what i actually wanted to say

What is this crap? Economy, stop failing morals, do better than we expect you to!

"Wall Street firms have been salivating over so-called life settlements for years. Under such arrangements, people sell their life insurance policies to financial firms that pay the premiums and collect the payouts." (BusinessWeek magazine, June 15, 2009)

I might be reading it wrong, but isn't "payout" supposed to be the money you get for dying while on life insurance? Doesn't that mean that someone that isn't your wife and kids will benefit financially from killing you? I could trust my wife and kids to not kill me for the life insurance money, but not some company that trades in Death Bonds (Though this could make a nice backdrop for the next bounty hunter movie).

Okay, are you thinking "what no one's going to get desperate enough to kill you, jeez."? Well, maybe not now, but say i was crazy enough to sell my life insurance policy. Then it's gotta be bad enough for someone to kill me over it! Also, will this thing really take off? Sure, you may be protected if somehow everyone starts doing it so that your chances of being singled out are low... but someone's gotta start it.

On a similar note, same thing applies to consumer spending and that hasn't taken off in the first quarter of 2009 either.

Non a similar note, this is not an economics blog, sorry.