Feds Now Bailing Out Life Insurers – Stop the Madness
If you haven’t already left and followed the link above, the B.S. is that now the federal government is shoveling TARP funds to life insurers. As Glenn Hall over at the Street.com points out:
People pay insurers monthly premiums to transfer the risk of fire, car crashes and in some cases even investment losses. So when those things happen, the insurance pays. …
… I reluctantly acknowledged the need to shore up AIG because that is a special type of behemoth insurer whose activities underpin the entire financial world. But these other insurers are just lapping up the dole, and the government seems entirely too willing to keep giving out corporate welfare checks.
When do the princes and princesses of capitalism get to see some of the market’s ultimate accountability? That’s called failure. It’s real simple. If you mismanage your company, you fail.
What the Bush and now Obama Administrations are saying to us is that if you’re a well-heeled bank, insurer or brokerage you’re too big to fail.
I don’t buy the “Socialist” argument from the right. I don’t doubt that the Barack Obamas and Timothy Geithners of the world would rather not be running or propping up the private sector. But I also believe that these big companies – who finance political campaigns – are getting treated differently than the average Joe.
Here’s what the next bailout should be. In order to level the playing field the feds should cut a check to every taxpayer for, say, a hundred thousand bucks.
Perhaps others would do with their bailout as I would do with mine:
- $12,000 would go to Chase Bank to pay off my car loan
- $25,000 would go into some sort of savings
- $25,000 would go into home improvements
- $10,000 would go to investments
- $5,000 into a vacay
- The rest would be for general pump priming
