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Gherkins and salad
Dec. 1st, 2009 01:26 pmTo the Swiss Re Gherkin this morning to hear chief economist Thomas Hess continue the "inflation is nothing to worry about" story, although it was at least tempered with "in the developed economies". I'm not quite sure how he thinks inflation in the BRIC countries will remain isolated from the developed world to which they are exporting their goods, but there you go -- he gets paid about five times what I get, I should think.
The driving theme of the morning appeared to be that the insurance industry is shitting itself that it will get tarred with the same brush as the banks when it comes to new solvency and capital rules. While Swiss Re shouts to the rooftops that the industries are fundamentally different (mainly in the worlds of liquidity and (non)-contagion) you can sort of see the point of view of the other side. After all, AIG was the biggest disaster, and AIG was an insurer. That it was the Financial Products division that caused the problem is a matter of how many angels can you get on the head of a pin to the people looking into the causes of the systemic crisis.
The other problem is that the insurance industry is very much a game of two halves -- life and non-life -- and if legislators have difficulties differentiating between the business models of the banks (borrow short and lend long) and insurers (take the money up-front and hope that the shit doesn't hit the fan) then you can imagine how much greater a difficulty they have between short-term business and long-term life assurance with a very large savings component.
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Managed to end the month only losing two-thirds of what I won in October (and that being won in the first 10 days of October to boot). I carried over quite a lot of bonusto December too, so things weren't even as bad as that. Whether I can win all of that back in December is debatable, as I am restricting myself to $100 buy-ins until I re-reach my peak earnings. If I put in the hours, it should be doable. Of course, there's always the Armageddon possibility, that I am now officially not a long-term winner at the game. But we'll take that scenario as and when, shall we?
___________
The driving theme of the morning appeared to be that the insurance industry is shitting itself that it will get tarred with the same brush as the banks when it comes to new solvency and capital rules. While Swiss Re shouts to the rooftops that the industries are fundamentally different (mainly in the worlds of liquidity and (non)-contagion) you can sort of see the point of view of the other side. After all, AIG was the biggest disaster, and AIG was an insurer. That it was the Financial Products division that caused the problem is a matter of how many angels can you get on the head of a pin to the people looking into the causes of the systemic crisis.
The other problem is that the insurance industry is very much a game of two halves -- life and non-life -- and if legislators have difficulties differentiating between the business models of the banks (borrow short and lend long) and insurers (take the money up-front and hope that the shit doesn't hit the fan) then you can imagine how much greater a difficulty they have between short-term business and long-term life assurance with a very large savings component.
++++++++
Managed to end the month only losing two-thirds of what I won in October (and that being won in the first 10 days of October to boot). I carried over quite a lot of bonusto December too, so things weren't even as bad as that. Whether I can win all of that back in December is debatable, as I am restricting myself to $100 buy-ins until I re-reach my peak earnings. If I put in the hours, it should be doable. Of course, there's always the Armageddon possibility, that I am now officially not a long-term winner at the game. But we'll take that scenario as and when, shall we?
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