Life Insurance Companies Quotes

Those who are courageous, go headlong. They search all opportunities of danger. Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies. Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer. And not only in the outside seas they surf; they surf in their innermost seas. And not only on the outside they climb Alps and Himalayas; they seek inner peaks. But remember one thing: never forget the art of risking— never, never. Always remain capable of risking. Wherever you can find an opportunity to risk, never miss it, and you will never be a loser. Risk is the only guarantee for being truly alive.

A NATION'S GREATNESS DEPENDS ON ITS LEADER To vastly improve your country and truly make it great again, start by choosing a better leader. Do not let the media or the establishment make you pick from the people they choose, but instead choose from those they do not pick. Pick a leader from among the people who is heart-driven, one who identifies with the common man on the street and understands what the country needs on every level. Do not pick a leader who is only money-driven and does not understand or identify with the common man, but only what corporations need on every level. Pick a peacemaker. One who unites, not divides. A cultured leader who supports the arts and true freedom of speech, not censorship. Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist. Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies. Most importantly, a great leader must serve the best interests of the people first, not those of multinational corporations. Human life should never be sacrificed for monetary profit. There are no exceptions. In addition, a leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader. And lastly, pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Apart from stemming consumption, the most intractable puzzle that Paul Ehrlich has encountered is why health decisions about Mother Nature—the mother that gives us life and breath—are made by politicians, not by scientists who know how critical her condition is. “It’s the immoral equivalent of insurance company accountants making decisions about our personal health.” Even

But as the Pujo Committee finds “the so-called control of life insurance companies by policy-holders through mutualization is a farce” and “its only result is to keep in office a self-constituted, self-perpetuating management.

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are include...how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living Earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam, who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumour of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.

Space is dangerous,” Mitch snapped. “It’s what we do here. If you want to play it safe all the time, go join an insurance company. And by the way, it’s not even your life you’re risking. The crew can make up their own minds about it.

Spaulding, and Dr Aaron Moore, founders of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, Durham, North Carolina (founded 1898).

Every month that you send a check to the life insurance company, you're making a bet with them. Don't worry, one day you'll win.

They became the directing power in the life insurance companies, and other corporate reservoirs of the people’s savings-the buyers of bonds and stocks. They became the directing power also in banks and trust companies-the depositaries of the quick capital of the country-the life blood of business, with which they and others carried on their operations. Thus four distinct functions, each essential to business, and each exercised, originally, by a distinct set of men, became united in the investment banker. It is to this union of business functions that the existence of the Money Trust is mainly due.[1]

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.

She worked for a life insurance company that had only recently become sufficiently progressive to hire Negroes. This meant that she worked in an atmosphere so positively electric with interracial good will that no one ever dreamed of telling the truth about anything.

It was a rite of passage each year at Manhattan Life Insurance Company. The golden doors would open every summer to a new crop of bright-eyed college students, all of which were over-qualified for a job that required little more than a high school-equivalent GED and a fully loaded MetroCard.

A statistician for the Prudential Insurance Company predicted the imminent extinction of Black people in his epic book that relied on the 1890 census figures. Unlike the Plessy ruling, Frederick Hoffman’s Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro received plenty of attention in 1896. Packed with statistical tables and published by the American Economic Association, the book was a pioneering work in American medical research, and it catapulted Hoffman into scientific celebrity in the Western world as the heralded father of American public health. At “the time of emancipation,” he wrote, southern Blacks were “healthy in body and cheerful in mind.” “What are the conditions thirty years after?” Well, “in the plain language of the facts,” free Blacks were headed toward “gradual extinction,” pulled down by their natural immoralities, law-breaking, and diseases. Hoffman supplied his employer with an excuse for its discriminatory policies concerning African Americans—that is, for denying them life insurance. White life insurance companies refused to insure a supposedly dying race. Yet another racist idea was produced to defend a racist policy.3

Today the man who has the courage to build himself a house constructs a meeting place for the people who will descend upon him on foot, by car, or by telephone. Employees of the gas, the electric, and the water- works will arrive; agents from life and fire insurance companies; building inspectors, collectors of radio tax; mortgage creditors and rent assessors who tax you for living in your own home.

State-regulated insurance companies, like the Equitable Life Insurance Company and the Prudential Life Insurance Company, also declared that their policy was not to issue mortgages to whites in integrated neighborhoods. State insurance regulators had no objection to this stance. The Bank of America and other leading California banks had similar policies, also with the consent of federal banking regulators.

Then again, by the nineteenth century, owners could purchase life insurance on their slaves (from some of the most reputable insurance companies in the country) and be paid three-quarters of their market value upon their death. These insurance companies, including modern household names New York Life, Aetna, and U.S. Life, were just some of the many northern corporations whose fortunes were bound up with slavery.

In the meantime, he rejected a friend’s offer to help him get a job at an insurance company, dismissing it as “an eight hour day of mindless drudgery.” As he told Marić, “One must avoid stultifying affairs.”8

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands! how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.

Prospecting & Marketing Institute, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I were conducting a multiday seminar for her clients — corporate executives and general agents from life insurance companies — about new methods of recruiting agents. Even though the attendees had paid a very high per-person fee to be there, most had traveled great distances, and the subject was of critical importance to them, we both noticed that on breaks, what most of them were talking about was where

The murder of poor Albert Snyder had one other unusual feature: the people responsible were caught. That didn’t actually happen much in America in the 1920s. New York recorded 372 murders in 1927; in 115 of those cases no one was arrested. Where arrests were made, the conviction rate was less than 20 percent. Nationally, according to a survey made by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company—and it is notable that the best records were kept by insurers, not police authorities—two-thirds of America’s murders were unsolved in 1927.

Why did you spend your whole life working in an insurance company? You should have been a painter, a musician, well, I don't know. Why didn't you follow your calling?" Don Rigoberto nodded and reflected a moment before answering. "Because I was a coward, son," he finally murmured. "Because I lacked faith in myself. I never believed I had the talent to be a real artist. But maybe that was an excuse for not trying. I decided not to be a creator but only a consumer of art, a dilettante of culture. Because I was a coward is the sad truth. So now you know. Don't follow my example. Whatever your calling is, follow it as far as you can and don't do what I did, don't betray it.

His doctor had treated two cases of falciparum malaria prior to treating Elon—both patients died.” Thiel remembers that he had a morbid conversation with the HR director after learning that Musk had taken out, on behalf of the company, a key-man life insurance policy for $100 million. “If he had died,” Thiel says, “all of our financial problems were going to be solved.

I have often witnessed this at hospital billing counters, where salaried or reasonably well to do people typically have a health insurance to take care of their bills, while a common man loses out. In such a pesky situation, these commoners are compelled to either take loans or sell their personal assets to be able to afford a reasonable medical treatment. Lack of home insurance has always been another concern. People lose out on their entire life’s savings when their homes get whisked away due to calamities.

They don't deserve the truth. You called them rubes, and how right you are. They have set aside what brains they have—and many of them have quite a lot—and put their faith in that gigantic and fraudulent insurance company called religion. It promises them an eternity of joy in the next life if they live according to the rules in this one, and many of them try, but even that's not enough. When the pain comes, they want miracles. To them I'm nothing but a witch doctor who touches them with magic rings instead of shaking a bone rattle over them.

A prison is perhaps the easiest place to see the power of bad incentives. And yet in many walks of life, we find otherwise normal men and women caught in the same trap and busily making the world much less good than it could be. Elected officials ignore long-term problems because they must pander to the short-term interests of voters. People working for insurance companies rely on technicalities to deny desperately ill patients the care they need. CEOs and investment bankers run extraordinary risks—both for their businesses and for the economy as a whole—because they reap the rewards of success without suffering the penalties of failure. District attorneys continue to prosecute people they know to be innocent because their careers depend on winning cases. Our government fights a war on drugs that creates the very problem of black-market profits and violence that it pretends to solve. We need systems that are wiser than we are. We need institutions and cultural norms that make us more honest and ethical than we tend to be. The project of building them is distinct from—and, in my view, even more important than—an individual’s refining his personal ethical code.

The insurance companies that create annuities often make them seem like investments,” he wrote in a recent explainer about annuities. “But really they’re more like insurance.” Lieber went on: “Like insurance to stave off financial disaster, an annuity is something you purchase to guarantee that you won’t run out of money if you live a long time.” In fact, thinking of annuities as insurance makes them a lot more sensible than thinking of them as investments—because as investments they are not good at all. But that’s not their goal—their goal is to insure you against the risk of outliving your money.

Declan Lynch was a liar. He'd been a liar his entire life. Lies came to him fluidly, easily, instinctively. What does your father do for a living? He sells high-end sports cars in the summer, life insurance in the winter. He's an anesthesiologist. He does financial consulting for divorcees. He does advertising work for international companies in English-speaking markets. He's in the FBI. Where did he meet your mother? They were on yearbook together in high school. They were set up by friends. She took his picture at the county fair, said she wanted to keep his smile forever. Why can't Ronan come to a sleepover? He sleepwalks. Once he walked out to the road and my father had to convince a trucker who'd stopped before hitting him he was really his son. How did your mother die? Brain bleed. Rare. Genetic. Passes from mother to daughter, which is the only good thing, 'cause she only had sons. How are you doing? Fine. Good. Great. At a certain point, the truth felt worse. Truth was a closed-casket funeral attended by its estranged living relatives, Lies, Safety, Secrets. He lied to everyone. He lied to his lovers, his friends, his brothers. Well. More often he simply didn't tell his brothers the truth.

Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs. In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production. Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal. Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness. Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.' Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature. Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.

As he surveyed the world being remade by Silicon Valley, and especially what was once called the sharing economy, he began to see through the fantasy-speak. Here were a handful of companies thriving by serving as middlemen between people who wanted rides and people who offered them, people who wanted their Ikea furniture assembled and people who came over to install it, people who defrayed their costs by renting out a room and people who stayed there. It was no accident, Scholz believed, that these services had taken off at the historical moment that they had. An epic meltdown of the world financial system had cost millions of people their homes, jobs, and health insurance. And as the fallout from the crash spread, many of those cut loose had been drafted into joining a new American servant class. The precariousness at the bottom, which had shown few signs of improving several years after the meltdown, had become the fodder for a bounty of services for the affluent—and, Scholz noted, for the “channeling of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.” Somehow, the technologies celebrated by the Valley as leveling playing fields and emancipating people had fostered a slick new digitally enabled upstairs-downstairs line in American social life.

Well, “maybe it is,” Chotiner wrote, “but the Republican Party must do something more than point out the evils of the administration’s plan—it must show that it is ready to meet the needs of Tom Jones when illness strikes.” And so Congressman Nixon joined with other Republican moderates to introduce a national health insurance plan in which the states and federal governments would subsidize the purchase of insurance from private companies. “Our bill involves neither socialized medicine nor medicine for indigents only,” the announcement said. “It recognizes that the problem of medical care for the people is urgent and that government should participate in its solution.

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

Incidentally, those who were shocked by Bush the Younger’s shout that we are now “at war” with Osama should have quickly put on their collective thinking caps. Since a nation can only be at war with another nation-state, why did our smoldering if not yet burning bush come up with such a war cry? Think hard. This will count against your final grade. Give up? Well, most insurance companies have a rider that they need not pay for damage done by “an act of war.” Although the men and women around Bush know nothing of war and less of our Constitution, they understand fund-raising. For this wartime exclusion, Hartford Life would soon be breaking open its piggy bank to finance Republicans for years to come. But the mean-spirited Washington Post pointed out that under U.S. case law, only a sovereign nation, not a bunch of radicals, can commit an “act of war.” Good try, G.W. This now means that we the people, with our tax money, will be allowed to bail out the insurance companies, a rare privilege not afforded to just any old generation.

Well, buying an annuity means you give the insurance company a lump sum—say, $500,000 at age 60—and in return you get a guaranteed monthly payout (for example, $2,400 each month) for the rest of your life, however long that happens to be. Like all insurance, annuities aren’t free—insurance companies have to make money to stay in business!—but if your goal is to maximize the life experiences you can buy with the money you’ve earned, they’re a very sensible solution. That’s partly because, even after the insurance company’s fees, your monthly payouts amount to more than you would probably be willing to pay yourself if you wanted to make sure you didn’t outlive your money. For example, one popular rule of thumb for retirement spending is the “4 percent rule,” whereby you withdraw 4 percent from your savings each year of retirement. Well, with annuities, your annual payouts will probably amount to more than 4 percent of what you put into the annuity—and, unlike the 4 percent withdrawals, those payouts are guaranteed to continue for the rest of your life.

This has been a long and imperfect journey. It is a journey I am still on. I will always be on. And it is one I would like to share with you. I want company along my road. This is an invitation to question your life and, should you desire, to find the courage to erase the lines that imprison you and to reimagine a better you. And if you do not get it just right (none of us do), you are invited to keep redrawing and redrawing until you feel your outer world matches your inner life. If falling short of our goals is truly what terrifies us, then we should do away with half measures. The notion that dipping a toe in the water somehow protects us is nothing short of fear propagation—and in fact guarantees the hurt we fear. Be bold. Name what you want. Give it voice and then give it action. Success is not guaranteed but commitment and courage are the only insurance we have. This is serious. Every day that passes is another day closer to looking back on your life and seeing whether you have done something meaningful. Don’t let the days pass without doing something great. Be the architect of your dreams.

At the same time, surveillance will change the very nature of insurance. Insurance is an industry, traditionally, that draws on the majority of the community to respond to the needs of an unfortunate minority. In the villages we lived in centuries ago, families, religious groups, and neighbors helped look after each other when fire, accident, or illness struck. In the market economy, we outsource this care to insurance companies, which keep a portion of the money for themselves and call it profit. As insurance companies learn more about us, they’ll be able to pinpoint those who appear to be the riskiest customers and then either drive their rates to the stratosphere or, where legal, deny them coverage. This is a far cry from insurance’s original purpose, which is to help society balance its risk. In a targeted world, we no longer pay the average. Instead, we’re saddled with anticipated costs. Instead of smoothing out life’s bumps, insurance companies will demand payment for those bumps in advance. This undermines the point of insurance, and the hits will fall especially hard on those who can least afford them.

What is a “pyramid?” I grew up in real estate my entire life. My father built one of the largest real estate brokerage companies on the East Coast in the 1970s, before selling it to Merrill Lynch. When my brother and I graduated from college, we both joined him in building a new real estate company. I went into sales and into opening a few offices, while my older brother went into management of the company. In sales, I was able to create a six-figure income. I worked 60+ hours a week in such pursuit. My brother worked hard too, but not in the same fashion. He focused on opening offices and recruiting others to become agents to sell houses for him. My brother never listed and sold a single house in his career, yet he out-earned me 10-to-1. He made millions because he earned a cut of every commission from all the houses his 1,000+ agents sold. He worked smarter, while I worked harder. I guess he was at the top of the “pyramid.” Is this legal? Should he be allowed to earn more than any of the agents who worked so hard selling homes? I imagine everyone will agree that being a real estate broker is totally legal. Those who are smart, willing to take the financial risk of overhead, and up for the challenge of recruiting good agents, are the ones who get to live a life benefitting from leveraged Income. So how is Network Marketing any different? I submit to you that I found it to be a step better. One day, a friend shared with me how he was earning the same income I was, but that he was doing so from home without the overhead, employees, insurance, stress, and being subject to market conditions. He was doing so in a network marketing business. At first I refuted him by denouncements that he was in a pyramid scheme. He asked me to explain why. I shared that he was earning money off the backs of others he recruited into his downline, not from his own efforts. He replied, “Do you mean like your family earns money off the backs of the real estate agents in your company?” I froze, and anyone who knows me knows how quick-witted I normally am. Then he said, “Who is working smarter, you or your dad and brother?” Now I was mad. Not at him, but at myself. That was my light bulb moment. I had been closed-minded and it was costing me. That was the birth of my enlightenment, and I began to enter and study this network marketing profession. Let me explain why I found it to be a step better. My research led me to learn why this business model made so much sense for a company that wanted a cost-effective way to bring a product to market. Instead of spending millions in traditional media ad buys, which has a declining effectiveness, companies are opting to employ the network marketing model. In doing so, the company only incurs marketing cost if and when a sale is made. They get an army of word-of-mouth salespeople using the most effective way of influencing buying decisions, who only get paid for performance. No salaries, only commissions. But what is also employed is a high sense of motivation, wherein these salespeople can be building a business of their own and not just be salespeople. If they choose to recruit others and teach them how to sell the product or service, they can earn override income just like the broker in a real estate company does. So now they see life through a different lens, as a business owner waking up each day excited about the future they are building for themselves. They are not salespeople; they are business owners.

I just have to ask these questions. Are you DEA? FDA? NICB? NHCAA? Are you a private investigator hired by any private or governmental entity? Do you work for a medical insurance company? Are you a drug dealer? Drug addict? Are you a clinician? A med student? Getting pills for an abusive boyfriend or employer? NASA?” “I think I have insomnia. That’s my main issue.” “You’re probably addicted to caffeine, too, am I right?” “I don’t know.” “You better keep drinking it. If you quit now, you’ll just go crazy. Real insomniacs suffer hallucinations and lost time and usually have poor memory. It can make life very confusing. Does that sound like you?” “Sometimes I feel dead,” I told her, “and I hate everybody. Does that count?” “Oh, that counts. That certainly counts. I’m sure I can help you. But I do ask new patients to come in for a fifteen-minute consultation to make sure we’ll make a good fit. Gratis. And I recommend you get into the habit of writing notes to remind yourself of our appointments. I have a twenty-four-hour cancellation policy. You know Post-its? Get yourself some Post-its. I’ll have some agreements for you to sign, some contracts. Now write this down.” Dr. Tuttle told me to come in the next day at nine A.M.

If there are costs to becoming legal, there are also bound to be costs to remaining outside the law. We found that operating outside the world of legal work and business was surprisingly expensive. In Peru, for example, the cost of operating a business extralegally includes paying 10 to 15 per cent of its annual income in bribes and commissions to authorities. Add to such payoffs the costs of avoiding penalties, making transfers outside legal channels and operating from dispersed locations and without credit, and the life of the extralegal entrepreneur turns out to be far more costly and full of daily hassles than that of the legal businessman. Perhaps the most significant cost was caused by the absence of institutions that create incentives for people to seize economic and social opportunities to specialize within the market place. We found that people who could not operate within the law also could not hold property efficiently or enforce contracts through the courts; nor could they reduce uncertainty through limited liability systems and insurance policies, or create stock companies to attract additional capital and share risk. Being unable to raise money for investment, they could not achieve economies of scale or protect their innovations through royalties and patents.

What’s it about?” Danny seemed authentically curious. “The night. It’s got its own set of rules.” “Day’s got rules too.” “Oh, I know,” Joe said, “but I don’t like them.” They stared through the mesh at each other for a long time. “I don’t understand,” Danny said softly. “I know you don’t,” Joe said. “You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy’s leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there’s a difference, like the banker’s just doing his job but the loan shark’s a criminal. I like the loan shark because he doesn’t pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be sitting where I’m sitting right now. I’m not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men’s club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid’s grades. Die at my desk, and they’ll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt’s hit the coffin.” “But that’s life,” Danny said. “That’s a life. You want to play by their rules? Go ahead. But I say their rules are bullshit. I say there are no rules but the ones a man makes for himself.

Staying at Home during this lockdown period is the right time to find your life purpose within Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan. This is an opportunity to know yourself better and to understand what motivates and feeds your mind and your soul, and also to find out as to where you fit in the bigger Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan. All members of each family/clan possess characteristics, abilities, and qualities specific to that family/clan. It is up to the family/clan to distinguish itself amongst other families/clans. Ba Ga Mohlala has become an institution to build cooperation in order to build and forge unity for social and economic benefits for Ba Ga Mohlala and Banareng in general. An institution is social structure in which people cooperate and which influences the behavior of people and the way they live. intelligence and assertiveness comes to us as our nature, it is in our blood (DNA) and all there is for us to do is to nature it and it will shine, otherwise it will gather dust and rust in us. The key of brotherhood and sisterhood is that brothers and sisters carry the same genetic code. Together, united, they carry the legacy of their forefathers. Our bond (through our shared blood/DNA) as Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan is our insurance for the future. As Ba Ga Mohlala we can have our own Law firms, Auditing Firms, Doctors's Medical Surgeries, Private School, Private Clinics or Private Hospital, farms and lot of small to medium manufacturing, service, retail and wholesale companies and become self relient. All it takes to achieve that is unity, willpower and commitment.

If you're involved in a motorcycle accident, this can result in devastating injuries, permanent disability or perhaps put you on on-going dependency on healthcare care. In that case, it's prudent to make use of Los Angeles motorcycle accident attorneys to assist safeguard your legal rights if you are a victim of a motorcycle accident. How a san diego car accident attorney Aids An experienced attorney will help you, if you're an injured motorcycle rider or your family members in case of a fatal motorcycle accident. Hence, a motorcycle accident attorney assists you secure complete and commensurate compensation because of this of accident damages. In the event you go it alone, an insurance coverage company may possibly take benefit and that's why you'll need to have a legal ally by your side till the case is settled to your satisfaction. If well represented after a motorcycle collision, you may get compensation for: Present and future lost income: If just after motor cycle injury you cannot perform and earn as just before, you deserve compensation for lost income. This also applies for a loved ones that has a lost a bread-winner following a fatal motorcycle crash. Existing and future healthcare costs, rehabilitation and therapy: these consist of any health-related fees incurred because of this of the accident. Loss of capability to take pleasure in life, pain and mental anguish: a motorcycle crash can lessen your good quality of life if you cannot stroll, run, see, hear, drive, or ride any longer. That is why specialists in motor cycle injury law practice will help with correct evaluation of your predicament and exercise a commensurate compensation. As a result, usually do not hesitate to speak to Los Angeles motorcycle accident attorneys in case you are involved in a motor cycle accident. The professionals will help you file a case within a timely fashion also as expedite evaluation and compensation. This could also work in your favor if all parties involved agree to an out-of-court settlement, in which case you incur fewer costs.

Collateral Capacity or Net Worth? If young Bill Gates had knocked on your door asking you to invest $10,000 in his new company, Microsoft, could you get your hands on the money? Collateral capacity is access to capital. Your net worth is irrelevant if you can’t access any of the money. Collateral capacity is my favorite wealth concept. It’s almost like having a Golden Goose! Collateral can help a borrower secure loans. It gives the lender the assurance that if the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender can repossess the collateral. For example, car loans are secured by cars, and mortgages are secured by homes. Your collateral capacity helps you to avoid or minimize unnecessary wealth transfers where possible, and accumulate an increasing pool of capital providing accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding. It is the amount of money that you can access through collateralizing a loan against your money, allowing your money to continue earning interest and working for you. It’s very important to understand that accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding are the key components of collateral capacity. It’s one thing to look good on paper, but when times get tough, assets that you can’t touch or can’t convert easily to cash, will do you little good. Three things affect your collateral capacity: ① The first is contributions into savings and investment accounts that you can access. It would be wise to keep feeding your Golden Goose. Often the lure of higher return potential also brings with it lack of liquidity. Make sure you maintain a good balance between long-term accounts and accounts that provide immediate liquidity and access. ② Second is the growth on the money from interest earned on the money you have in your account. Some assets earn compound interest and grow every year. Others either appreciate or depreciate. Some accounts could be worth a great deal but you have to sell or close them to access the money. That would be like killing your Golden Goose. Having access to money to make it through downtimes is an important factor in sustaining long-term growth. ③ Third is the reduction of any liens you may have against these accounts. As you pay off liens against your collateral positions, your collateral capacity will increase allowing you to access more capital in the future. The goose never quit laying golden eggs – uninterrupted compounding. Years ago, shortly after starting my first business, I laughed at a banker that told me I needed at least $25,000 in my business account in order to borrow $10,000. My business owner friends thought that was ridiculously funny too. We didn’t understand collateral capacity and quite a few other things about money.

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Andreessen talked about the difference between technology companies and “normal” companies. He said the output of normal companies is their product: cars, shoes, life insurance. In his view, the output of technology companies is innovation. Whatever they are selling today, they will be selling something different in five years. If they stop innovating, they die.

You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy's leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there's a difference, like the banker's just doing his job but the loan shark's a criminal. I like the loan shark better because he doesn't pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be where I am sitting right now. I'm not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men's club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid's grades. Die at my desk, and they'll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt's hit the coffin.

I felt I had a calling in my life to be in full-time ministry, and although I was very successful in the insurance business, earning a very large six-figure income, I gave notice to my company and sold out in January 2007 to go into the ministry full-time.

WHY HABITS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS If our programmed behaviors are so influential in guiding our everyday actions, surely harnessing the same power of habits can be a boon for industry. Indeed, for those able to shape them in an effective way, habits can be very good for the bottom line. Habit-forming products change user behavior and create unprompted user engagement. The aim is to influence customers to use your product on their own, again and again, without relying on overt calls to action such as ads or promotions. Once a habit is formed, the user is automatically triggered to use the product during routine events such as wanting to kill time while waiting in line. However, the framework and practices explored in this book are not “one size fits all” and do not apply to every business or industry. Entrepreneurs should evaluate how user habits impact their particular business model and goals. While the viability of some products depends on habit-formation to thrive, that is not always the case. For example, companies selling infrequently bought or used products or services do not require habitual users—at least, not in the sense of everyday engagement. Life insurance companies, for instance, leverage salespeople, advertising, and word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations to prompt consumers to buy policies. Once the policy is bought, there is nothing more the customer needs to do. In this book I refer to products in the context of businesses that require ongoing, unprompted user engagement and therefore need to build user habits. I exclude companies that compel customers to take action through

Debbie Simoncini-Rosenfeld, vice president of an insurance company, was trying to deal with her eight-year-old daughter, Jessica, “screaming and yelling” to stay up later than her 8:30 bedtime. Her daughter wanted to read later at night. So Debbie traded her daughter a 9:30 P.M. bedtime in exchange for no bare-belly shirts at school and no riding her bike in the street. Debbie valued her daughter’s decorum and safety more than a later bedtime; her daughter valued a later bedtime more than decorum and safety. “Children like to be involved in making the rules,” Debbie said. “If they get something, they will give up something.

With our eager cooperation, food manufacturers and restaurant chains and fast-food giants get rich by making us sick. Then the pharmaceutical giants and the insurance companies and hospitals and other health care providers get rich by making us better. Not healthy, mind you, but well enough to work and pay the bills we’ve just run up. If we ate our broccoli and quinoa and salads and berries and almonds and drank our water and green tea and took long, vigorous hikes and got enough sleep, we might feel great, but who would profit? Nobody. What kind of system is that?

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The tobacco settlement money went to lawyers and to governments, which effectively turned the money into a tax and then spent it on state bureaucracy. Regular folk did not receive any tax refund checks, nor did we see lower health insurance premiums, but we did pay more for everyday products not related to smoking. This means we are, in effect, paying billions of dollars in additional tax besides the billions in legal fees because of the tobacco settlement, as well as funding the next legal campaign to collect another large pay-day in contingency fees. It is very interesting to note during the tobacco suit that, while claiming various individuals were being victimized, or medical costs were mounting from misleading advertising or dishonest business practices, it was lawyers and governments, not the people nor their insurance companies, that collected all the loot. This the type of litigation did nothing to improve your life and it raised your cost of living.

Some of these tasks are interesting. Tinkering with machines is fun. Marketing decisions, especially how to manage the Web site and AdWords, are an intellectual challenge. Some are unpleasant but lead to a satisfying conclusion, like nagging customers for past-due payments. (They've always paid me, eventually.) Some are frightening, I can change an employee's life with my decisions about pay rates and whether to hire and fire. And many are just aggravating: the taxes, insurance purchases, legal issues, and some of the employee interactions. Each layer of government, each enormous and indifferent private bureaucracy, requires its own special knowledge: the right form filled out the correct way and filed at the right time. Learning how to complete on type of tax filing tells you nothing whatsoever about how to fill out the next form. One health insurer presents a quote one way, another in an entirely different way, and both require extensive study to determine the best choice. It's like stepping back to an old, old world where every tree, every rock, every stream is inhabited by its own resident spirit, and each needs to be mollified in the correct manner. Or very bad things happen. I didn't start my company to do any of this. I had no idea, when I decided that I would make furniture in exchange for money, that this was in my future. And the strange universe of administration expands as the company grows.

I also quickly came to appreciate the importance of watching what’s said around clients. When clients make unexpected requests for legal advice – as they often do – I learned that it was better to tell them I’d get back to them with an answer, and go away, research the question, and consult with a supervising attorney, rather than firing back an answer off-the-cuff. A friend of mine at another firm told me a story that illustrates the risks of saying too much. It seems an insurance company had engaged my friend’s California-based firm to help in defending against an environmental claim. This claim entailed reviewing huge volumes of documents in Arizona. So my friend’s firm sent teams of associates to Arizona, all expenses paid, on a weekly basis. Because the insurance company also sent its own lawyers and paralegals, as did other insurance companies who were also defendants in the lawsuit, the document review facility was often staffed with numerous attorneys and paralegals from different firms. Associates were instructed not to discuss the case with anyone unless they knew with whom they were speaking. After several months of document review, one associate from my friend’s firm abandoned his professionalism and discretion when he began describing to a young woman who had recently arrived at the facility what boondoggles the weekly trips were. He talked at length about the free airfare, expensive meals, the easy work, and the evening partying the trips involved. As fate would have it, the young woman was a paralegal working for the insurance company – the client who was paying for all of his “perks” – and she promptly informed her superiors about his comments. Not surprisingly, the associate was fired before the end of the month. My life as an associate would have been a lot easier if I had delegated work more freely. I’ve mentioned the stress associated with delegating work, but the flip side of that was appreciating the importance of asking others for help rather than doing everything myself. I found that by delegating to paralegals and other staff members some of my more tedious assignments, I was free to do more interesting work. I also wish I’d given myself greater latitude to make mistakes. As high achievers, law students often put enormous stress on themselves to be perfect, and I was no different. But as a new lawyer, I, of course, made mistakes; that’s the inevitable result of inexperience. Rather than expect perfection and be inevitably disappointed, I’d have been better off to let myself be tripped up by inexperience – and focus, instead, on reducing mistakes caused by carelessness. Finally, I tried to rely more on other associates within the firm for advice on assignments and office politics. When I learned to do this, I found that these insights gave me either the assurance that I was using the right approach, or guidance as to what the right approach might be. It didn’t take me long to realize that getting the “inside scoop” on firm politics was crucial to my own political survival. Once I figured this out, I made sure I not only exchanged information with other junior associates, but I also went out of my way to gather key insights from mid-level and senior associates, who typically knew more about the latest political maneuverings and happenings. Such information enabled me to better understand the various personal agendas directing work flow and office decisions and, in turn, to better position myself with respect to issues and cases circulating in the office.

Where do such numbers come from? I’ll tell you where they don’t come from: They don’t come from the body-weight tables and formulas created by health experts. These tables and formulas, which include height-weight charts used by life insurance companies and body-mass index guidelines used widely by doctors, are far too general to help individual men and women determine an ideal body weight.

Civil rights lawyers like Fred Gray knew that the discriminatory actions of insurance companies not only depleted blacks of their current wealth but deprived future generations of the financial benefits burial insurance and life insurance provided for whites: a safety net, a leg up, an inheritance. Decades later, class-action lawsuits by living clients and surviving beneficiaries would reveal the appalling extent of the abuse: half a billion dollars in restitution and legal fines were wrenched from almost one hundred companies in the redress of more than fourteen million

Life’s too short to wallow in the weeds! There are thousands of stocks to choose from. Some investors do build a career around digging into the minutiae in the footnotes. For banking and insurance analysts, it’s mandatory. But as a portfolio manager who didn’t own Enron stock, I didn’t need it. Disclosure is a wonderful thing, but I’ve never had good luck with complex corporate structures that require massive information statements. Not infrequently, companies with complex corporate structures or opaque disclosures are trying to hide something.

In fact, my colleague Peter D'Arruda ("Coach Pete") sums it up best when he says that no one is any safer than the person who has looked ahead and shifted the financial burden from their family to an insurance company in the form of life or long-term care insurance. There's really no better way to bring peace of mind with you into retirement

I WOULD OFTEN think back to that Santelli clip, which foreshadowed so many of the political battles I’d face during my presidency. For there was at least one sideways truth in what he’d said: Our demands on the government had changed over the past two centuries, since the time the Founders had chartered it. Beyond the fundamentals of repelling enemies and conquering territory, enforcing property rights and policing issues that property-holding white men deemed necessary to maintain order, our early democracy had largely left each of us to our own devices. Then a bloody war was fought to decide whether property rights extended to treating Blacks as chattel. Movements were launched by workers, farmers, and women who had experienced firsthand how one man’s liberty too often involved their own subjugation. A depression came, and people learned that being left to your own devices could mean penury and shame. Which is how the United States and other advanced democracies came to create the modern social contract. As our society grew more complex, more and more of the government’s function took the form of social insurance, with each of us chipping in through our tax dollars to protect ourselves collectively—for disaster relief if our house was destroyed in a hurricane; unemployment insurance if we lost a job; Social Security and Medicare to lessen the indignities of old age; reliable electricity and phone service for those who lived in rural areas where utility companies wouldn’t otherwise make a profit; public schools and universities to make education more egalitarian. It worked, more or less. In the span of a generation and for a majority of Americans, life got better, safer, more prosperous, and more just. A broad middle class flourished. The rich remained rich, if maybe not quite as rich as they would have liked, and the poor were fewer in number, and not as poor as they’d otherwise have been. And if we sometimes debated whether taxes were too high or certain regulations were discouraging innovation, whether the “nanny state” was sapping individual initiative or this or that program was wasteful, we generally understood the advantages of a society that at least tried to offer a fair shake to everyone and built a floor beneath which nobody could sink.

Best insurance policies are those that remain not encashed.

...if I was willing to sound cynical - that the only reason that psychiatrists diagnose their clients is so that insurance companies can pay the bills, and I actually believe that that's more true than the claim that the psychiatric diagnostic categories actually capture the essence of the person's problems.

By the beginning of August, a rumor was flying that Chatham Phenix was not going to develop the site, as originally planned, but had found prospective developers who would. The link between the site and the developers was the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which had made the loan to Brown. As a Met Life board member, Al Smith had been intimate with the details of the loan to Brown and recognized the desirability of the property,

The ship later christened the Edmund Fitzgerald was the brainchild of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Northwestern Mutual had been investing for some time in the mining and processing of iron and other similar minerals dug out of the ground around the Great Lakes, and in 1957, Northwestern Mutual became the first life insurance company in America to invest in a ship to haul the ore.

The pandemic of 1918–1919 was clearly one of influenza, except in two of its features. One, it killed more humans than any other disease in a period of similar duration in the history of the world. Two, it killed an unprecedentedly large proportion of the members of a group who, according to records before and since, should have survived it with no permanent injury. The year 1918 was an actuarial nightmare: the flu and pneumonia death rate of life insurance policy holders over 45 and 50, for whose deaths the insurance companies were at least partly prepared, did, of course, rise, but only slightly as compared to the rate of young adults, whose deaths in great numbers no insurance company anticipated.16

but the truth is that comparing what private equity firms used to be—and where the perception of private equity still sits in many quarters—to what they are now is like comparing a Motorola cellphone from the 1990s to the latest iPhone. There’s a world of differences; it’s not even close. For pension funds and other investors in private equity funds, the firms they back gives them access to investment opportunities they can’t find or execute themselves. What’s more, they get consistent investment returns out of these opportunities, whether they include leveraged buyouts, credit investments, infrastructure assets, essential utilities, real estate transactions, technology deals, natural resources projects, banks, insurance companies, or life science opportunities. They can buy companies, carve out businesses, build up companies through acquisitions and organic growth, spin off businesses, take companies private from the public market, buy businesses from other funds they manage, draw margin loans to finance dividends, and refinance the capital structure pre-exit. And more besides.

Table Of Contents Introduction The Problem With Contracts The Smart Solution Distinctive Properties What You Need to Know What Is A Smart Contract? Blockchain and Smart Contracts Vitalik Buterin On Smart Contracts Digital and Real-World Applications How Smart Contracts Work Smart Contracts' Historical Background A definition of Smart Contracts The promise What Do All Smart Contracts Have in Common? Elements Of Smart Contracts Characteristics of Smart Contracts Capabilities of Smart Contracts Life Cycle Of A Smart Contract Why Are Smart Contracts Important? How Do Smart Contracts Work? What Does Smart Contract Code Look Like In Practice? The Structure of a Smart Contract Interaction with Traditional Text Agreements Are Smart Contracts Enforceable? Challenges With the Widespread Adoption of Smart Contracts Non-Technical Parties: How Can They Negotiate, Draft, and Adjudicate Smart Contracts? Smart Contracts and the Reliance on “Off-chain” Resources What is the "Final" Agreement Reached by the Parties? The Automated Nature of Smart Contracts Are Smart Contracts Reversible? Smart Contract Modification and Termination The Difficulties of Integrating Specified Ambiguity Into Smart Contracts Do Smart Contracts Really Guarantee Payment? Allocation of Risk for Attacks and Failures Governing Law and Location Best Practices for Smart Contracts Types Of Smart Contracts A Technical Example of a Smart Contract Smart Contract Use-Cases Smart Contracts in Action Smart Contracts and Blockchains In the Automobile Industry Smart Contracts and Blockchains in Finance Smart Contracts and Blockchains In Governments Smart Contracts And Blockchains In Business Management Smart Contracts and Blockchains in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) Smart Contracts and Blockchains In Rights Management (Tokens) Smart Contracts And Blockchains In NFTs - Gaming Technology Smart Contracts and Blockchains in the Legal Industry Smart contracts and Blockchains in Real Estate Smart Contracts and Blockchains in Corporate Structures - Building DAOs Smart Contracts and Blockchains in Emerging Technology Smart Contracts and Blockchains In Insurance Companies Smart Contracts and Blockchains in Finance Smart Contracts And Blockchains In Powering DEFI Smart Contracts  and Blockchains In Healthcare Smart Contracts and Blockchains In Other Industries What Smart Contracts Can Give You How Are Smart Contracts Created? Make Your Very Own Smart Contract! Are Smart Contracts Secure?

On the other side of the street from the library, sitting in the back of a beat-up Ford F-150 with blacked-out rear windows and cradling a considerably more modern SLR camera was a man who wasn’t really called Mike Lee. He wasn’t an employee of an insurance company called Atlanta Life, either, though he really was from Georgia

If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name.

Private equity surrounds you. When you visit a doctor or pay a student loan, buy life insurance or rent an apartment, pump gas or fill a prescription, you may—wittingly or not—be supporting a private equity firm. These firms, with obscure names like Blackstone, Carlyle, and KKR, are actually some of the largest employers in America and hold assets that rival those of small countries. Yet few people understand what these firms are or how they work. This is unfortunate because private equity firms, which buy and sell so many businesses you know, explain innumerable modern economic mysteries. They explain, in part, why your doctor’s bill is so expensive and why your veterinary clinic seems to be in decline. They explain why so many stores are understaffed or closing altogether. They explain why there are ever fewer companies in America and why those that remain are selling ever lower-quality products. In fact, despite their relative anonymity, private equity firms are poised to reshape America in this decade the way in which Big Tech did in the last decade and in which subprime lenders did in the decade before that. And as we will explore, they’re all doing it with the government’s help.

Suddenly, at a time when medicine had more of value to offer, tens of millions of people were interested in gaining access and expected their employers to provide insurance so they could do so. For-profit insurance companies moved in, unencumbered by the Blues’ charitable mission. They accepted only younger, healthier patients on whom they could make a profit. They charged different rates, depending on factors like age, as they had long done with life insurance. And they produced different types of policies, for different amounts of money, which provided different levels of protection.

I'll give you an actual example. Pamela Yellen, the CEO of the Prospecting & Marketing Institute, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I were conducting a multiday seminar for her clients — corporate executives and general agents from life insurance companies — about new methods of recruiting agents. Even though the attendees had paid a very high per-person fee to be there, most had traveled great distances, and the subject was of critical importance to them, we both noticed that on breaks, what most of them were talking about was where they were going to go play golf that evening when the seminar let out, the next morning before it started, or the day afterward. Both Pamela and I made note of how important it was to these clients of hers to get out on the golf course. This led to one of the most unusual ads Pamela has ever written and run in her own industry's trade journals, with the headline: “Puts Recruiting on Autopilot So You Can Go Play Golf!” The entire ad is reproduced on the following page, Exhibit #3. As you'll see, it sold the system we devised for insurance agent recruiting, but it did so circuitously, by emphasizing the hidden benefit: you'll get the job done with less time invested, so you can spend more time on the golf course.

Your complete online source for final expense life insurance, burial insurance and cremation insurance. We are licensed in 46 states and carry over 20 final expense whole life insurance companies. Our promise to our customer is that we will find the lowest price for the most amount of coverage available, to them.

While my coffee brews, I flip through the mail: catalog, bill, junk, bill … and an envelope with the return address for LifeLine, the agency that handled Paul’s life insurance policy. Probably just a follow-up, since they already sent Lana the generous settlement. I slide my finger under the seal and remove the letter. I scan the document quickly at first, then my eyes widen: medical fraud … investigation … misrepresentation … My hand begins shaking and I almost drop the sheet of paper. It sounds as if the insurance company thinks I had something to do with Paul’s death. I sink onto a counter stool, rereading the letter, this time more closely. Then I reach for my cell phone and call my lawyer.

Americans. All had good credit ratings, and banks were willing to issue mortgages if the FHA would approve. But the agency stated that “no loans will be given to colored developments.” When banks told the real estate agent that without FHA endorsement they would not issue the mortgages, he approached the Prudential Life Insurance Company, which also said that although the applicants were all creditworthy, it could not issue mortgages unless the FHA approved. Today, Fanwood’s population remains 5 percent black in a county with a black population of about 25 percent.

At various times he was on the boards of no less than five investment and insurance companies, the chief one being the National Mutual Life Assurance Company, whose chairman he was from 1921 to 1937. From 1923 to 1931, he was chief proprietor and chairman of the board of the weekly journal, the Nation and Atheneum, working closely with its editor, Hubert Henderson. His editorship of the Economic Journal (1911–37) was also conducted from London. London was crucial to Keynes as a base of influence.

The German inflation was a huge fraud which benefited the debtors and speculators at the expense of the large, prudent middle class. The following things happened in Germany: a. Bonds (including governments), real estate mortgages, life insurance, bank savings and all fixed value investments became worthless because they were redeemed by debtors with depreciated money. b. Common stocks of industrial concerns soared to fantastic heights and paid huge dividends. When stabilization came these stocks crashed and only the strongest companies survived. In spite of this common stocks proved to be the best investment. c. Real estate owners who paid off their mortgages with depreciated currency and held on to it until stabilization came, still had something of value. The same applied to purchasers of commodities such as diamonds, etc. d. Industries expanded, built huge additions to their plants and paid in worthless currency. Of all classes, the industrialists fared best. e. Professional men were badly off.

The following rules are the fundamental differentiators to keep in mind throughout this book. 1. Retirement Is Worst-Case-Scenario Insurance. Retirement planning is like life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case scenario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive. Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons: a. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice. b. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hotdogs-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2–4% per year. The math doesn’t work.3 The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending. c. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that’s the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you’ll be so damn bored that you’ll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You’ll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn’t it? I’m not saying don’t plan for the worst case—I have maxed out 401(k)s and IRAs I use primarily for tax purposes—but don’t mistake retirement for the goal.

We are the ones paying for health care, not your employer, an insurance company, or the government. If you won’t protect your money, they’re going to keep taking more of it. The customer is always right, but health care power players don’t consider you their most important customer. Even though you are the one paying for your health care and undergoing the treatment, the industry players are teaming up to enrich themselves. The business of medicine exploits your sickness for profit. It’s life and death for you. It’s dollars and cents for them. And the system is not operating in good faith. The health care industry wastes obscene amounts of your money. The solution isn’t to keep taking more money from you. The solution is to reduce the waste so you pay less. Our health care system is not broken. It was made this way. Our elected officials and health care companies have had decades to reduce health care costs. If they wanted to fix the problem, they could. We must stop being naïve and realize that saving our money is not their intent. So we need to stick up for ourselves and demand that the system change. If we don’t, the exploitation of our sickness will never stop. I

Let’s take the example of life insurance. How can life insurance companies—some of the most conservative companies in America—insure people’s lives when they know they’re all going to die? • It’s risk they’re aware of. They know everyone’s going to die. Thus they factor this reality into their approach. • It’s risk they can analyze. That’s why they have doctors assess applicants’ health. • It’s risk they can diversify. By ensuring a mix of policyholders by age, gender, occupation and location, they make sure they’re not exposed to freak occurrences and widespread losses. • And it’s risk they can be sure they’re well paid to bear. They set premiums so they’ll make a profit if the policyholders die according to the actuarial tables on average. And if the insurance market is inefficient—for example, if the company can sell a policy to someone likely to die at age eighty at a premium that assumes he’ll die at seventy—they’ll be better protected against risk and positioned for exceptional profits if things go as expected. We do exactly the same things in high yield bonds, and in the rest of Oaktree’s strategies.

For who owns that car, or that washing machine, or that apartment? Not the man himself. The banks own them, the insurance companies, ultimately the State. They are his only on credit, on sufferance. Every month he lops off a bit of his life and labor and mails it to the bank, or the credit card company, or the Government. He is in thrall; and there is no foreseeable end to it.

For who owns that car, or that washing machine, or that apartment? Not the man himself.The banks own them, the insurance companies, ultimately the State. They are his only on credit, on sufferance. Every month he lops off a bit of his life and labor and mails it to the bank, or the credit card company, or the Government. He is in thrall; and there is no foreseeable end to it.

the chairman of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, was saying that his company was spending more money on insurance for its employees than it was spending on coffee.

Naturally, immunity is a natural physician that fends off all invading bacteria and viruses, whereas food becomes its medicine or trouble since that appears to increase or decrease your immune system; thus, choose the right and healthy food, and adopt this proverb: Eat to be alive, not live to eat. Experienced and qualified doctors understand the side effects of medicines before the prescription. Indeed, the majority of doctors hold a professional degree and certificate, whereas virtually none of them has the latest and accurate knowledge; as a result, it executes no difference between such doctors and a robot. When naturopathy experts and spiritual figures predict with significant certainty that you have no cancer or whatever other sickness, it confuses, surprises, and creates suspicious feelings in your mind, whereas doctors have diagnosed metastatic cancer. What should one believe and what not? However, one’s enemies are still awaiting its death. One breathes, expecting and waiting for the miracle of God; it will soon happen if one believes. You neither feel trust in your family doctor and specialists nor feel satisfaction with their treatment. You always realize that they do not tell the truth about how risky your disease is, and they never discuss it. If doctors fail to meet your sufferings of mucus, shortness of breath, and swallowing difficulties because of medication’s side effects, they will indeed put you on medical victimization, ignoring the better quality of life that the medical system promises. Most doctors work for the insurance companies instead of caring for patients. It is factually a medical crime that doctors, hospitals, or insurance providers put patients at high risk. Many doctors do not respect patients’ requests to fulfill it because patients want treatment according to international medical guidelines. Such refusal results in the spreading of their suffering. It saddens patients that the doctors only think about the insurance provider and not the patient. Indeed, such a situation can put one on the track in a dilemma. However, one’s experience and others may prove that none of the medicines give patients a good quality of life, whether homeopathy, allopathy, naturopathy, or even a spiritual one. If your fate stands as a barrier in front of you, no one sees or realizes what you have faced and is still facing worries about your health. Factually, robot doctors cannot provide significant information that may help to ease patients’ suffering; there is only one way to change lifestyle and stay strict on diet; it will have a better result than medicine, which is full of toxins that damage patients’ health instead of curing it. One can think or predict that the medical world has become a medical trade in which one cannot exclude the medical mafia. Is it a valid context that requires an authentic answer?

If you’re Black or brown, the value of your life is less than the fragile masculinity of a cop who wants to feel superior or a racist who wants you out of the way so they’re not forced to face someone they don’t understand. El valor de tu vida es lo que vale el segundo en que alguien aprieta el gatillo, el segundo en que alguien pone toda su ira en su mano y te clava un cuchillo. Not enough? Think harder. The value of your life is zilch to most people. That’s why they sell you food that will kill you. That’s why they put poison in the water and don’t care if you get cancer. That’s why they allow you to rely on our shitty health system and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage based on a ridiculously long list of preexisting conditions, one of which is probably being alive.

Among the top fifteen hundred companies in the United States, only about 2.5 percent of the highest-paying executive positions are held by women.

She had chosen chemistry over astronomy in the first place because it was more relevant to everyday life. Testing wallpaper for arsenic for an insurance company and co-analyzing the entire water supply of Massachusetts, she saw the good that science could do in the world.

life insurance companies have been reporting alarming increases in all-cause mortality and disability in working-age people. We may be experiencing both a huge human tragedy as well as a profound failure of the US government to serve and protect its citizens. We may be forced to conclude that the genetic vaccines that were so aggressively promoted have failed and the federal campaign to prevent early treatment with lifesaving drugs has contributed to a massive, avoidable loss of life.

Hydoski and a few others supported Harris’s view, even as another point kept being brought up: legal advice from the insurance company. If Harris apologized, “we admit liability,” putting the church’s financial standing, ability to secure loans, maintain property, and pastors’ retirement accounts at risk if Covenant Life was found liable.

In a targeted world, we no longer pay the average. Instead, we’re saddled with anticipated costs. Instead of smoothing out life’s bumps, insurance companies will demand payment for those bumps in advance.

Shelby put in her time, did the right thing, took good care of her mom, and now it’s her turn. She’s going to go back to school. She says she’s going to be a nurse, but you watch—she’ll end up a doctor or something. She’s quiet, but scary smart. She has money from selling a paid-off house—so she can travel all over the world, pay for a dozen years of college. You know how important that is, we’ve been all over the world and it’s worth seeing.” Aiden laughed. “I hope she sees better parts than we did. You saw a bunch of deserts, I went to sea, medical officer on a ship…” “But it all counts. Life experience—it’s worth it. She’s young—she has time to look around. I’ll tell you what—that girl’s going to have men hunting her down, she’s that good-looking. She never had that before. In high school she was shy, had a couple of short-term boyfriends, but she lost a lot of shyness, got tougher and more aggressive while she was taking care of her mom and had to go up against doctors and therapists and hospitals and insurance companies.” His eyes glistened proudly. “Believe me, she’s ready now. It’s her time.” He’s letting her go, Aiden thought. For her, though it’s going to kill him.

According to Satwalekar, former head of HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd, who was on the bank's board for eight years, the biggest thing about leadership is asking questions and not necessarily providing the answers. 'That makes your people think. Look at the retail portfolio of all banks and NBFCs [non-banking finance companies] in 2008—whoever was aggressive got decimated. The exception is HDFC Bank as they were always very clear in their mind on what could and could not be done. Aditya would ask the right questions and make his people see what was required. The top line was not a target for him. Value creation through profitability was the objective,' says Satwalekar.

Jan was born in a small town outside of Kiev, Ukraine. He was an only child. His mother was a housewife, his father a construction manager. When Koum was sixteen, he and his mother immigrated to Mountain View, California, mainly to escape the anti-semitic environment of their homeland. Unfortunately, Jan’s father never made the trip. He got stuck in the Ukraine, where he eventually died years later. His mother swept the floors of a grocery store to make ends meet, but she was soon diagnosed with cancer. They barely survived off her disability insurance. It certainly wasn’t the most glamorous childhood, but he made it through. After college, Jan applied to work at Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer. He spent nine years building his skills at Yahoo, and then applied to work at Facebook. Unfortunately, he was rejected. In 2009, Jan bought an iPhone and realized there was an opportunity to build something on top of Apple’s burgeoning mobile platform. He began building an app that could send status updates between devices. It didn’t do very well at first, but then Apple released push notifications. All of the sudden, people started getting pinged when statuses were updated. And then people began pinging back and forth. Jan realized he had inadvertently created a messaging service. The app continued to grow, but Jan kept quiet. He didn’t care about headlines or marketing buzz. He just wanted to build something valuable, and do it well. By early 2011, his app had reached the top twenty in the U.S. app store. Two years later, in 2013, the app had 200 million users. And then it happened: In 2014, Jan’s company, WhatsApp, was acquired by Facebook―the company who had rejected him years earlier―for $19 billion. I’m not telling this story to insinuate that you should go build a billion-dollar company. The remarkable part of the story isn’t the payday, but the relentless hustle Jan demonstrated throughout his entire life. After surviving a tumultuous childhood, he practiced his craft and built iteratively. When had had a product that was working, he stayed quiet, which takes extreme discipline. More often than not, hustling isn’t fast or showy. Most of the time it’s slow and unglamorous―until it’s not. 

I saw a documentary about prostitution in Holland a few years ago, that said over there health insurance actually pays for monthly visits to a prostitute for the disabled, because they feel that sex is part of a healthy life, so unmarried disabled men have a right to have sex, even if it's with a paid prostitute. Pretty bizarre, huh? Can you imagine a US health insurance company picking up the bill for your romp in the hay with a hooker?

Somewhere along the way companies grew to have no respect for the people whose lives their products perhaps intended to improve, refusing to provide workers with a decent wage or health insurance. Despite this, people fight to endure, just as they always have. And as they fight, some percentage of them will look to a drug that falsely promises help in that cause.

Global Insurance Travel Medical Coverage GeoBlueAffiliate Available for PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory Members GeoBlue Voyager Global Insurance for Single-Trip International Travel travel insurance Global insurance health coverage may be the last thought we have when planning a trip to another country. Most people do not even realize that while traveling, your current medical insurance can be useless in some countries or that your usual over-the-counter medications are prohibited in many locations. Protect Your Health Around the World. What is GeoBlue VoyagerSM? Short-term travel medical insurance for U.S. residents traveling abroad. Why Choose GeoBlue? Strength of a U.S. Insurer Underwritten by 4 Ever Life Insurance Company, rated A- (Excellent) by A.M. Best. 4 Ever Life is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Better Coverage: Our plans are U.S. licensed and feature coverage more generous than plans sold as “surplus coverage.” Our plans do not restrict illnesses or injuries resulting from a terrorist act. We do not impose precertification penalties for hospitalization. We provide coverage for pre-existing conditions for medical evacuation. Pre-existing conditions are also covered in all instances by our Choice plan. A Better Kind of Care: International travelers can leave home feeling confident that a trusted source of care is available at a moment’s notice - no matter what town, country or time zone, with global insurance. Travel anywhere knowing that if your health is a concern, getting good care is not. Global insurance coverage is available through PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory's affiliate partner, GeoBlue. You will have access to short-term global insurance health coverage options that best suit your needs while traveling. Just another way PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory looks out for all your health and wellness needs.* At PrestigeCare, we provide health solution services. *Up to $250,000 of coverage available through our affiliated partner for an unlimited number of trips of a maximum of 30 days in duration.

Global Insurance Travel Medical Coverage GeoBlueAffiliate Available for PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory Members GeoBlue Voyager Global Insurance for Single-Trip International Travel travel insurance Global insurance health coverage may be the last thought we have when planning a trip to another country. Most people do not even realize that while traveling, your current medical insurance can be useless in some countries or that your usual over-the-counter medications are prohibited in many locations. Protect Your Health Around the World. What is GeoBlue VoyagerSM? Short-term travel medical insurance for U.S. residents traveling abroad. Why Choose GeoBlue? Strength of a U.S. Insurer Underwritten by 4 Ever Life Insurance Company, rated A- (Excellent) by A.M. Best. 4 Ever Life is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Better Coverage: Our plans are U.S. licensed and feature coverage more generous than plans sold as “surplus coverage.” Our plans do not restrict illnesses or injuries resulting from a terrorist act. We do not impose precertification penalties for hospitalization. We provide coverage for pre-existing conditions for medical evacuation. Pre-existing conditions are also covered in all instances by our Choice plan. A Better Kind of Care: International travelers can leave home feeling confident that a trusted source of care is available at a moment’s notice - no matter what town, country or time zone, with global insurance. Travel anywhere knowing that if your health is a concern, getting good care is not. Global insurance coverage is available through PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory's affiliate partner, GeoBlue. You will have access to short-term global insurance health coverage options that best suit your needs while traveling. Just another way PrestigeCare Private Health Advisory looks out for all your health and wellness needs.* At PrestigeCare, we provide health solution services. *Up to $250,000 of coverage available through our affiliated partner for an unlimited number of trips of a maximum of 30 days in duration.

Seminars allow you to deliver your stadium pitch to multiple people at one time. The purpose is to create more buyers, but the deciding factor as to if your seminar will swim or tank is your title and pitch. Seminars are over 500% more successful when you use market data over product data. Market data is factual information that can be found by anyone doing research. Product data is information developed by your company or yourself to sell your product.                  Prospects are only interested in product data when they are looking to purchase your type of product at that moment. Everyone is interested in market data if you could show them how they can benefit from the information.

Google was a company that’d made more money off advertisements than any other company in the history of the world, but it had been founded by people who were embarrassed by a business model dependent upon advertising lawn chairs, car insurance, and Viagra. To deflect the embarrassment, the company cloaked itself in an aura of innovation and some old bullshit about the expansion of human knowledge. Google maintained this façade by providing web and mobile services to the masses. The most beloved of these services was the near daily alteration of the company’s logo as it appeared on the company’s website. Almost every day, the Google logo transformed into cutesy, diminutive cartoons of people who’d done something with their lives other than sell advertisements. These cartoons were called Google Doodles. They encompassed the whole spectrum of achievement, with a special focus on scientific achievement and the lives of minorities. In its own way, this was a perfect distillation of politics in the San Francisco Bay Area. Whenever they appeared, the Google Doodles were beloved and celebrated in meaningless little articles on meaningless little websites. They were not met with the obvious emotion, which would be total fucking outrage at a massive multinational corporation co-opting a wide range of human experience into an advertisement for that very same corporation. Here was the perversity of Twenty-First-Century AD life: Native-American women had a statistically better chance of being caricatured in a Google Doodle than they did of being hired into a leadership position at Google. And no one cared. People were delighted! They were being honored! By a corporation!

Over the next few years, the number of African Americans seeking jobs and homes in and near Palo Alto grew, but no developer who depended on federal government loan insurance would sell to them, and no California state-licensed real estate agent would show them houses. But then, in 1954, one resident of a whites-only area in East Palo Alto, across a highway from the Stanford campus, sold his house to a black family. Almost immediately Floyd Lowe, president of the California Real Estate Association, set up an office in East Palo Alto to panic white families into listing their homes for sale, a practice known as blockbusting. He and other agents warned that a 'Negro invasion' was imminent and that it would result in collapsing property values. Soon, growing numbers of white owners succumbed to the scaremongering and sold at discounted prices to the agents and their speculators. The agents, including Lowe himself, then designed display ads with banner headlines-"Colored Buyers!"-which they ran in San Francisco newspapers. African Americans desperate for housing, purchased the homes at inflated prices. Within a three-month period, one agent alone sold sixty previously white-owned properties to African Americans. The California real estate commissioner refused to take any action, asserting that while regulations prohibited licensed agents from engaging in 'unethical practices,' the exploitation of racial fear was not within the real estate commission's jurisdiction. Although the local real estate board would ordinarily 'blackball' any agent who sold to a nonwhite buyer in the city's white neighborhoods (thereby denying the agent access to the multiple listing service upon which his or her business depended), once wholesale blockbusting began, the board was unconcerned, even supportive. At the time, the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration not only refused to insure mortgages for African Americans in designated white neighborhoods like Ladera; they also would not insure mortgages for whites in a neighborhood where African Americans were present. So once East Palo Alto was integrated, whites wanting to move into the area could no longer obtain government-insured mortgages. State-regulated insurance companies, like the Equitable Life Insurance Company and the Prudential Life Insurance Company, also declared that their policy was not to issue mortgages to whites in integrated neighborhoods. State insurance regulators had no objection to this stance. The Bank of America and other leading California banks had similar policies, also with the consent of federal banking regulators. Within six years the population of East Palo Alto was 82 percent black. Conditions deteriorated as African Americans who had been excluded from other neighborhoods doubled up in single-family homes. Their East Palo Alto houses had been priced so much higher than similar properties for whites that the owners had difficulty making payments without additional rental income. Federal and state hosing policy had created a slum in East Palo Alto. With the increased density of the area, the school district could no longer accommodate all Palo Alto students, so in 1958 it proposed to create a second high school to accommodate teh expanding student population. The district decided to construct the new school in the heart of what had become the East Palo Alto ghetto, so black students in Palo Alto's existing integrated building would have to withdraw, creating a segregated African American school in the eastern section and a white one to the west. the board ignored pleas of African American and liberal white activists that it draw an east-west school boundary to establish two integrated secondary schools. In ways like these, federal, state, and local governments purposely created segregation in every metropolitan area of the nation.

If your company has any credible strategy for providing equity-based returns with muted volatility, you have not just a value proposition, but one of the most important value propositions of our time.... What's the concept in an operating real estate REIT? Operating real estate (as distinct from net leases or mortgages, which are other financing concepts) has the potential to produce equity-like long-term returns, but isan extremely powerful diversifier, in that real estate correlates positively with inflation while stocks and bonds correlate negatively with it. Inflation, with it attendant higher interest rates, chokes off new supply of real estate: new expensive to build, to expensive to finance at prevailing market rents. When new supply dwindles, normal growth absorbs the available space and puts upward pressure on rents, increasing cash flows to the owners... until rents get to a point where new construction pencils out again. (Meanwhile, in an inflation/interest rate flareup of any consequence, stocks and bonds are usually getting hit, and sometimes hit hard.) This, to me, is a trifecta of a conceptual value proposition: (a) the potential for the equity-like long-term returns investors need, (b) historically correlated positively with inflation, unlike all financial assets, and (c) just when you think this story can't get better, with 90% of available income paid out currently to income-starved investors.... What's the concept for variable life insurance? It's certainly the least expensive long-term form of life insurance, in that, as the investment portion grows, it extinguishes the insurance company's exposure. (As Ben Baldwin gnomically and brilliantly observes, 'All insurance is term insurance.') It may also be, in a given situation, the cheapest way of funding an estate tax liability, leaving the maximum legacy to one's heirs. And, of course, if the ownership is vested in an insurance trust, one may (under current law at this writing) be bequeathing wealth without income or estate taxation. As long as there is an estate tax - any estate tax - there will be a financial planning issue in the life of every affluent household/family: how do you want the heirs to pay it? And it seems likely that, conceptually, VUL will always be an answer.... Small cap equities? The concept is, clearly, higher returns with - and precisely because of - their higher volatility.