Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Death Derivatives Emerge From Pension Risks of Living Too Long - Bloomberg

Death Derivatives Emerge From Pension Risks of Living Too Long - Bloomberg: "

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which bundled and sold billions of dollars of mortgage loans, now want to help investors bet on people’s deaths.

Pension funds sitting on more than $23 trillion of assets are buying insurance against the risk their members live longer than expected. Banks are looking to earn fees from packaging that risk into bonds and other securities to sell to investors. The hard part: Finding buyers willing to take the other side of bets that may take 20 years or more to play out.

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Thursday, May 12, 2011

Next Up, a Crackdown on Outside-Expert Firms - NYTimes.com

Next Up, a Crackdown on Outside-Expert Firms - NYTimes.com

Lizzie O'Leary: What I Read - Business - The Atlantic Wire

Lizzie O'Leary: What I Read - Business - The Atlantic Wire:

"The oil spill was actually the first time I came to understand the power of Twitter and started using it personally to get reporting tips. You'd see something pop up about oil coming ashore on Grand Terre or Grand Isle and you could get over there. Otherwise you'd be calling the sheriff's department, who might not have wanted to tell you where the oil was. When I started covering the oil spill I didn't know anything about petroleum engineering, and a hydraulic engineer started following me and an oil engineer from Texas started sending me information. They turned into real sources and helped me read through the data that I got my hands on."