In the wake of the economic meltdown, Wall Street bankers are pursuing their next great idea, albeit a bit morbid. The concept involves life insurance policies of ill or elderly owners, sold to bankers for a fraction of the policy’s death benefit prior to death. Despite the likelihood of beefed up federal regulations, financial wizards are dreaming up ways to ‘securitize’ these groups of life insurance policies into bonds to be sold to investors who ultimately collect the death benefits when the owners perish at significant profit. Sheeesh. And we thought credit-default swaps and subprime mortgages were questionable. Read the full Wall Street Journal story here. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/06insurance.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
