I’ve got your Death Panels™©® right here:
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.
And when this plan inevitably blows up in America’s face (to Wall Street’s benefit), and we’re staring face-to-face with the Second Republican Great Depression, Wolf Blitzer’s going to be in front of the cameras saying, “No one could have possibly foreseen this crisis,” before spontaneously combusting from his diet of hard cheese and drywall.
Would it kill Wall Street not to act like rapacious mobsters for one fucking nanosecond? I mean, seriously. What the hell are they teaching in the nation’s MBA programs, “How To Be Nakedly Criminal And Get Away With It?”
What was BartCop’s Second Law again?
ANY time a person or entity makes a “mistake” that puts extra money (or power) in their pocket, expect them to make that “mistake” again and again and again.
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
