Next, Fix the Insurers

Looks like I didn't need that second life insurance policy from Minnesota Life anyway.

One of the big issues in this market, one that has put endless pressure on the financials, is the need for the big insurers to refinance their considerable debt load. Who has not watched with terror the action in Lincoln National (LNC - commentary - Cramer's Take) or Principal (PFG - commentary - Cramer's Take) or Hartford (HIG - commentary - Cramer's Take) or Genworth (GNW - commentary - Cramer's Take), my insurer by dint of its purchase of Mayflower -- my pristine carrier for so many years -- not that you get to vote on your insurer's takeover; I know I would never have voted for the cowboys at Genworth.

Now TARP money will be made available to those who need it. My hope, frankly, is that the insurers who screwed up on both sides -- on the investment side with plenty of once-safe commercial and residential mortgage bonds, and on the product side with unhedged annuities linked to the S&P 500 -- do not get bailed out as companies but as policyholders that should be paid off. Someone has to take the hit here for recklessness, and it should be the shareholders, because not all insurers are in trouble and the companies should be made to consolidate and bought by solvent players for next to nothing as their policyholders are insured. This, of course, should have been the course taken by the government for the banks like Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take), once they stumbled, but they were too big and there was no one to sell them to.

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