State-Regulated US Insurance Industry Avoids the "Ostrich Maneuver"

Looking at risk in an un-ostrichlike manner, and, uncontrolled by the Federacy, (From an IPS story of Mar. 14, 2006) "insurance commissioners of the 50 U.S. states last week voted unanimously to establish a task force on the possible impact of climate change on the insurance industry and its consumers...The decision, taken by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, came during the same week that the world's biggest insurance broker, Marsh & McLennan, briefed its corporate clients, which include roughly 75 percent of the "Fortune 500" biggest companies, on the potential impact of global warming on their businesses...Indeed, last week's action by the state insurance commissioners came in the wake of devastating back-to-back hurricane seasons that caused a record $30 billion in U.S. insured losses in 2004 and as much as $60 billion in insured losses from Hurricane Katrina alone in 2005, which was also by far the costliest year in weather-related natural disasters on record, according to a recent study by the Munich Re Foundation".

Note: the Comissioners originally had plans to vote on the Climate Change task force at their meeting scheduled to be held in New Orleans last year: a meeting which had to be canceled due to Hurricane Katrina. No joke. We couldn't make up stuff this potent. And just when you wanted to rebuild that luxury condo for the third time...