The "Death Bond", Wall Street's new investment scam.

Years ago, a person or company purchased shares in a corporation as an investment.

The corporation had a track record, when times were good, paid dividends, and the investor felt a tiny sense of security that the corporation will be well managed by people who cared about the corporation’s and subsequently the shareholders’ viability.

No more.

Wall Street is packaging anything it can and marketing it to investors, selling an upside that often doesn’t exist and a downside that has proved to be catastrophic and they continue the flim flam game.

I learned about “Death Bonds” today in theglobandmail.com.

They’re called “death bonds” – or, more formally, life settlement securitizations – a burgeoning class of financial products that have caught the eye of financial innovators at some of Wall Street’s biggest banks, which are eager to find new ways to make money after the popping of the mortgage bubble. The bonds are created by intermediaries that buy up life-insurance policies from policy holders – typically seniors looking to cash out their policies – bundling them together, and selling off small slices to investors. The profit comes when the policy holders die and the investment funds, as the designated beneficiaries, collect the payouts.