Can’t Say – [BonkNote]

A judge has ordered The Twin Falls Times News to pay $1.9 million in libel damages after it refused to disclose its sources for articles that an insurance company said ruined its business.

1978 0406 - NYT - $1.9 Million Payment Ordered in Libel Case - [link]

2007 0722 - WSJ - U.S. Regulators Shut Down IndyMac, Blame Senator's Letter (Senator Chuck Schumer), By Tom Barkley - [link]
1989 0501 - National Press Club - Where Was the Press During the S&L Crisis? - [link-CSPAN]
2010 0127 - GOV - Geithner

re: FSOC
- I have heard that the designation process is not transparent, and I am all for increased transparency, but I assume the Council must balance transparency against disclosing confidential or potentially market-moving information. (p37/2:08)

2015 0325 - GOV (Senate) - FSOC Accountability Nonbank Designations - [PDF-165p,

re: AIG - 2008 Financial Crisis
- (p17) - The other thing that I'll share with you is that we didn't feel that we could speak plainly about what multiple insolvency proceedings affecting an insurer would look like in 2008 and 2009.
- When you go back and look at the discussions of what caused financial problems at AIG, you see the story dominated by Financial Products, and that's in part because people didn't want to criticize the state insurance supervisors.

2018 1120 - YPFS - Lessons Learned Oral History Project Interview: Thomas Baxter --- [BonkNote] --- 19p

What nobody seems to want to tell people is that no one knows exactly how long it will take to build up enough cash value to pay the remaining premiums.
- They do not know, so they guess.
- And as long as they are making up facts, they make them sound real good.
Companies say: After 5 years, there will be enough in your cash value for you to stop paying premiums forever, or your money will earn at 10 percent, or your premium will never be more than $7.00 per thousand dollars of insurance.
- And very quietly, maybe hidden in a footnote or in a gobbledygook phrase, they say: Well, we are really only guessing.
- They never say: We do not have any idea how much you will eventually have to pay for policyholder. (p3)

-- Senator Howard Metzenbaum

1993 0525 - GOV (Senate) - When Will Policyholders Be Given The Truth About Life Insurance? - [PDF-354p-GooglePlay, VIDEO-?] --- [BonkNote]

Senator SHELBY. What does ‘‘relatively’’ mean?
Mr. MCRAITH. Well, that means——
Senator SHELBY.You say they are in ‘‘relatively’’ good shape.
Mr. MCRAITH. First of all, I would never say publicly whether any one company were in trouble, but at the same time, I am not going to mislead you, Senator.
- The companies that we are regulating, we are comfortable with their financial status.

2009 0317 - GOV (Senate) - Perspectives on Modernizing Insurance Regulation - [PDF-160p,

1995 - JIR / NAIC - Solvency Monitoring in the Twenty-First Century, by Robert W. Klein and Michael M. Barth - 47p
- A major problem that must be overcome with such monitoring systems is that of avoiding the self-fulfilling prophecy.
- A monitoring system that identifies high-risk behavior can actually trigger the bad luck required to actually send a company under.
- For instance, a system that identifies a life insurer as having high potential for capital losses in the event that it experiences a policyholder run may actually incite policyholders to pull their money out of the company, thus triggering a financial meltdown that would not have otherwise occurred.

2021 - Lessons Learned: Eric Dinallo, Former New York Insurance Commissioner, Journal of Financial Crises - 6p
- (p4) - Which is, even if I had caught it and demanded that we fix it, the amount of political energy that would have been leveled against me would be inconceivable.
  - Until the crisis happened.
- (p6) - I wrote an op-ed for the [Financial Times] that lays out that there's a law, that [hedge fund manager] Bill Ackman and I argued about.
  - About not disparaging or questioning the solvency of an insurance company.
    - You can short the stock all day, and you can go out there and trash MBIA stock all day.
    - But when you start to question its solvency, that's actually against the law.
    - 2008 0731- FT (Financial Times) - Tackle false rumours about insurance companies, by Eric Dinallo (New York Insurance Commissioner) - 2p

codes.ohio.gov/oac/3901-6
- (36) Distribute any literature or make any statement about any other company or any of its policies based upon the company's being required to change any policy forms or its sales or other related materials or presentations for the purpose of inducing any policyholder or prospect to purchase, amend, lapse, forfeit, change or surrender insurance.

(p11) - Chairman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA). It seems to me that we are flying down a road at a tremendous speed here that could bring into collapse the entire financial market as we know it today, not only in the United States but potentially it could move around the world and metastasize.
- I am just disturbed that there are not too many people who are really speaking to the issue, and those who are speaking to the issue are assuming that somebody else is doing something about it.
- Maybe I would like to know what the Governor of New York and what the superintendent of insurance of New York feel you can do surgically in the areas in which you have jurisdiction?
Governor SPITZER. (NY) - Yes, sir. I agree with your final conclusion there.
- I am torn between two objectives.
  - One, as I just said in my opening statement, is to generate a sense of concern such that we can move any potential deals with great rapidity,
  - and on the other hand, not to speak with such dire prognostication that the capital markets begin to sense there is no hope out there, because so much of this is emotional and driven by the analysis of what is likely to happen rather than what actually has happened, not to generate that cascading effect that we are concerned about.

2008 0214 - GOV (House) - The State of the Bond Insurance Industry, Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) --- [BonkNote]