Euro On The Point Of Collapse - Victim Of A Trojan Horse?
If the Franco-German alliance fails to bail out the Greek debt then the Euro will most certainly collapse!
Mass Devaluation.
Cheap Holidays in the Sun!
Suddenly Europe will not be worth half as much as it was!
Worse still for the Euro Bankers is the fact that the amount of Greek debt appears unquantifiable due to some smart bookeeping by the previous conservative government who were incumbent for most of the credit crunch and the subsequent recession.
This is not going to impress those financial entrepreneurial illuminati who have their money tied up in the Euro and itchy fingers on the sale button!
Europe is supposed to be growing itself out of recession faster than the UK or USA.
Some say that this is a mirage and was a temporary bounce due to the Eurobankers encouraging consumer spending coupled with the christmas seasonal factor.
The overall trends appear to be down!
If the Euro collapses on the money markets, all participants will pay the price of the Greek tradegy.
I can already hear the British Euroskeptics say 'I Told You So!' as the Irish economy collapses.
So what will it mean for the UK and in particular the
UK Insurance Industry?
Well Insurance Blogger thinks it could be a very good thing for the UK financial services industries as a whole.
After all when the Money markets sense a tsunami coming; the smart money always runs to the safest shores!
Of course the right wing euro-sceptics will claim victory in the advent of a Cameron led election victory; but the real praise must go to
Gordon Brown and Barack Obama for not following the Euro pump priming recovery route.
Labels: Bank of England, Barack Obama, Currency Exchange, Euro Bankers, Gordon Brown, Greece, Greek Economy, Money, MoneyMarkets, pump priming, UK government, UK Insurance
Health Insurance and Care Abroad - Get Travel Medical Insurance!
Reading a blog post today from my
Health Insurance Blog Blogger friend, got me thinking...
"You don't know how lucky you are" My parents used to say to me about going to places on exotic holidays...
Their parents would have likely said the same thing to them about the National Health Service - as kids they would have remembered their parents having to pay for the doctor on an ad hoc basis!
You never miss it until it's gone, or more importantly you don't notice it until you have to pay for it, and in the case of medical and health insurance at this holiday time of the year, it's yet another necessary cost of holidaying abroad.
Watching the news and the debate going on in the States about the health care reforms proposed by the President, that are being made out by the Media to be dividing the Nation....you can't help but laugh when you read that the right wingers are using the NHS system as an example of everything that could go wrong with a nationalised healthcare insurance scheme.
I can't wait to see Barack Obama's camp stand up and defend the NHS as the example of a health care system that all countries should be following!
Here's some thoughts from the
Health Insurance Blog Barack Obama is the Good Samaritan for US Health Care
Most of us are used to some type of
health insurance in the the UK despite the existence of the ubiquitous free for all NHS.
In fact most UK citizens have purchased private medical insurance at some time or another!
Yep! surprising isn't it! But because we all travel we are probably as well versed in the vagaries of the medical insurance section of our
travel insurance policies as we are with our compulsory
car insurance!
Since the 1970's Brits have regularly bought medical insurance for their two week jaunt to the Costa del Sol and very many have had to claim and seen the workings of a foreign privatised health care system in action.
It is only then that we see the true worth of our NHS, when we have to participate in the bureaucracy of a claim when sick. We also get to see the standards of foreign care at the coal face!
Still, the good news about those sorts of health insurance covers found on a travel policy is that they will always repatriate you to good old Blighty and the awaitng NHS.
Most Brits like to visit our cousins in the United States.
This is when we come face to face with the fact that health care is not homogenous, especially when it comes to availablilty and more importantly - price!
Those travel insurance insurance policies suddenly treble in premium and all those exclusions to cover such as pre-existing medical conditions suddenly become real concerns....the same sort of concerns that face the average American daily!
Even with Insurance - you don't wan't to get ill in America. You especially don't want to get ill for a chronic amount of time - all health insurasnce policies have strict limits of liability!
What if the money runs out?
In the Land of the Free there is no human safety net! (if you can't pay)
Charles Darwin would have loved it!
Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan?
From the right wing noises of middle american rabble rousing grannies shouting on about abortions and illegal immigrants that we see every night on CBS and ABC news ..... I don't think so! Try Luke!
Well you all go to church on Sunday dressed up in you finery, or is that just Hollywood agitprop to satisfy the lunatics of the Bible belt?
So step forward Barack Obama, determined to bring some social justice to the cities and peoples of America. The Good Samaritan who refused to walk on by on the issue of Health Care.
From the looks on the faces of those church going grannies and their militia sons who are dressed up for Afghanistan, and their kids dressed up like neo cons from The Matrix.....I just hope you're wearing extra strong Kevlar Barack, because in some parts of your divided nation that's the only healthcare you will need!
Labels: Barack Obama, Health Care Cover, health insurance, medical expenses cover, NHS, travel medical insurance, US Healthcare, USA
Labels: Barack Obama, health care, health insurance, NHS, private health insurance, Private Medical Insurance, travel insurance, travel medical insurance, UK government, US health reform
Recession still to bottom out as UK Insurance Industry Suffers
The pundits in the housing markets often seem to be singing from a different songsheet when it comes to what's really happening in the UK economy. One minute we hear that repossessions have dropped in comparison to the first quarter of 2009, and that house prices are rising, but this is surely industry sales talk.
Fact of the matter is house prices haven't reached anything like the levels needed to stimulate a National recovery and movement in the market. Mortgages are very difficult to come by and often require up to a thirty percent deposit. Those lucky ones on tracker mortgages are praying every month that the Bank of England doesn't put up interest rates, otherwise many of them would bejoining the ranks of the reposessed!
Credit in general is non-existant, particularly in the Car Finance sector, and the credit card companies with their extortionate rates are only interested in recuoperating lending and tightening the national screw further!
Unemployment is rising and you only have to drive a short distance to see hundreds of towns that relied upon local industries that have gone to the wall, with the ranks of unemployed growing on a daily basis!
We as a Nation are in the proverbial big time, the good news is so is everybody else!
Insurance in the UK is suffering big time in many ways too. Households are cutting back on items seen as luxuries and Insurance is often perceived this way. In particular
home insurance and personal finance insurances such as income protection have seen their markets decimated.
As no mortgages are being given away and the recent furore over miselling,
mortgage protection insurance has virtually disappeared as a product to be replaced by a more encompassing lifestyle protection insurance policy.
Car insurance is in trouble too, despite the fact that it is compulsory. Many underwriters have been asking for rate rises for nearly two years but the prices have been artificially kept down by the levels of competition brought in by the Internet insurance comparison sites or aggregators as they are known. Many major players have made substantial losses in the Motor market over the last few years and many have had to cut deeply into their reserves. This cannot go on ad infinitum, and prices must harden. This will inevitably lead to many suppliers leaving the market.
As for the car scrappage scheme - did that generate demand? Yeah for a couple of thousand Hyundais built in India and imported into the UK - Sheer and utter madness!
Commercial Insurance is the one area which has obviously taken a massive reduction in premium volumes as businesses go to the wall and very few new startups enter the market.
One thing we can be sure of it's going to be a long cold winter, a change of UK Government won't make the slightest bit of difference and by the noises coming out on ABC and CBS News recently is going to kick of Stateside long before it does here!
Labels: Barack Obama, car insurance, credit crunch, Home Insurance, housing market, insurance news, misselling, recession, small business insurance, UK government, unemployment
UK Health Insurance- From the Cradle to the Queue
Health and Wealth! Isn't that what eveyone drinks to?
A look at
UK Health Insurance and National Wealth.
Britain was still reeling from World War Two when the National Health Service was launched in 1948, sweeping in an era of social change and expectation.
Gone were the days of ‘bring out your dead’ if you couldn’t afford to pay.
Despite many changes over the sixty one years and its recent flirtations with Private
Health Insurance companies, the so called postcode lottery system and other structural difficulties, the NHS has remained true to the ethos of access for all.
No system is perfect and spatial differences in levels of access and quality of care still need to be radically addressed.
In the UK when the National Health Service was finally implemented in 1948 as part of Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee's 'cradle to the grave' welfare state.
A nationwide system of free healthcare was finally launched by Aneurin Bevan the then Minister of Health, which promised us access to health care cover and treatment for all.
The cradle to the grave speech mentality had set the standards for social healthcare and access to treatment for all.
To date, despite its recent structural changes, and despite the healthy criticism and debate that the subject of the NHS always brings, if you look at the system in performance and social cohesion you have to say that it appears to work much better as a form of national health insurance than do comparative systems in so called developed countries. This development in healthcare is always a subject of great debate in the lead up to a General Election, and no doubt will take greater stage in the months to come
Everyone working in the UK has to pay National Insurance contributions as part of their income in order for the system to work, and facilitating everyone in the UK with medical cover.
However National Insurance contributions are not a good solution for a number of reasons.
They increase the costs of labour.
By definition this makes them inflationary.
The costs of production are passed onto the populace en masse
The contributions are by no means equitable
Many sections of the population are able to virtually opt out of the contribution system
The NHS is heavily subsided by the tax contributions of the healthy and wealthy forty percent plus payers.
Whether the United States Government is able to take what could be seen as a major left shift to achieve better social cohesion and consequently improved GDP, remains to be seen.
Are the workers prepared to subsidize the shirkers and the misfortunate? There needs to exist a situation both economically, socially and mentality, of desperation and hope that existed in the UK in 1945, in order to see a fiscal response to the current situation, biting the healthcare bullet that the USA is so afraid to bite. Providing the ultimate National Safety Net!
The States is in the difficult situation of how to deal with chronic sickness, the recession, the role of PMI as an underwriter of GDP and the political influence and lobbying power of the large Health Insurance companies. Rather you than me Barrack!
Gordon Brown should note that
Private Health Insurance became one of the first things people were encouraged to buy when her who’s name shall not be spoken came to power in 1979.
Labels: Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, health insurance, health insurance quotes, medical insurance, NHS, PMI, private health insurance, Private Medical Insurance, UK government
Recession latest - Cracks appear as Barrack Brown tonic bites
Now Insurance Blogger always keeps a sceptic eye on things while the other one is open to all sorts of suggestion. Combine them both and you've got a third eye that can come to some sort of rational analysis of whatever the problem or situation is.
So what is really going on in the Economy?
And in particular in the UK Economy?
Are the cracks in the recession that are staring to appear around the globe genuine?
If so and to what amount of the recent Obama and Brown pump priming can we really attribute to the effect?
Moreover is it a tangible upswing in the Global Economy and genuine growth or are the latest figures just smoking mirrors, conveniently released PR for a week either side of the G (how many are there now) Lockdown London Economic crisis Summit.
OK so whats been happening?
The Zeitgeist seems prety upbeat with some recent strategically announced PR from some of the major UK Government owned Banking and Insurance institutions suggesting, that the downward spiral of deflationary pressures has finally bottomed out. Hmmm!
We need to examine some of these releases chronologically to see behind the mirrors!
Two weeks ago - late at night our time, CBS News New York post stories and report that the Obama insistence that the US financial institutions release bale-out capital for mortgages and housing is beginning to have some effect with construction projects starting up and the demand for houses and prices starting to rise.
Halifax - A week ago announcing UK housing prices are moving upward.
Today - Council of Mortgage lenders announce that there are more mortgage schemes available now and the number of live mortgage schemes has increased for the first time in eight months.
Hmm!
Insurance blogger is pleased but cautiously concerned!
Is this just cheesy Blair style PR that we are all supposed to buy into to go around saying how good life is at the moment and dip into our overdrawn accounts and start spending some more?
Well, until the restricted flow of the money supply starts to drip down to the masses and to those holding the system up with debt, one cannot possibly start to argue that the recent so callled 'fiscal measures' are having any effect at all other than to allow the banks to continue operating.
Until the lower level debt is released or absorbed into the reinflation that will eventually occur, there will be no stimulus to demand and pump priming will become just pumping - lets hope its enough to keep us all afloat!
On a global front there have been casualties everywhere - The Ukranian Government has had to go crawling back to its old masters in the Kremlin after its Banking system and Economy collapsed and the IMF and the West refused to bail it out!
Russia itself is beginning to melt. The frosty cold war like demands of recent years and the noises coming out of the renegade capitalist government there, have softened to the broad smile of the Obama machine. Where is Georgia anyway?
Has the Bear finally realised that all its efforts to undermine the Anglo-Saxon banking system has backfired and shot them in the foot. If you can't beat them - join them!
Likewise China, it may well have the largest bank in the world in the HSBC, but if it continues to squeeze and mess with our markets ( The Chinese Government is actively engaged in Cyberwars!), it is the Chinese people that will suffer in the long term, as we will not buy their products, not through protectionism, but through the inability to afford them.
Everybody is running scared of protectionism as it is well known that it was this mentality that depepened the 1930's global shutdown.
Everybody must come to the table!
Labels: Barack Obama, credit crunch, Economy, Gordon Brown
Welcome to the Casa Blanca Bazzer and Meesh
Today is a landmark day in the history of modern mankind, and the significant of the winds of change are not lost on insurance blogger who grew up not contemplating that today was remotely possible in his lifetime.
The white dream died in Dallas and I watched the women cry. They cried again when the black dream died in Memphis in 1968 and we watched quietly as the fists were raised in defiance in Munich a few months later.
A few years later I was honoured to watch Kevin Keegan kick a ball into the back of a net at the same spot where the fists were raised, but my first thoughts were about Palestinians.
Years later I had the privilege of standing on the spot in Berlin for
World Cup Football where Jesse Owens stuck two fingers up to Hitler, and funnily enough I'm still thinking about Palestinians.
But for all the power nobody contemplated today was possible
So whats this got to do with Insurance?
We'll without boring old insurance we would not be welcoming Barack and Michelle to the White House.
why I hear you ask?
Well for one of its many sins Insurance is partly responsible for the Slave trade.
Shippers, Owners, Insurance brokers, Lloyds Names, Gamblers etc all funded slaving ships and many of todays Insurance Companies and Brokers made the foundations of their businesses through slavery and risk. Shipping, Slavery and Insurance were intimately bound together as a business practice.
So you could argue that those Insurance companies who we shall remain nameless have abetted the hastening of global multi-culturalism.
Whatever!
Good Luck Barack, you've already created a good zeitgeist. Until America deals with the toxic debt, despite the goons in Whitehall's best efforts, we are a hundred percent reliant upon the origin of the problem containing the solution.
Labels: Barack Obama, credit crunch
