Old School

Many years ago old man Newmania was a well known Lloyds Broker who placed the of the infamous Den Har Binder with the Sasse syndicate . It is still easily found on the inter web and I turned up this brief description of what happened
“Tim Sasse was an underwriter of the old school, who made one big mistake. He gave his pen away to Dennis Harrison of the Den-Har Underwriting Agency, an Englishman based in New York with access to a vast book of property business.
Under something called Fair Plan, any insurer wishing to write property insurance in New York had to accept a proportion of uninsurable business from the city ghettos. Den-Har, on the Sasse Syndicate's behalf, materially undercut the Fair Plan rates. The result was a huge inflow of premium income. ……non disclosure ..The Sasse Syndicate fell.”
Nowadays this might be called sub prime business or perhaps distressed . The fall out was one of series of scandals which lead to the end of the old gentlemanly Lloyds and when it arose it was with corporate capital and amounted to the "Spirit of Ecstasy" stuck on a BMW.Poor Old Tim Sasse hung himself unable to cope with the disgrace of having let down so many people.Couldn`t happen today could it .
As I look this morning at the wreckage of the US plan to bail out bankers ,and the coalition of right wingers and left wingers that will not put up with it,I thought of this sad story. It strikes me that the fury in America that the tax payer should be bailing out the nameless executives who have behaved as badly might be less obdurate if there was any sign of remorse whatsoever .Where are the bankers hurling themsleves out of 36th floor windows .During the depression as I sipped cup of cold soup in my ragamuffin hat , that would have cheered me up immensley.