ChatGPT on ‘Dispersion’ and ‘Beta’ in Private Credit
I recently asked ChatGPT to help translate some of the private credit patois that I heard at recent conferences. People were talking about 'dispersion.' And they were saying, 'Private...
Bermuda Short-Sellers
Short-sellers, including hedge funds, sense that the bespoke loans that asset managers have sold to life insurers could fail in the next financial crisis. They may not know it,...
Nashville, Honky Tonks, and Private Credit
In April, at a conference in Nashville, I mingled with the people who turn bundles of below-investment-grade loans into stock-like or bond-like assets. They perform the valuable service of...
Corebridge-Equitable Merger: An Aftershock of 2008
In 2008, Corebridge was still AIG’s retirement business and Equitable had not yet separated from French insurance giant AXA. (Back then, ING-US hadn’t become Voya and MetLife hadn’t yet...
What’s Behind Annuities’ Latest Sales Record?
Gross sales of annuities approached the half-trillion-dollar mark in 2025. Net inflows, though positive, are much more modest. If demand for lifetime income solutions, as opposed to safe tax-deferred...
‘Why Social Security Can’t Go Broke’
Here's a link to a chapter on Social Security that I contributed to 'The Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory.'
CITs: Private Credit’s Pathway into 401(k) Plans
'Everybody—all the asset managers—are trying to pick CIT dance partners so that they can have product in 401(k) plans,' said Chris Randall at SEI Trust Company....
Private Credit Anxiety and the Bermuda Triangle
The share prices of Apollo, KKR, and F&G Annuities & Life have fallen significantly over the past 14 months. Are investors skittish about their exposure to private credit? Or...
Australia’s ‘Super’ Gets a Presidential Shout-Out
Australia's mandatory defined contribution retirement savings system is "a 'good' system that has 'worked out well' for Australia, the president said from the Roosevelt Room. Mr. Trump is flanked...
Kyle Busch’s Crash Course in IUL
An indexed universal life policy demands about as little maintenance as an eight-cylinder, 750-horsepower, 200-mph NASCAR stock car. And in the hands of an unskilled, or untrustworthy driver, or...
How the ‘Harkin Amendment’ Enabled the ‘Bermuda Triangle’
My bias regarding the Bermuda Triangle' was confirmed when I read “The Law of Capitalism” (Yale, 2025) and “The Code of Capital” (Princeton, 2019) by Columbia law professor Katharina...
The Year of Living Uncertainly
The life insurance industry is sensitive to changes in interest rates and in regulations, and President Trump appears bent on lowering rates and removing regulations that he doesn't...
Dutch Pensions Go Collective
Today’s financial Goldilocks moment—with strong equity returns and robust fixed income yields—creates favorable conditions for the Netherlands to complete its long-planned switch from traditional private defined benefit plans to...
The Private Credit Instability Hypothesis
Private credit might be healthy in moderation. But 'moderation' isn't Wall Street's modus operandi. We shouldn't expect that to change.
Third Point Joins the Triangle, Cayman-Style
Another asset manager goes subtropical. Third Point Investors Ltd. established Malibu Re in the Cayman Islands, bought a Texas life insurer from Mutual of America, acquired a private credit...
How Life Insurers Changed Alt-Asset Managers
A new research paper from Harvard Business School and State Street documents how publicly-traded alternative asset managers have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars from annuity issuers into their...
A Look at Nine RILA Income Riders
We examine the lifetime income riders on registered index-linked annuity contracts from the six largest RILA sellers (Equitable, Allianz Life, Prudential, Brighthouse, Lincoln, and Jackson) plus those from Principal,...
Gold, Not Tariffs, Saved the 1890s
President Trump said his "Liberation Day" tariffs would boost the U.S. economy the way President William McKinley's tariffs did in the 1890s. But the boom of the 1890s came...
