The Next Big Thing

Okay, so we had the financial meltdown in the marketplace that was, somehow, due to derivatives that were, to a large extent, based upon a real estate bubble. The bubble bursts, everyone goes bust. But, and the best thing, to this day most people have no idea what really happened.

Well, here is the next big thing, "life settlements."

And what, you might ask, are "life settlements"? You buy a life insurance policy from an ill or elderly person. For example, you might pay $400,000 for a $1 million policy. The amount you would pay would depend upon the life expectancy of the insured person. Kind of like a reverse mortgage, only on your life. This gives the older person an immediate cash boost, and that has to help the economy, Right?

Now you "securitize" these policies you bought by packaging hundreds of thousands of them into bonds. These bonds will then be sold to investors who will receive payouts when the insureds, those old or elderly people, die. Wall Street would make its money by creating the bonds, selling the bonds, and trading the bonds. Inverstors make their money, well, when people die.

Now, of course, the sooner the insureds die the more, and more quickly, money is made by everyone. This sets up all kinds of interesting scenarios that I am sure some enterprising fiction writers will pick up on. For example, you bet heavily on these securites and then clean up in the market when you secretly unleash a deadly virus that attacks the old and sick. Or you orchestrate a health plan that withholds care from the old and sick in an effort to prop up a sagging economy. The possibilities are endless.

Remember, you heard about it here first.

Disclaimer: the above is intended to be satire and is not, in any way, to be construed as a political statement of any kind. Barman gave up politics for good when he, while in the sixth grade, lost the race for Chief Hall Monitor in what he still maintains was a fixed election. Barman did have an Eisenhower jacket once, and thought it was quite snappy.