Anyone want to buy some dead body futures?

[Emperor_Gestahl]

From NYTimes.com, but my posts are too low to link it.. Here's an excerpt:

*quoted from nytimes.com*

"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."

*endquote*

I'm sure someone can post the link, google "life settlements".

Yipes!

[Eddie Dane]

From NYTimes.com, but my posts are too low to link it.. Here's an excerpt:

*quoted from nytimes.com*

"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."

*endquote*

I'm sure someone can post the link, google "life settlements".

Yipes!

I think there was an investment fund selling something like that in the Netherlands. It crashed and burned in rather a grand way.

Any Dutchies here remember what it was called? I forget.

[Emperor_Gestahl]

This turns cigarette smoking into a profitable career. Smoking increases the perceived death risk by the insurance corp, which then causes your policy to be worth more when sold to Goldman death-speculators? And why do you care about premiums, you won't be the one paying them!

Perhaps a history of drunk driving can be parlayed into monetary gain? High blood pressure = high net worth? I can't yet put my finger on exactly what is wrong with this plan but something's fishy.

Old people aren't losing, they get instant free money from wall street simply for being old. Insurance companies aren't losing? Presumably their premium structure is such that payouts do not exceed premium collection? So.. who's losing? If insurance is already structured so that payouts < premiums, how is adding further expense to the right of the < sign going to make for a wise investment?

It seems like these "bonds" have to intrinsically be a worse deal than the insurance policies in the first place, which already can't be a good deal overall or the insurance corps would go under.