Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The ice is creaking....
Guardian: Insurance "perfect storm"
I have wondered for some time when the first insurance company would go bust. After all they bough a lot of the CDOs and other toxic junk from the banks. The bail out of AIG seems to have been glossed over in favour of more bank bashing, but the $1.2Tn Obama coughed up was spent just the same. Total financial collapse may not be inevitable (one hopes so) but it remains "highly likely".
Posted by chrisch @ 10:15 AM (854 views) Add Comment
7 Comments
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1. Crunchy said...
Enter Obamacare. It's for 'your' health.
2. This comment has been removed as it was found to be in breach of our Blog Policies.
3. refusetobuy said...
BP self insures
(http://www.businessinsider.com/bp-jupiter-insurance-2010-5)
so not sure how they can say
"The insurance industry is forecasting a loss of up to $3.5bn (£2.4bn) from the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This will be the biggest loss in the energy market since the explosion of the Piper Alpha rig in the North Sea in 1988, which led to a spiral of reinsurance losses and cost Lloyd's £8bn between 1988 and 1992."
The insurance industry never complains when they have a calm year. They are a bit like bookies who lost millions on the 100/1 winner of the grand national, conveniently ignoring the money bet on the other 39 losing horses.
4. techieman said...
http://www.insuranceday.com/insday/financial/Captives/home.htm
Jupiter has a $700m per occurrence limit. [so its likely the rest IS reinsured].
"Swiss Re has put total insured losses from the oil spill at $1.5bn-$3.5bn, and its own loss at $200m. Lloyd's will issue its own estimate later this month."
Remember there are other parties to this loss, so there may be some cross-claims against parties that are probably (re)insured too.
5. icarus said...
"During the financial crisis the insurance industry has performed very well, without the need to fall back on either government or taxpayer support". Meaning? The CDS insurance that sank AIG were written in London.
6. icarus said...
"contracts" instead of "insurance"
7. dbc reed said...
@rtb
Bookies don't complain when 100/1 bets come in: its favourites that cost them money.One roly-poly racing commentator used to be a bookie but Frankie Detorri's going through the card at a major race meeting put him out business.