pay for hospice care at that point.
Same thing happens if you are a newborn with a chronic illness.
So the retardlicans can suck my big fat death panel.
Once again, Uncle Dave’s limited worldview (the Democratic party as a religion) runs face-first into reality (investment bankers are overwhelmingly Democrats). Oops. I’ll bet that doesn’t stop him from posting more drivel in the future, though.
# 28 so assuming you have a point other than the one on the top of your head ?8^) exactly how much do you want to pay to have someone tell you to go pick out a grave plot?
I’m not a big fan of the funeral business either. I told my guy that all I actually needed him to do was did the hole, put the body at the bottom and fill the hole back up. Ashes to Ashes and dust to dust. For some reason he didn’t seem happy about that.
#28: What are you talking about? Of course it was the Republicans. Having reading comprehension issues today?
#30: I’m so glad you’ve cleared that up for me. I didn’t realize that I was a Democrat, given I disagree with so many of their policies. It could be that given I disagree with so many of the Republican’s policies even more is what got you confused.
#32, Dave,
You should probably edit your post so that it’s more factual.
Unless you’d like to continue promoting partisan bullshit and also perpetuating the false left/right paradigm so many people appear to have adopted.
Big business loves big government. They are not opposed to each other. Rather they are two heads on the same coin. No matter which way you flip that coin you’re going to lose.
That said, both parties do receive significant campaign donations from big business. But why?
simple.
Both parties increase the size of government, and also pad the bottom line for big business. They are no different.
God Bless America.
#26
> is your reference to
> the mostly correct
> posting at #17 correct?
Correct. I presumed the author was referring to Congressional Republicans and getting health care legislation passed.
> You say nonsense
> and then make the
> opposite argument
> actually supporting
> what #17 said.
I’m not sure how you conclude that. I’m saying that blaming the Republicans on issues such as health care reform is ridiculous. Responsibility for getting any legislation passed is solely in the hands of the Democrats.