Wall Street pursues profit in bundles of life insurance
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.
Let me guess, then they’ll buy and sell bogus “insurance” on these bundled securities, slice and dice them into incomprehensible financial instruments, do the whole thing with massive leverage, then create a massive bubble. Golly, what could go wrong with this?
Ivan the Insurance Agent – profiting on the potential of your misfortune.