The account is treated almost like a checking account and pays "modest interest". Then the insurance companies invest this money getting a much greater return than the beneficiary. The other thing is that the accounts are not in banks that are federally insured like our savings. They are in "corporate coffers". Business week reports that the beneficiaries receive "misleading guarantees" about the safety of the accounts.
Don't you just love the terms they use when they report on the excessive robbery of their colleagues. Enron/ Worldcom, just "accounting errors." Exorbitant executive pay Not "Contrary to the Public Interest", or "Ill Advised". Why they can't find $9 billion of US taxpayer's money missing in Iraq; a problem of excessive "archival retrieval". Lying to the parents or spouse of a young worker killed in Iraq or Afghanistan in order to gain access to their loved ones death benefits, giving them "misleading guarantees".
What scum these people are. Speaking to Harvard Business School about the buyout bubble David Rubenstein, the founder of the Carlyle Group said that, “I analogize [private equity] to sex...You realize there were certain things you shouldn’t do, but the urge is there and you can’t resist.” They "can't resist". He's right about that, that's what capitalism is about, making money off the misery of others. Yet workers are supposed to show extreme restraint when faced with a choice of things "you shouldn't do" or no food on the table. A poor person or young worker would not get much sympathy from one of their judges using the "can't resist" defense. The insurance bigwigs can't resist ripping of the mothers of dead soldiers but that defense will work somehow for them.
Given the mood of anger against the insurance companies, bankers and the rich in general the politicians are forced to take a closer look at this practice and curb some excesses for a while. But we live in a "free" society which means the capitalist class will not prevent their heroes from acting on their "urges" for too long.
They often say that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. That may be. One thing for sure, the terrorists who harm us the most are in our own back yard.
* Business Week: 8-2-2010
2 comments:
this article makes very important points again.we might argue that it is a narrow ideal,but it takes great bravery to put your life on the line for your country.it is so bad for our communities to have people willing to profit from this.it is simply a great evil.
I don't think the average worker joined the military to put their lives on the line for God and country. Most of us are in through the economic draft.
The high unemployment, upwards of 20 million people by some accounts, increases the pool of likely applicants for the military and the wars of aggression carried out by the US government.
Some might think their cause is just but a month or two in Iraq bursts that bubble.
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