Friday, July 30, 2010
| Make Florida More Hurricane-Resistant
published: Sep 28, 2009
by: Eli Lehrer and John Hallman
As hurricane-ridden September passes by, much of the news in Florida appears good: Hurricanes, so far, have stayed away from U.S. coastlines, the Legislature has passed a few common-sense reforms to the state's property insurance system and state CFO Alex Sink says that the state's troubled Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (Cat Fund) has gained a firmer fiscal footing. more... |
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| A catastrophe waiting to happen
published: Sep 15, 2009
by: Jonathan Orszag
This month marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That raises a simple question: Are we prepared as a Nation for the next mega-catastrophe (one, perhaps, worse than Katrina) that will inevitably strike our country? more... |
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| The Meltdown Next Time: The financial danger nobody knows about.
published: Sep 12, 2009
by: Eli Lehrer
When the insurance giant American International Group was threatened with collapse in late 2008, its credit default swap business and other international operations were cited as the heart of its troubles. But the largest consequence of AIG's uncontrolled failure on consumers' pocketbooks could have come from the domino-like collapse of its businesses writing insurance on boats, cars, homes, lives, and just about everything else. If these businesses fell apart as a result of AIG's overall collapse, the argument went, the contagion could have brought a collapse of everything from retirement savings plans to auto insurance claims payments from companies unconnected to AIG. (In theory, the operations were firewalled from AIG's other operations, but the extremely slow rate at which they've found buyers indicates that many had significant exposure to the company's other woes.) more... |
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New CEI Report Explores Hurricanes, Warming |
by: Daniel Sutter and Richard Morrison
published: Jun 05, 2009
Some predictions of catastrophic loss are overstated. Best responses to warming involve risk-based insurance rates, better land use, stronger building standards.
Washington, D.C., A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute questions alarmist predictions of increased hurricane damage resulting from human-caused global warming. The report recommends that individuals, insurers, businesses, and governments confront global warming by changing insurance, building, and land use policies.
In the report, ''Hurricane Damage and Global Warming,'' Daniel Sutter, a professor at the University of Texas Pan-American, argues that increased social vulnerability—the growing number of people living in hurricane-prone areas—does more to explain increased hurricane damage than does potential human-caused global climate change.
''Existing public policies—including insurance regulation, government-subsidized flood insurance, improper mitigation, and faulty building code enforcement—contribute to unnecessarily risky and inefficient development along coastal areas by shifting the cost of hurricane damage ultimately onto third parties—mainly taxpayers,'' writes Sutter.
The full report, '' Hurricane Damage and Global Warming: How Bad Could It Get and What Can We Do About It Today??'' is available at www.cei.org.
Contacts:
Daniel Sutter, 956-221-2172
Richard Morrison, 202-331-2273 |
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