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Guest Post: Suspicious Deaths Of Bankers Are Now Classified As "Trade Secrets" By Federal Regulator
Submitted by Pam Martens and Russ Martens of Wall Street On Parade,
It doesn’t get any more Orwellian than this: Wall Street mega banks crash the U.S. financial system in 2008. Hundreds of thousands of financial industry workers lose their jobs. Then, beginning late last year, a rash of suspicious deaths start to occur among current and former bank employees. Next we learn that four of the Wall Street mega banks likely hold over $680 billion face amount of life insurance on their workers, payable to the banks, not the families. We ask their Federal regulator for the details of this life insurance under a Freedom of Information Act request and we’re told the information constitutes “trade secrets.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the life expectancy of a 25 year old male with a Bachelor’s degree or higher as of 2006 was 81 years of age. But in the past five months, five highly educated JPMorgan male employees in their 30s and one former employee aged 28, have died under suspicious circumstances, including three of whom allegedly leaped off buildings – a statistical rarity even during the height of the financial crisis in 2008.
There is one other major obstacle to brushing away these deaths as random occurrences – they are not happening at JPMorgan’s closest peer bank – Citigroup. Both JPMorgan and Citigroup are global financial institutions with both commercial banking and investment banking operations. Their employee counts are similar – 260,000 employees for JPMorgan versus 251,000 for Citigroup.
Both JPMorgan and Citigroup also own massive amounts of bank-owned life insurance (BOLI), a controversial practice that pays the corporation when a current or former employee dies. (In the case of former employees, the banks conduct regular “death sweeps” of public records using former employees’ Social Security numbers to learn if a former employee has died and then submits a request for payment of the death benefit to the insurance company.)
Wall Street On Parade carefully researched public death announcements over the past 12 months which named the decedent as a current or former employee of Citigroup or its commercial banking unit, Citibank. We found no data suggesting Citigroup was experiencing the same rash of deaths of young men in their 30s as JPMorgan Chase. Nor did we discover any press reports of leaps from buildings among Citigroup’s workers.
Given the above set of facts, on March 21 of this year, we wrote to the regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), seeking the following information under the Freedom of Information Act (See OCC Response to Wall Street On Parade’s Request for Banker Death Information):
The number of deaths from 2008 through March 21, 2014 on which JPMorgan Chase collected death benefits; the total face amount of BOLI life insurance in force at JPMorgan; the total number of former and current employees of JPMorgan Chase who are insured under these policies; any peer studies showing the same data comparing JPMorgan Chase with Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.
The OCC responded politely by letter dated April 18, after first calling a few days earlier to inform us that we would be getting nothing under the sunshine law request. (On Wall Street, sunshine routinely means dark curtain.) The OCC letter advised that documents relevant to our request were being withheld on the basis that they are “privileged or contains trade secrets, or commercial or financial information, furnished in confidence, that relates to the business, personal, or financial affairs of any person,” or relate to “a record contained in or related to an examination.”
The ironic reality is that the documents do not pertain to the personal financial affairs of individuals who have a privacy right. Individuals are not going to receive the proceeds of this life insurance for the most part. In many cases, they do not even know that multi-million dollar policies that pay upon their death have been taken out by their employer or former employer. Equally important, JPMorgan is a publicly traded company whose shareholders have a right under securities laws to understand the quality of its earnings – are those earnings coming from traditional banking and investment banking operations or is this ghoulish practice of profiting from the death of workers now a major contributor to profits on Wall Street?
As it turns out, one aspect of the information cavalierly denied to us by the OCC is publicly available to those willing to hunt for it. On March 24 of this year, we reported that JPMorgan Chase held $10.4 billion in BOLI assets at its insured depository bank as of December 31, 2013.
We reached out to BOLI expert, Michael D. Myers, to understand what JPMorgan’s $10.4 billion in BOLI assets at its commercial bank might represent in terms of face amount of life insurance on its workers. Myers said: “Without knowing the length of the investment or its rate of return, it is difficult to estimate the face amount of the insurance coverage. However, a cash value of $10.4 billion could easily translate into more than $100 billion in actual insurance coverage and possibly two or three times that amount” said Myers, a partner in the Houston, Texas law firm McClanahan Myers Espey, L.L.P.
Myers’ and his firm have represented the families of deceased employees for almost two decades in cases involving corporate-owned life insurance against employers such as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Fina Oil and Chemical Co., and American Greetings Corp. (Families may be entitled to the proceeds of these policies if employee consent was required under State law and was never given and/or if the corporation cannot show it had an “insurable interest” in the employee — a tough test to meet if it’s a non key employee or if the employee has left the firm.)
As it turns out, the $10.4 billion significantly understates the amount of money JPMorgan has tied up in seeking to profit from workers’ deaths. Since Wall Street banks are structured as holding companies, we decided to see what type of financial information might be available at the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), a federal interagency that promotes uniform reporting standards among banking regulators.
The FFIEC’s web site provided access to the consolidated financial statements of the bank holding companies of not just JPMorgan Chase but all of the largest Wall Street banks. We conducted our own peer review study with the information that was available.
Four of Wall Street’s largest banks hold a total of $68.1 billion in BOLI assets. Using Michael Myers’ approximate 10 to 1 ratio, that would mean that over time, just these four banks could potentially collect upwards of $681 billion in tax free income from life insurance proceeds on their current and former workers. (Death benefits are received tax free as is the buildup in cash value in the policies.) The breakdown in BOLI assets is as follows as of December 31, 2013:
Bank of America $22.7 billion
Wells Fargo 18.7 billion
JPMorgan Chase 17.9 billion
Citigroup 8.8 billion
In addition to specifics on the BOLI assets, the consolidated financial statements also showed what each bank was reporting as “Earnings on/increase in value of cash surrender value of life insurance” as of December 31, 2013. Those amounts are as follows:
Bank of America $625 million
Wells Fargo 566 million
JPMorgan Chase 686 million
Citigroup 0
Given the size of these numbers, there is another aspect to BOLI that should raise alarm bells among both regulators and shareholders. The Wall Street banks are using a process called “separate accounts” for large amounts of their BOLI assets with reports of some funds never actually leaving the bank and/or being invested in hedge funds, suggesting lessons from the past have not been learned.
On May 20, 2008, Bloomberg News reported that Wachovia Corp. (now owned by Wells Fargo) and Fifth Third Bancorp reported major losses on failed gambles with BOLI assets. “Wachovia reported a $315 million first-quarter loss in its bank-owned life insurance program, known as BOLI, because of investments in hedge funds managed by Citigroup Inc. Fifth Third said in a lawsuit filed last month that it had losses of $323 million from Citigroup’s Falcon funds, which slumped more than 50 percent in the past year as the subprime market collapsed.” Citigroup’s Falcon Strategies hedge fund had lost as much as 75 percent of its value by May 2008.
Following are the names and circumstances of the five young men in their 30s employed by JPMorgan who experienced sudden deaths since December along with the one former employee.
Joseph M. Ambrosio, age 34, of Sayreville, New Jersey, passed away on December 7, 2013 at Raritan Bay Medical Center, Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He was employed as a Financial Analyst for J.P. Morgan Chase in Menlo Park. On March 18, 2014, Wall Street On Parade learned from an immediate member of the family that Joseph M. Ambrosio died suddenly from Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
Jason Alan Salais, 34 years old, died December 15, 2013 outside a Walgreens inPearland, Texas. A family member confirmed that the cause of death was a heart attack. According to the LinkedIn profile for Salais, he was engaged in Client Technology Service “L3 Operate Support” and previously “FXO Operate L2 Support” at JPMorgan. Prior to joining JPMorgan in 2008, Salais had worked as a Client Software Technician at SunGard and a UNIX Systems Analyst at Logix Communications.
Gabriel Magee, 39, died on the evening of January 27, 2014 or the morning of January 28, 2014. Magee was discovered at approximately 8:02 a.m. lying on a 9th level rooftop at the Canary Wharf European headquarters of JPMorgan Chase at 25 Bank Street, London. His specific area of specialty at JPMorgan was “Technical architecture oversight for planning, development, and operation of systems for fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives.” A coroner’s inquest to determine the cause of death is scheduled for May 20, 2014 in London.
Ryan Crane, age 37, died February 3, 2014, at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. The Chief Medical Examiner’s office is still in the process of determining a cause of death. Crane was an Executive Director involved in trading at JPMorgan’s New York office. Crane’s death on February 3 was not reported by any major media until February 13, ten days later, when Bloomberg News ran a brief story.
Dennis Li (Junjie), 33 years old, died February 18, 2014 as a result of a purported fall from the 30-story Chater House office building in Hong Kong where JPMorgan occupied the upper floors. Li is reported to have been an accounting major who worked in the finance department of the bank.
Kenneth Bellando, age 28, was found outside his East Side Manhattan apartment building on March 12, 2014. The building from which Bellando allegedly jumped was only six stories – by no means ensuring that death would result. The young Bellando had previously worked for JPMorgan Chase as an analyst and was the brother of JPMorgan employee John Bellando, who was referenced in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ report on how JPMorgan had hid losses and lied to regulators in the London Whale derivatives trading debacle that resulted in losses of at least $6.2 billion.
Related Articles:
Swiss Insurers and JPMorgan Have More than ‘Suicides’ in Common
A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter — With Ties to Wall Street Investigations
Suspicious Death of JPMorgan Vice President, Gabriel Magee, Under Investigation in London
JPMorgan Vice President’s Death in London Shines a Light on the Bank’s Close Ties to the CIA
As Bank Deaths Continue to Shock, Documents Reveal JPMorgan Has Been Patenting Death Derivatives
»
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Great article. I never could understand why FORMER employees were being "suicided" along with some current ones. It never occurred to me that the bank would hold a policy even AFTER they terminated employment (for which the bank would still be paying a premium to keep the policy in force).
If somebody isn't getting a kick-back for "suiciding" these people for the bank to collect the death benefit, I'll eat my hat.
"Suicide Provisions", bitchez.
Typical Gubbermint answer...
From the promised... "Most transparent Admin in American history..."
Yep... how predictable...
"Nothing to see here - move along!"
Soon to be parroted by all the lapdog MSM in full lock-step support!
Unless... They faked their deaths and split the profits and joined the others on a private island in the South Indian Ocean where Malaysain Airlines went.....just a thought
Now I can understand why when I told them they are going to work me to death they smiled.
pods
"Trade Secrets' is financial terminology for "Go Fuck Yourself"
According to the OCC's Interagency Statement on the Purchase and Risk Management of Life Insurance, federally charted banks are also allowed to purchases life insurance policies on borrowers.
From the Statement: "When purchasing insurance on a key person or a borrower, management should consider whether the institution’s need for the insurance might end before the insured person dies. An institution generally may not hold BOLI on a key person or a borrower once the key person leaves the institution or the borrower has either repaid the loan, or the loan has been charged off...Institutions can take two approaches in purchasing life insurance on borrowers. First, an institution can purchase life insurance on an individual borrower for the purpose of protecting the institution specifically against loss arising from that borrower’s death."
http://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/bulletins/2004/bulletin-2004-56a.pdf
It would be interesting to see the total amount of insurance these banks have placed on their clients, as well as the client death rate per bank. However, I am sure those numbers are a trade secret as well.
If you have an outstanding loan with any of the TBTF banks, always check your six.
This life insurance story is bullshit, a mere distraction!
Plad, you're off on this one. ZH has been publishing some crap recently. This is a breath of fresh air in the vein of old Tyler research.
Agreed, sb; I don't think it is as much BS as it just scratches the surface. Loosing money from a hedge fund in conjunction with BOLI sure smells like these are not policies purchased from a 3rd-party insurance company, but self-insurance. Even more shenanigans are possible if that is the case.
Me? I'm just thinking of the securitization of all those policies, and how they slice and dice them into tranches, offer them as collerateral for the London rehypothecation game, millions into billions into trillions, backed by nothing but life and death, fucking sick and macabe bastards.
Don't forget Larry McCarthy - Dick Fuld's Managing Director of Distressed Debt,
'Somehow he doesn't even seem to be on the list.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/lawrence-mccarthy-lehman-bond-swaps-529708
"Dead Peasant" insurance.
The Carlisle Family Reunion!
Pass the chips!
Where Ken Lay is doing his best Ricardo Montalban impersonation as the newly retired Ben Bernanke squeals....
Da plane!....Da plane!!.....
Diego Garcia is ......FEDtasy Island
That's the question. Since the person who took out the policy is not the same person as the one named in the policy who supposely committed suicide, will the policy pay out?
It will pay out if the beneficiary's last name is Dimon or Blankfein.
"Trade Secrets" sounds so much better than "I'll take the 5th".
Laugh now, but don't be surprised when Schemin' Lloyd B reveals that GS has patented this as a business method.
Doing God's work, indeed.
Man I tell you, it's hard to leave me speechless, but this whole story did.
What will these guys not do for money. Coin and bits ....
wow....
ori
I replied some usual goofy shit to Groundhog Day's post "2 years ago i would have been disturbed by this, now it's like water off a ducks back." below, but I am as speechless as you. I must have been underestimating the cruelty of these fuckers, if there is anything as such left after seeing their manaical actions over the last six years. Not only drawing insurance from the lives of the workers, but creating layers of bets on top of that? Fuck man, that's not even related to homo sapiens, bipedal organisms, or anything like that. Just pure evil shit.
Do they drive cars in heaven and hell? We might need afterlife car insurance.
There are a fair number of books published about large corporations and banks actions during ww2. Their actions then were equally disgusting. I am not sure if BOLI is new, but it is certainly not the first time they have traded on death.
Here's a new one. ...HFInsurance. Bots write policies 2 hours before.you or someone else offs you....
The old life insurance scam wonder who taught who this one the banks or the mob. Until they changed the laws anyone could take out a life insurance policy on anyone else. The mob used to take out policies on homeless people then kill them since the cops would never follow up on the deaths outside of procedural purposes and then collect on the policy.
It's done on Veterans, too...
"Trade Secrets" sounds so much better than "I'll take the 5th".
--------------
Hey, "I'll take the 5th" may have worked for Lois The non-Lerner!
Especially with the wussy Repubs... They should nail her lyin' ass to the wall!
She's tribe. She's got global immunity.
2 years ago i would have been disturbed by this, now it's like water off a ducks back. no news really phases me anymore. I'm upset cuz i didn't figure out they were doing this first.
on another note, Big religious institutions do the same thing on their, priests, rabbi's, sant's, preachers etc.
"Why did you molest my son!?"
"Trade secrets yo."
"If somebody isn't getting a kick-back for "suiciding" these people for the bank to collect the death benefit, I'll eat my hat."
What evidence would you consider sufficient to prove that negative?
All shit trails these days lead to dead ends with executive privilege signs on them
The banks probably hold policies on ALL of the rest of us ... payable even in the case of war, famine, radiation poisoning, etc.
Not a policy, but a securable interest in the value you produce on the US tax farm. Why do you think you have a social security number?
Probably a new division of Blackwater, or whatever they are calling themselves these daze.......
Hmmm I wonder how many WTC bankers were insured during 9/11?
I buy life insurance on all my bitches before I push them off the roof.
Now I'm no expert but life insurance policies carry a clause that they don't pay out in the event of a suicide in the first two years of the policy being in force. How long were the employees working at said banks before being suicided?
even if they were working there more than 2 years...i am no attorney, but if your spouse threw themselves out a window at JPM because they were under intense pressure by JPM, don't they have a case that this was intentional or in the least JPM was possibly causing this to benefit from it? I mean how many "key man" policies does JPM need?
Lets see if they have 260k employees then i would guess 260k "key man" policies. Those tellers they pay 9-10 dollars an hour are worth more to them dead then alive, especially if they have moved on say BAC or Wells fargo, where those firms can also take out "key Man insurance......RE HYPOTHICATION of tellers BITCHEZ.
One dead banker pays out multiple times....its like rolling a hard 6 or 8 on the craps table.....9 to 1 payout
Thew best is the guy they threw off the roof twice. I bet they had an AD&D policy on that poor guy.
"what do you mean he was not dismembered.....well fuck man, keep throwing him off until something gets dismembered while i call in the accident."
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was the shit.
RIP, Gary Gygax.
My friends and I were early adopters of D&D. We would stay up all night playing. Some of the more fundamental religious people were convinced we were worshipping demons. We got a kick out of that.
When my friend got a copy of The Dragon magazine with the critical hit charts things got awesome.
pods
Don't forget the banker who shot himself 8 times with a nail gun.
Next will be some banker who killed himself by jumping head first into an axe.
"Lets see if they have 260k employees then i would guess 260k "key man" policies. "
I would guess more like 1 million. Think of all the people who ever worked there, people retired in their 80s after a lifelong career, people who quit after a few weeks, everyone inbetween.
I'm not sure it is so much about profit, as it is about avoiding taxes; I believe the deductibles are tax deductible, while the claims are tax free?
I know this industry. One of my partners was instrumental in BOLI development back in the 80's.
BOLI funds the reitrement of the key execs (it isn't keyman insurance). The "highly compensated" face a retirement income shortfall even if they max out all the tax-deferred vehicles available. This mimics a tax deferred account (inside life insurance is tax free).
Yes, I know what you've been taught. However, this is life insurance like you never seen, and you can't buy it; only banks can.
The cost of the insurance is minimal. In fact, the surrender value at the end of the first year is more than the premium.
The BOLI cannot be tied directly to the execs retirement; by law it cannot match exactly.The bank enters a contract with the employee to pay out a retirement/death benefit. Then the bank takes out the insurance, but it isn't tied to the first contract.
It typically guarantees a payout to the employee, or his/her family for a certain number of years at a definite annual amount if the employee dies prematurely.
The bank, if the employee dies of natural causes, recoups their loss on the retirement package (plus a little extra) from the life insurance payout. While the employee is retired, the bank borrows the money out of the insurance at a net-zero APR, the balance of which remains inside the life insurance to go to the bank at the employees death (tax free death benefit, of course). Or the bank can pay the exec however they want and let the life insurance continue to grow.
Lots of tax benefits to it, which is why banks use it (see the figures above).
The main benefit is this: banks can use up to 25% of their tier one assets (think deposits) to fund these. This is why it grew so rapidly after the bailouts; more free money for their reitrements. The auditors don't give it a second glance as long as it stays no more than 25%.
The rule of thumb is no more than 10% of the employees can be top hats. Although, legally I believe the figure can be as high as 33%.
COLI works similarly, but for is any c-corp (only) and not banks.
Essentially, a BOLI or COLI is selling greed and discrimination. Unlike qualified plans, not every employee has to have one.
..... and your local "My Cousin Vinny" lawyer can beat the highly paid army of JPM laywers to prove that assertion in a court of bought-and-paid-for judges and attorneys, I assume?
His name was Jerry Callo, and yes he can.
I concede the point.
You are assuming that there's an honest judge somewhere out there.
Who needs honesty with monetized justuce incorporated. Rehypothecated morals and integrity for sale.
2 years and 2 months.....just to be on the safe side
Double indemnity clause : if death involves Big Foot or any Malaysian transportation vehicle
Even with the welcome demise of banksters, they still make profits from it, Remarkable.
Necrophelia.
Give it a name.
Disgusting.
Paraphrasing here, but: Bankers gonna bank!
WTF???
They must get like 5 phone calls a day from the actuaries at the underwriters telling them to cut this shit out.
Not to mention directions to the strip club and 8-ball orders.
Pretty sure the underwriters would be giving them a lot worse than that if they were on the way to paying out hundreds of billions in claims. Another reason this conspiracy theory doesn't hold up.
IMHO this talk of banker-suicide is mythology that
the banker problem has already been solved.
It has NOT.
We still need to round up all the bankers, and
kill them are selves, only then will we know for
sure they're dead.
Watch "game of thrones", most of the series is
about clever way's of torturing bankers, lawyers,
and judges and cops.
I can just imagine a "terrorist" attack in a room full of low level, yet heavily insured, bankers. There's all kinds of ways to get creative with this one, expecially when one consideres they own the justice system.
I've never liked the term "human capital".
It always seemed so cold and calculating ;-)
You are a number and you will like it, now get back to work number 1223456, or you will go see "human resources*."
* Those were the people who ran the sausage machine in the Floyd video.
pods
You seem to post with a French accent, 24601.
and the names of future banker suicides is on the double secret classified list !!!
That page is somewhere between the list of where our TARP funds went and the jobs created under Obama. We'll never know.
tarp = taxpayers are refunding premiums.
Who is paying on these claims? Is it BUFFET?
Or EUROPE?
I know that the MH-370 was insured by KAZAHK Reinsurance
It would be interesting to know if there are payout's.
BUFFET model, is "DENY CLAIMS, and COLLECT PREMIUMS"
If any of this would be true, then who is paying off these claims? Come on name name(s) of insurance company's.
Isn't that pretty much old news, companys have always insured 'key employees' and knowing their financial value would telegraph to competitors their value on the 'hoof'.
AIG?
prudential.
we're never gonna lose a fucking penny on THIS ONE!!!
Bankers not only get rich off of our present and future wages , but off of our deaths too. They're a bunch of sick fuckers who are a parasite killing it's host.
Just like their parasitic kin, .gov.
Long live Putin. You get any of these vermin and the whole world will love you.
I can't decide if Putin is on team Obama, putting on an elaborate show in Ukraine or if he is genuinely opposing the West.
Oligarchs in the West and Oligarchs in the East
both need to have scared Sheeple
in order to justify further increases in expenditures for their MICs.
why is everybody afraid of blood? it's the solution!
If these aren't known in the trade as "WTC7 policies", they should be.
Word up
bank-owned life insurance expert ....michael myers
bwahahahahahahahah.
Hey jamie, we need a few million, send micheal and don't forget the hockey mask.
I could just stay up all night reading about dead bankers.
The practice of a corporation / company / malevolent entity keeping a life insurance policy on a current and/or former employee is NOTHING new.
I would be willing to bet that each and every one of us, myself included, has at least one such insurance policy from a current, or former employer, payable to same.
Here is additional info on the subject:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/april_19.htm
http://deadpeasantinsurance.com/which-employers-bought-policies-on-the-l...
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/dead-peasant-life-insurance-policies-fair/stor...
http://www.legalzoom.com/legal-headlines/corporate-lawsuits/can-your-emp...
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/lake-worth-woman-sues-walmart-cit...
BBS = Banker Backed Securities
Think I will bundle me some bankerz and sell them into the market. Lever UP!
They know they are doomed when the revolution starts.
Go long dead bankerz bitchez.
Because somebody had to say it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5aZJBLAu1E
Calling all Zero Hedgers to teach this dumb wit a lesson. I normally do not post but came across these comments on Investing.com in the gold forum under the charts. "Er Webber Apr 29, 2014 02:09AM GMT Zero Hedge is a “financial” news website. The writers all write under the pseudonym of "Tyler Durden", Brad Pitt's character from Fight Club (pathetic joke) . Each post comes with a little black and white icon of Brad Pitt's head. On Zero Hedge you can read “news”, rumors, “facts”, figures, off-the-cuff analysis, and political screeds (anti-government, anti-American and pro-hard money). On the sidebars, you can click on ads for online brokerages, gold collectibles. "------------------------------------ "Er Webber Apr 29, 2014 02:11AM GMT As you might expect, it's not hard to look back at Zero Hedge's predictions and see that a large number of them are junk. For example, here's a bunch of posts from 2009 predicting imminent hyperinflation and the next apocalypse. They are batting 0000% on all their “end of world” predictions. The site posts nearly indecipherable analyses of multiple seemingly unrelated subjects to point towards a consistent theme of economic collapse any day now, and has accurately predicted pretty much NOTHING. Tyler seems to repeat The Economic Collapse Blog's idea of posting blog articles many times a day and encouraging people to post it as far and wide as humanly possible. Tyler moves away from the format of long lists to write insanely dense volumes filled with (often contradicting) jargon that makes one wonder if the writers even know what the words actually mean. The site first appeared in early 2009, meaning that (given Tyler's habit of taking a dump on each and every positive data point), anyone listening to him from the beginning missed the entire 2009-2013 rally in the equities market – and are now losing thousands on gold. The site is a big fat hoax. And if you read it for anything other than amusement, you're almost certainly a big fat sucker. Anyone that can believe the words of someone who is unwilling to reveal their names – is as naïve as it gets here on this earth."
that comment came from the CIA........SOP for them...
My metals are for 30 years from now. I'm at about even. We will see how far my dollar goes then.
Ummm, I have an insurance policy on you that says you might not want to plan that far into the future.
I actually saw another similar "article" slandering brother Durden.
I see it as the bomber over the target gets the most flak. Keep dropping 'em, Tyler. Fire for effect.
Space Monkeys got your back....
Poor slob doesn't understand you don't make or lose any money until you sell. Very few people who bought gold in 2009 are selling now (and if they did they'd about break even). If you bought stocks in 2009 and sold them last year you made out like a bandit, but if you're still holding them... well we'll see. For some reason the financial press is never urging people to cash in before the peak.
Keep Calling "Conspiracy Therory" a use selective, maybe self planted missinformation.
I read and make judgements, and think what if....10% is true? Now after years of paying attention, seeing what did become true. The fight to keep ahead of most, knowing what some Elitist are capable of.....Including paying Shills to do thier Dirty Work. When will you realize your short term gain give most people Long term Pain?
Do you sleep at night? Do you think you ever hurt your own family?
Translation:
Don't read Zerohedge. It's all lies and garbage.
Go to pro-government, pro-American website. Only here you find the full truth.
Well, the author of that copy/pasted diatribe obviously doesn't read ZH too much and therefore probably is a government stooge or has an axe to grind.
What I read are not long lists of predictions about this or that imminent apocalypse as the author claims, but researched analysis which exposes the criminality, corruption, countless moral hazards and flawed policies (economic, social/domestic and increasingly geo-political) of those in government and Wall Street. These can lead to catastrophe. Readers make their own judgements.
There's a big difference between these things. Too bad the author missed all that.
{shrug}
Best comment ever on this site. Bar none.
Banks may be able to leverage their bets with the insurance company and have a pay day if:
-disgruntled former employees go postal
-neo nazi revolutionaries burn branches
-ethnic seperatists lynch bourgeois counter-revolutionary swine
-cult leaders spike company picnic Kool Aide
"Yes Ms. Masters, go straight through that door".
We need a crisis.
It's gone too far.
"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the life expectancy of a 25 year old male with a Bachelor’s degree or higher as of 2006 was 81 years of age. But in the past five months, five highly educated JPMorgan male employees in their 30s and one former employee aged 28, have died under suspicious circumstances, including three of whom allegedly leaped off buildings – a statistical rarity even during the height of the financial crisis in 2008."
You fail statistics forever. Life expectancy is an average, not a guarantee. JPM has tens of thousands of employees in that age cohort. Plus heart attacks and respiratory attacks are hardly suspicious and if you know someone who's survived a 60 foot fall without a parachute, you know a gorram miracle. A 10 foot fall can kill a person.
And I suppose the insurance company with whom JPM has these life insurance policies is happily paying out claims on "suspicious" deaths? I trust the judgement of someone with skin in the game rather than random conspiracy theorists on the Internet, lol.
Heart attacks at age 34 are fucking suspicious. And how about the guy who died in early February, but the coroner won't be getting around to fingering the cause of death until four months later???
I've got the perfect addendum to this.
Put in a clause that actually claims the body, postmortem.
JPMorgue buys Purina Dog Chow company.
Take out policies on all US dogs, with same claim to dog carcasses postmortem.
Dogs become Soylent Green Chow.
Double Plus Good payday when dogs start dying from eating rotten dead bankers.
A perfect loop. Dog eat dog.....
Edit: Not saying I could do this.
I like dogs too much.
Didn't the new CFO of AIG get accidentally dead right after the '08 shitstorm?
So the the banks have turned to eating their own
If borrowers can't pay, kill them and collect the money, its the Bankster way-
Couldn't bankers also be used as collateral for some of their own deals? That would keep up the pressure to work hard...
I've taken out a policy on Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein. I'll give 50% of the payout to the very first person that calls to inform me of their deaths--just because I want to be the second person to know...
You would actually be in the right because the actions of those men influence each of us greatly on an economic basis, so an insurable interest does indeed exist.
By calling it a "trade secret", they're basically admitting that the deaths of their current and former employees is a revenue stream for them. You can't get any more perverse than that, but I suppose for these evil bastards who live on debt slavery, fraud, and theft, the commoditisation of human life is par for the course.
And I thought the Insurance on the Airplanes as well as the twin Towers would have created a stir, nothing
Same as this ........ nothing.
Could someone post a link to the Internet death game where you can bet who is Next?
keep abreast of the real financial news and you'll bet like an insider......
"Fun stuff", and "I did not know that", RIP Johhny Carson.
"Both JPMorgan and Citigroup also own massive amounts of bank-owned life insurance (BOLI), a controversial practice that pays the corporation when a current or former employee dies. (In the case of former employees, the banks conduct regular “death sweeps” of public records using former employees’ Social Security numbers to learn if a former employee has died and then submits a request for payment of the death benefit to the insurance company."
As if the banksters couldn't get anymore guillotine eligible. These people know no bounds or propriety.
"To guillotines and beyond!"
Apparently, they will profit on that too.
Dearth By Guillotine is double Indemity
Uhhh...
It's not controversial at all. It's standard practice. Last time I checked several years ago there was over $115 billion in BOLI. Once again, it funds (unofficially) the Top Hats retirement packages.
Most (all?) states don't allow STOLI anymore (Stranger Owned Life Insurance), so by law, if they follow the law, the employee has to consent.
The Walmart "Janitor Insurance" can't be done anymore. Yeah, that was the reason they hired the 88 year old grampas as "Greeters". "Hi, and welcome to Walmart. When I die they make out like bandits""
Also, all insurance companies do a quarterly sweep of SS#'s as people tend to forget about them.
How does an insurance company profit on that?
Lacking the actuarial probability of profit, why would the insurance company sell the policy?
Insurance isn't a lottery, and you can't 'insure' an event whose occurence and timing are near certain.
If an 80-year-old greeter, or a 30 year old banker, is statistically at risk under a policy, then the premiums will be such that the insurance company is taking in more than it is paying out.
So...a 30-something banker was employed for maybe 10 years at the bank. If the policy on him is $1 Million, and enough people are dying young to lower their statistical mortality age to 30-something, then premiums will be north of $100K per year.
See?
There are two sides to every transaction. The banker is betting that he will pay less in premiums than he will receive in policy payout, the insurance company is betting the opposite.
On the face of it, without some transfer of wealth from outside the insurance and banking market, there is no way to make an imaginary profits scam via insurance money - because the premiums will be driven up.
gcjohns:
Policies are either guaranteed rate, or variable (mutual fund). Most insurance companies get a rate of return on their investments of 5%-7% per year. They guarantee 2%-3%.
Think of it like a bank; you make a deposit which the institution knows you will take out at some point. They just make money on the spread and try to diversify risk in various groups or pools of insureds.
And, it is amazing how accurate they are at predicting lifespans (Italian acturaries know exactly when your going to die).
BOLI relies on the experience that Top Hats live to ripe-old ages; they can reduce the cost of the insurance and grow money tax-deferred inside the policy. The bank loans money from the policy at net 0% to pay the retirement package (certain amount over vertain period), but still leaves some in there for a death benefit (tax-free). They pay tax on the money before it goes in, which is why it is tax-free as a death benefit to them.
Life insurance isn't gambling. Gambling is betting on the probability of an outcome. Death is certain (100%). And, if life expectancy drops to 30, we've all got bigger problems than life insurance premiums.
The insurance companies are working with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars and they know very closely what their risk spread (payout) will be (actuarial tables are incredibly accurate); it's a simple calculation. They know what they need to earn on their investments to make a profit.
From the banks perspective, they are using the bank's money and it shows up as an asset. Here's the neat thing for banks; the growth on the investment (BOLI) doesn't show up on their books. They are funding their retirements at 100% or more of the salary. It's not a loss to the bank because it comes back in (plus more) at their death. In sum, it doesn't "cost" them anything.
The next debate point is, "What about the time value of money." Believe me, that's covered, too.
It's not a scam. You can debate the morality of life insurance in general, but the numbers work.
Great. Now people are basically betting on other peoples lives. How far further down must we sink before it goes up again?
I also wonder how the statistics behind the premium calculation looks like. This is fucked up.
There is something despicable and evil when a nation and its laws allow a former employer to collect on a former employee.
And then we wonder how the US can allow drone strikes and waterboarding of foreigners.
Correction. Drone strikes and water boarding are perfectly acceptable to use on American citizens too. You haven't seen domestic lethal drones yet but is a matter of time.
All you need to be is to be deemed a terrorist and everything is on the table.
So they will get a secret funeral and a tombstone with a fake name?
Still more in the World of Shit of contemporary Economic asshattery.
Don't miss tonight's Special Podcast, an Interview with Steve Ludlum of Economic Undertow.
RE
Given that the finance sector is bloated, and there are easily 100,000 if not a million people in the USA alone employed by banks, I'm not sure the recent "string" of 10 or so bankers dying by suicide or other means is statistically significant. Bankers die and commit suicide just like everybody else.
Nail gun wounds to the back of the head? Entire family shot, the woman in the back. Pulling over to the side of the road and throwing yourself over an EMBANKMENT. Leaping from heights that could leave them in vegetative state. Are you joking? Watch Goodfellas. Henry did what those bankers would have done.
Thirtysomething JPM Banksters take note, GS not the only one doing Gods work. They should croke an older one to make it look more random.
Personally, I'd prefer a few higher up the food chain, preferably C-Suite.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/04/28/14630/federal-judges-plead-guilty
When Linda Wolicki-Gables and her husband appealed a lawsuit all the way to the second-highest court in the nation against Johnson & Johnson over a malfunctioning medication pump that had been implanted in her body, the couple had no idea that one of the judges who decided their case had a financial stake in the giant multinational company.
Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Hill owned as much as $100,000 in Johnson & Johnson stock when he and two other judges ruled against the Gables’ appeal in the precedent-setting case.
For the Gables, a different decision in the 2011 appeal could have helped them win a verdict for as much as $20 million, a sum that would have vastly improved the quality of her care, according to their attorney, T. Patton Youngblood Jr. Today, the Florida woman is a partial paraplegic, he said, largely confined to her home with only her husband to care for her.
The Center also found that Hill ruled on three other appeals involving companies in which he owned stock, violating clear rules governing the federal courts. In all four instances, the court rulings favored his financial interest. In a statement released by the court, Hill said he was not aware of those stock holdings at the time due to the complexity of his family’s trusts.
Seems sensible. It's good practice to insure your livestock.
Certainly!
In 2011, on average, 13 workers died per day in work-related fatalities.
Not counting the 50,000 who died from occupational illnesses!
And donT forget to consider workplace-violence fatalities too. Somewhat special category.
"only" 791 in 2011.
Death on the Job
Lesson Learned: Be sure to insure your Proles!
If you buy that many policies, I bet they throw in the nail guns for free.
Nah, banksters are greedy, but they will let you have a 1.5% discount
Money from policy premia,
Nail guns for free.
Kinda cool, there are song lyrics somewhere there...
They can print money but need insurance? WTF ever.
what company is underwriting these policies... you need to have an “insurable interest” in the risk you insure.... so how does that apply to FORMER EMPLOYEES... AND ISNT THE INSURED'S CONSENT (signature) REQUIRED OTHERWISE? ... i have to watch Discovery ID for answers now..
Looks like that (often suspicious) deaths of bank employees - past and present (but presumably not key players) - has become a new tax-free revenue line.
Who-da-thunk that anyone could stoop that low?
As always follow da money!
just like those put options right around 9.11.01.
nothing to see here...
.
So FOIA will be honored for dead peasants, but not for dead banksters. Got it.