Today we are going to talk about insurance. To most of us, it is a painful necessity that we must pay insurance premiums each month. The only time that we see insurance as a matter of life and death is a situation where one gets sick or needs a life-saving drug that can only be paid for with health insurance.
There is another very serious dimension
to insurance that is a matter of life and death for hundreds of thousands or
millions of people. Russia never developed a truly viable insurance industry.
In the days when it was the Soviet Union when things like armaments were sold
to other countries; they had to go to Western insurance brokers to get
insurance coverage to cover the ships and weapons being transported to
customers worldwide. I was friends for many years with a shadowy character
named Philip M. Wilson. His family was Russian Jews. Somehow, they fled the
Soviet Union and arrived in Saint Louis, Missouri. The family name was changed
to Wilson. Phil became an international insurance broker. Soviet officials used
him to insure arms shipments. Phil was a double agent. He reported all his
Soviet Union insurance policies to the CIA.
The European Union and England have
decided to no longer insure tankers carrying Russian oil. Wheat will follow.
(Russia produces 25% of the world's wheat.) No ship moves without insurance.
China could step in and provide insurance. They will not because of fear of
sanctions. Russia is also going to block the export of Ukrainian grain
shipments. 12% of the world's grain production will be lost.
Oil prices are going to go up. Wheat
prices will go up. We, affluent Westerners, will feel discomfort with higher
food prices. Starvation will take place in other parts of the world. It is not
a happy scenario.
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