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Political and economic stewpot
Nov. 3rd, 2009 11:57 amIt was either September or October that I heard about life insurance securitization. In short: a company pays you cash for your life insurance policy, based on your actuarial chances of staying alive and the type of policy (whole, variable, term) - a fraction of a dollar on the dollar. They assume the payments, you get a smaller lump sum than the face value. They then bundle these together with other purchased life insurance policies and sold as securities, much like we just saw for mortgages. I think this is a particularly horrid idea.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, there is moral hazard. If, as a completely hypothetical example, I have paid you $40k for your $100k life insurance policy, well, I would prefer you die sooner than later. Talk about morally repugnant! Even if I am a fine and morally upstanding citizen who would never harbor any hint of wanting people to die before their time it still means I am betting on you dying. Feh! Admittedly securitizing this could mean less of an interest in you specifically, but its still pretty nasty.
Second, whoever has purchased your policy from you also has a vested interest in your health, in a very literal sense. Unless I am seriously mistaken this means they have access to any and all of your health records. Now picture somebody buying a security that has a slice of a fraction of hundreds or thousands of health records. Suddenly they too have a vested interest, writ on a multitudinous scale. We have privacy rules for a reason, among other things so your employer can't try to mess with you because of your health.
In other news, apparently secrecy in the War on (some) Terror decried by Senator Obama is more than acceptable to President Obama, even when it's no secret and its about a mistake. Mr. President, why not run with your own policy before you became President and not Bush's? I mean, didn't this man suffer enough? Canada admitted it made a mistake, apologized publicly, publicized the list of mistakes and paid over $11M (Canadian) in an attempt to make whole. We should not say that National Security is more important than holding government accountable. National Security is not supposed to be a trump card, especially not over our Constitution.
Isn't government supposed to be accountable to, say, its citizens? And its treaty partners? Are we supposed to simply trust when there is literally no accountability whatsoever? We had enough of that in the Bush years. End it, please.
On the fluffernuttier side, the national GOP no longer seems to want moderates in the GOP - at least not when running for office. Astroturf, anybody? They seem to be saying that if they appeal to fewer people they will get more votes. Yanno, so long as the GOP aren't starting bloody rebellion I'm OK with them doing this - mainly because they would really hate being in a community with me.
The GOP really does seem to be suffering from MPD, badly. They don't want government to do anything, like regulate business, except when they want government to solve everything, like save a business. They don't want government to give things to other people, like health care, but go livid when government might take away something they've been given from government, like Medicare. They don't want government to spend large sums of money, like hurricane relief, except when that money goes to their big donors, like KBR.
They also talk a lot about the Constitution without apparently having read it very well. I mean, they talk a lot about Liberty and Defense but then skip the little item right between the two in the Preamble. What do they think "promote the general welfare" means, anyways? Common Defence never used to mean municipal police and fire departments; it does now. General Welfare didn't mean health care for all back in the 18th century, but it really has changed over the years.
On the lighter though savage political side: The Onion laments the continuing life of Glenn Beck. NSFW, bad language, funny if you don't like Mr. Beck - and I really don't like him. No, I don't actually wish him ill.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, there is moral hazard. If, as a completely hypothetical example, I have paid you $40k for your $100k life insurance policy, well, I would prefer you die sooner than later. Talk about morally repugnant! Even if I am a fine and morally upstanding citizen who would never harbor any hint of wanting people to die before their time it still means I am betting on you dying. Feh! Admittedly securitizing this could mean less of an interest in you specifically, but its still pretty nasty.
Second, whoever has purchased your policy from you also has a vested interest in your health, in a very literal sense. Unless I am seriously mistaken this means they have access to any and all of your health records. Now picture somebody buying a security that has a slice of a fraction of hundreds or thousands of health records. Suddenly they too have a vested interest, writ on a multitudinous scale. We have privacy rules for a reason, among other things so your employer can't try to mess with you because of your health.
In other news, apparently secrecy in the War on (some) Terror decried by Senator Obama is more than acceptable to President Obama, even when it's no secret and its about a mistake. Mr. President, why not run with your own policy before you became President and not Bush's? I mean, didn't this man suffer enough? Canada admitted it made a mistake, apologized publicly, publicized the list of mistakes and paid over $11M (Canadian) in an attempt to make whole. We should not say that National Security is more important than holding government accountable. National Security is not supposed to be a trump card, especially not over our Constitution.
Isn't government supposed to be accountable to, say, its citizens? And its treaty partners? Are we supposed to simply trust when there is literally no accountability whatsoever? We had enough of that in the Bush years. End it, please.
On the fluffernuttier side, the national GOP no longer seems to want moderates in the GOP - at least not when running for office. Astroturf, anybody? They seem to be saying that if they appeal to fewer people they will get more votes. Yanno, so long as the GOP aren't starting bloody rebellion I'm OK with them doing this - mainly because they would really hate being in a community with me.
The GOP really does seem to be suffering from MPD, badly. They don't want government to do anything, like regulate business, except when they want government to solve everything, like save a business. They don't want government to give things to other people, like health care, but go livid when government might take away something they've been given from government, like Medicare. They don't want government to spend large sums of money, like hurricane relief, except when that money goes to their big donors, like KBR.
They also talk a lot about the Constitution without apparently having read it very well. I mean, they talk a lot about Liberty and Defense but then skip the little item right between the two in the Preamble. What do they think "promote the general welfare" means, anyways? Common Defence never used to mean municipal police and fire departments; it does now. General Welfare didn't mean health care for all back in the 18th century, but it really has changed over the years.
On the lighter though savage political side: The Onion laments the continuing life of Glenn Beck. NSFW, bad language, funny if you don't like Mr. Beck - and I really don't like him. No, I don't actually wish him ill.
