winds of insurance change

Those coldly calculating insurance companies are voting with their wallets, and are scaling way back on insurance in vulnerable coastal areas, Joel Garreau reports.

And a big boo-hoo to people who've built on the Outer Banks and can't get insurance now. We've subsidized them long enough -- they shouldn't get FEDERAL coverage or disaster relief either. Nobody is going to compensate me if I set up my lemonade stand in the middle of the Beltway and it is eventually smashed by a Wal-Mart truck. If they want their $2 million, 14-bedroom dream homes on the Outer Banks, let 'em find a way to fund the risk too. (As for the couple who had their home as their retirement fund, let me kindly suggest that is just plain fucking stupid, and was probably just a rationalization they made when they overspent on their two-week- a-year cabin-on-steroids.)

Insurers aren't being mean or unfeeling in doing this either. Believe me, they LIKE selling insurance because they expect to make a profit on it. So you know their calculations are bleak if they are essentially pulling out of a sector.

Not that you should let climate change worry your pretty little head. After all, de facto President Bush isn't worried about it.