regulation

Homeowners Insurance Tops Inflation by 691%

/ L. M. Walker / 1 Comment

Caveat Emptor

– By: Larry Walker, II –

Have you checked your homeowner’s insurance policy lately?

I’ve been with the same insurer for over 10 years through two residences. Even with the previous company my homeowner’s rates stayed about the same from 1998 through 2007. During a recent review, I discovered that my basic coverage amounts (i.e. dwelling, private structures, personal property and loss of use) have been inflated by around 3.0% annually since 2007, or slightly higher than the general inflation rate, and although I sort of get that, albeit the cost to rebuild is now around 150 times current fair market value (ugh, don’t get me started), over the same time-frame, my insurance premiums (bundled with auto and other discounts) have grown by an annual average of 11.4%. What do you call that?

In fact, excluding additional discounts received in 2009 and 2010, which helped dampen the rate of growth, my premiums spiked by 17.5% in 2008, by another 16.8% in 2012, and finally by a backbreaking 20.4% this year. Had it not been for those additional discounts, my homeowner’s premiums would have averaged 18.2% over the period. Yet, even with a generous discount, my premiums have ballooned by 65.3% since 2007. Now compare that to inflation, which rose by just 13.7% during the same period (via Dollar Times).

So in other words, from 2007 to 2013, my homeowner’s premiums grew 377% faster than inflation. But don’t just take my word for it. A May 2013 article by the Associated Press (AP) confirms that homeowner’s insurance rates have spiked, however it fails to mention why? More specifically, why homeowner’s insurance premiums are currently advancing 691% faster than inflation.

Of course, the insurance industry blames increasing replacement costs (the cost of rebuilding a home from the ground up). Okay, great! But that only accounts for a 2% to 3% annual increase. So how does this translate into an average annual premium spike of 18.2%? According to the aforementioned AP article, which I might add is based on antiquated data, “Nationwide, an average homeowner paid $909 for homeowner’s insurance coverage in 2010, up 36 percent from 2003. Inflation rose 19 percent during the same period.” It goes on to provide a list of what homeowner’s in states bordering the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico were paying in 2010.

Following are the average costs in five of those states, ranked by the percentage change from 2003 to 2010:

  1. Florida: $1,544, up 90.6 percent.

  2. Alabama: $1,050, up 54.2 percent.

  3. Mississippi: $1,217, up 53.5 percent.

  4. South Carolina: $997, up 48.4 percent.

  5. Georgia: $833, up 46.1 percent.

Now if the AP had continued its research through the current year, it would have discovered that the situation has gotten a lot worse since 2010, as I mentioned above. Here’s an idea for the media – next time, if you don’t know, why not try asking people who are actually affected? My premiums actually went up by 16.8% in 2012 and by another 20.4% this year, for a two-year average of 18.6%, while inflation averaged a mere 2.35%. So over the past two years, premiums have risen 691% faster than the rate of inflation ((18.6 – 2.35) / 2.35). What’s up with that?

It’s not the miniscule annual dollar increase that bothers me, but rather what the cost will be 10 or 20 years from now. At the current pace, by the time I reach what used to be considered retirement age, God willing, which is less than 20 years from now, homeowner’s premiums will be simply outrageous, perhaps more than 4 times the amounts shown above (i.e. doubling about every five years). In other words, if this doesn’t stop soon, I could be paying around $3,500 a year in retirement. I’m sorry, but this is just unacceptable.

So what did I do? I requested quotes from several local insurers. And what did I find? I received some quotes for less than half my current rate, some 30% to 40% lower, and others around the same. So I struck a deal which comes in at just 64% of the proposed renewal rate. That puts my new rate just 5.7% above what it was in 2006. Now that’s more like it. Perhaps I could have done better, but somewhere along the way I’ve learned that if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

The bottom line: Why have homeowner’s insurance rates spiked? As one of my Google+ friends put it, “Because they can get away with it.” Do yourself a favor; check your policy and take action while there’s still a free market (caveat emptor).

References:

Time to reassess your Homeowners Policy

How Homeowner Insurance Rates Have Spiked

Progressive Regression II | Financial Regulation Crisis

/ L. M. Walker / 4 Comments

– By: Larry Walker, Jr. –

Government Regulation vs. Self-Regulation

Once again, the Progressive Obama Administration’s magical solution, for all problems American, is more government regulation. But is government regulation really any better than self-regulation? Progressive government regulation is even worse. (A Progressive regulator is pictured to the left.)

I contend that banks and financial services companies have a direct interest in the safe, efficient, and profitable business of making loans, investments, and protecting assets. Would it benefit a bank to carelessly make loans to unqualified borrowers, taking the risk of never being repaid? No. Would it benefit a financial services company to recommend investments in financial instruments that continually lose money? No. Every private sector company has a direct interest in self-regulation.

Surely there will be incidents of fraud, theft, and abuse, but when such incidents occur, private companies will pay stiff fines under applicable Federal and State laws. When it is discovered that laws have been violated, corporate employees, and executives often face stiff fines and/or prison time. But what happens when government regulators screw up?

On August 9, 2007, former SEC Commissioner, Roel C. Campos officially announced his resignation.

On October 2, 2007, former SEC Commissioner, Annette L. Nazareth, a nine-year SEC veteran, officially announced her resignation.

On August 13, 2008, Florida’s top financial regulator, Don B. Saxon resigned before he could be fired. He was blamed for lax enforcement of state laws which allowed convicted felons to be licensed as mortgage brokers, including individuals who took part in mortgage fraud.

On January 26, 2009, Timothy Geithner, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was sworn in as Secretary of the Treasury.

On May 7, 2009, Stephen Friedman, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, abruptly resigned; days after questions arose about his ties to Goldman Sachs.

When regulators make costly mistakes most of them simply resign, disappearing into the shadows with taxpayer funded golden-parachutes. However, in some cases (Geithner) they get promoted. So there is no accountability when it comes to government regulation.

The case against more government regulation:

Raymond Richmond, in his latest article, Geithner and Summers Make Their Economic Mistakes Transparent, reminds us that the last major governmental intrusion into the private financial sector is what created our current recession. Instead of learning the valuable lesson that ‘government regulation equals no regulation’, the Progressive Obama Administration’s solution, like a junkie in relapse, is more of the same. “This time it will be different.”

“Here at home, we are on the verge of completing the most sweeping financial reform in more than 70 years.”

They failed to mention that the last major intervention in bank regulation caused this recession. Beginning in 1977 with the Community Reinvestment Act, every administration pressured the banks to make loans on easy terms, turning their eyes away from the housing bubble they were causing and the dangerous lack of collateral backing most mortgages. Government created two Government Sponsored Enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to create a secondary market for such ill-fated loans. Wall Street got into the act and created derivatives which brokers sold all over the world. When the housing bubble burst, the U.S. and Europe’s largest banks and insurance companies faced bankruptcy, and stock markets round the world collapsed. The U.S. does not need new bank regulations; it needs to keep the politicians from making decisions that should be left to the shareholders of private firms who have the major stake in the firm’s success. This is the lesson that should be learned around the world.

The past year and a half has seen unemployment grow in the U.S. to double digits, factories disappear, witnessed a worsening in the distribution of income, saw soaring government budget deficits, saw the U.S. dollar, the world’s standard, lose more than a third of its value in foreign exchange.

Prospects have never been worse. And all of these are the product of government intervention in the private economy. This is the lesson the G-20 ought to learn, government intervention in the economy usually does more harm than good. That would include intervention in the economy by the G-20, should it become an institution that makes and enforces decisions.

Michael Pomerleano in a Financial Times article entitled, The Failure of Financial Regulation, explains how government regulation failed. This is more proof that all of the time, effort, and money spent on government financial regulation has been for naught.

The regulation and supervision of the banking system rest on three pillars: disclosure to ensure market discipline, adequate capital and effective supervision.

Did the regulatory philosophy governing our financial markets withstand the test of the recent crisis? My conclusion is that all three regulatory pillars failed.

Was adequate information available before the crisis erupted? The information on the subprime exposure was out there for anyone who had the determination to collect and [analyze] the (sometimes patchy) data from quarterly 10Q reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for US banks, supplemented by rating agencies’ and investment banks’ research reports.

A final question we need to ask is how effective was the supervisory apparatus in this crisis?

It is reasonable therefore to infer that the regulatory agencies would have taken notice of those estimates as early as the autumn of 2007. For a long time the regulatory and supervisory apparatus was silent.

We need to question why didn’t any regulator add up the potential size of the losses on the sub prime exposure, based on publicly available information, and verify them with on-site examinations?

Why wasn’t there a far more forceful response from the supervisory agencies? Equally, we should have expected credit rating agencies, investment research and investors to respond more forcefully. In this context, one can only express puzzlement and disappointment at the tepid regulatory reaction. Only after the monumental policy mistake of allowing Lehman Brothers to fail, did the authorities grasp the full significance of the problems and we witnessed a systematic effort to manage and contain the crisis.

Finally, Glenn Hubbard in his Harvard Business Review Article, Financial Regulation: It’s Not About More, reminds us that over-regulation by the government can do more harm than good.

…the economic concern that over-regulation of financial instruments and institutions in the name of safety can lead to aggregate harm — most obviously by raising the cost of funds to household and business borrowers. The key is to design regulation to insure proper pricing of risk and information about risk — such an approach (not that really taken in the bill winding its way through Congress) offers the right balance between protection of the individual and society.

The end result of the Progressive Obama Administration’s magical plan of more government regulation will lead directly to higher costs for American consumers and businesses. Businesses will pass their costs on to customers. Consumers will be hurt. Those who get hurt the most will be those on the lowest end of the economic food chain. Thus, the end result of Barack Obama’s cowardly, status quo, regressive, regulation policies will be to harm those that he claims to be helping.

Smaller government and less governmental regulation will lead to lower taxes, lower consumer prices, greater accountability, more freedom, and more opportunities for wealth creation. What exactly have we gotten in return for all of our money that has been squandered on regulating the financial industry? What will we get with Obama’s ‘more of the same’ approach?

Progressive Regression | Gulf Oil Disaster

/ L. M. Walker / Leave a comment

Government Regulation vs. Self-Regulation

– By: Larry Walker, Jr. –

The Progressive Obama Administration’s magical solution for all problems American is more government regulation. But is government regulation really better than self-regulation?

Companies like BP have a direct interest in the safe, efficient drilling and harvesting of oil. Would it benefit a private oil company like BP to carelessly blow up its own oil well and lose millions of gallons of the precious black gold into the sea? No. Did it benefit Exxon to crash the Valdez and leak millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska? No. So every company has a direct interest in self-regulation.

Sure, accidents will happen. And when accidents happen, private companies will pay the price under applicable Federal and State laws. Many private sector executives have even found themselves behind bars when laws were violated. But what happens when government regulators screw up?

On May 27, 2010, Elizabeth Birnbaum, the former head of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), which is charged with monitoring and regulating offshore drilling, simply resigned.

On May 17, 2010, Chris Oynes, the associate director of Offshore Energy and Minerals Management at the Minerals Management Service simply announced that he was moving up the date of his retirement to May 31, 2010.

On May 11, 2010, Frank Patton, an unlicensed Minerals Management Service (MMS) engineer, who approved the plans for the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer just four days before the blowout, admitted that he did so without ever seeing the blowout preventer plans. He further admitted that he has never seen any such documents on the more than 100 approvals his office issues each year. MMS regulation 250.416(e) requires would-be drillers to submit proof that the blowout preventer they are using to shut off the well will have enough power to shear a drill pipe in case of an emergency, but Patton was apparently unaware of this particular regulation. As far as we know, Patton will keep his job, and will probably get a promotion.

In September of 2006, Interior Department Inspector General, Earl Devaney told a House panel that the Minerals Management Service failed to include price triggers in leases signed with oil companies in 1998 and 1999. The Government Accountability Office estimated that the total cost to taxpayers during the two year period was over $10 billion, yet government officials once again were able to pass the buck.

The point is that U.S. taxpayers have been paying billions of dollars (that we don’t have) annually, for more and more government regulation, yet when it comes time to hold the government accountable we find that they are not.

Barack Obama, and his Progressive minion’s solution to every problem American is more government regulation. I see this cowardly pat answer as just another way of passing the buck. Should we feel confident when Obama, who’s on his way to going down as the worst president in American history, boldly declares that ‘the buck stops with him’? Obama, like his predecessor’s, will be long gone when it is discovered just how badly he screwed up.

In reality, and in general, all that government regulation does is to increase taxes in many forms (income, excise, fees, fines), which in turn makes products and services more expensive for all American consumers; and it creates a layer of unaccountable bureaucrats, who ultimately make us all less safe, secure and prosperous.

Progressive Obama worshippers say that we need more government regulation. I say we need less. It would benefit all Americans to begin dismantling our huge governmental bureaucracy. Increasing the size and scope of government regulation has not historically benefited a single soul, and it never will.

Less Government regulation leads to lower taxes, lower consumer prices, greater accountability, more freedom, and more wealth creation opportunities. What exactly did we get for all the money spent on regulating oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?