“Future Generations Have To Deal With The Financial Carnage”

testosteronepit.com
December 4, 2012

During the off-hours on Sunday, when few people were willing to ruin whatever remained of their weekend and when even astute observers weren’t supposed to pay attention, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners approved new rules that would allow life insurance companies to lower their reserves for future claims.

Executives claimed that they could put that capital to “more productive uses,” such as blowing it on stock buybacks and acquisitions or plowing it into subprime-based CDOs or Greek sovereign debt, or whatever, to goose their paper returns—having already forgotten all about the financial crisis.

“The insurance industry weathered the financial crisis well precisely because of the careful reserving state regulators have historically required,” said Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services. “To ignore the lessons of the financial crisis and deregulate the industry, allowing them to keep less in reserves, is unwise.”

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This article was posted: Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 1:31 pm

Tags: economics

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