When gambling about your imminent death sets bankers panting…
Concerned that they are not making nearly as much money as they once used to banks have now figured out a new way to make money- essentially it’s betting on when you die. Fun? Too much fun. Are you going to profit? No, but you might cash in before you die. Are insurance premiums going to go up? – Hell yeah, someone has to pay for the fun. Are insurance companies going to make out? Hell no, not unless they start trading in their own insurance policies and what about the banks themselves? Do big bears shit in log cabins?
Welcome to the carnivore called greed, grunting and scrounging for new ways to make money and lots of it. The general low down goes something like this:
Say you own an insurance policy but want to cash out before you die (an inconvenient detail we can mutually appreciate…), an investment bank will then buy it from you for cash at a discount and then collect from the insurance company when you pass away. How much they collect depends on how soon you die, the sooner you die the better for them as the policy will net them a sum closer to the difference between what you sold the policy for and what your family would have collected upon your death.
In any event it’s a cash bonanza waiting to be stripped, re securitized and shoved down your throat and with 29 trillion dollars sloshing around soon you will go from betting on home mortgages to betting on your best friends death. Of course the banks are claiming and perhaps legitimately that investment opportunities will grow and everyone will get richer but we’re sure we heard this argument about mortgage backed securities too…and you know how well that bet worked out…
When wall street thinks of new cash cows you better believe one way or another it’s all about their self interest.
Observations of a Wall St Trader.
The Culture of Fat Cats, Fast Cars, and the Dreams That Sometimes Go Bust.
Its funny how if you word something differently you can make life insurance sound so evil. What would make this better is talking about how the government takes half of your stuff when you die.