Nice. Rick Perry tried to set up a scheme with the foreign bank UBS to bet on the deaths of elderly teachers, and then he put in motion a plan to cut benefits to their health plans. Gruesome. Cold.
The description of this amazing scheme starts at 3:00 in the Ed Schultz Show segment below.
Did you notice that Phil Gramm (of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which repealed the toothy part of Glass-Steagall) is involved? Zach Carter, who is interviewed, says that likely the only beneficiaries of the scheme would have been UBS and Phil Gramm. The master predator hasn't his touch.
Huff Post's Zach Carter, one of two who broke the story, is interviewed at 5:05. Texas expert James Moore comments at 9:15.
For fans of the print version, here's a bit of the Zach Carter & Jason Cherkis Huff Post story:
According to the meeting notes [between Perry's people and the teachers], which were authenticated by a meeting participant, the Perry administration wanted to help Wall Street investors gamble on how long retired Texas teachers would live. Perry was promising the state big money in exchange for helping Swiss banking giant UBS set up a business of teacher death speculation.Like I said ... predators. Ronald Reagan, in his Gordon Gekko mask, has much to answer for.
All they had to do was convince retirees to let UBS buy life insurance policies on them. When the retirees died, those policies would pay out benefits to Wall Street speculators, and the state, supposedly, would get paid for arranging the bets. The families of the deceased former teachers would get nothing.
The meeting notes offer the most direct evidence that the Perry administration was not only intimately involved with the insurance scheme, but a leading driver of the plan. ... The notes make clear that the governor's proposal deliberately targeted the elderly. The state was only seeking to take out life insurance on people between the ages of 75 and 90.
GP
