Has Obama’s Ultimate Insurance Program Failed Us All? + Lee’s take on ALL, HIG, PGR, PRU, EBAY, AET, TWX, GCI, MO, DIS, and NYT

Lee Allen Investors Observer.com

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This is not another endless article on how National Healthcare could be the savior or the bankrupter of the entire nation. Nope… This is about something that could be more expensive and more immediate than the mega-healthcare reforms, programs, and laws being debated right now. This is about an even bigger mega insurance program the United States took out many years ago and how this country dutifully paid all its “premiums” and more.  But right when the USA had to collect, the holders of that insurance plan balked at the prospect of fulfilling their commitment. The worst thing is that the nation formerly know as the most powerful nation in the world is letting them get away with it.  Yes, after spending untold billions over almost a half century, that insurance program is starting to look like nothing more than a Bernie Madoff-style scam times about a bazillion. Nope, I’m not talking about an insurance company like Allstate (ALL), Hartford (HIG), Progressive (PGR), or Prudential (PRU)… I am talking about one of the largest insurance programs in history. It’s known as NATO and it’s starting to look like the biggest insurance fraud of all time….

This guy may need some insurance

Back in the dark ages, a few months after my wife and I were married, we decided to take a trip to Europe. We were young, crazy, and the dollar was strong. When we returned home we found we were robbed. We walked in the door and our apartment was cleaner than it had ever been. We could hear an echo when we talked because almost everything we owned was gone. The robbers had even dug through our closets and stolen wedding presents still in the boxes.

This was before eBay (EBAY) and CraigsList, so we had no obvious place to check and see if our worldly possessions were up for sale. All the police did was give us a form to fill out so they could file some report. No team of CSI technicians showed up to dust the place for fingerprints or to search for DNA.

But… Luckily my wife and I had listened to my Uncle Mort’s shrewd Wedding Day advice and bought apartment insurance. The slick insurance guy talked us into spending an extra few bucks a month on something we really didn’t totally understand but he said we should have. It was called replacement value coverage.

NATO Insurance Headquarters

Within a week, everything was replaced at no cost to us. Thank you Aetna (AET) insurance.  Now that’s how insurance is supposed to work. Without that insurance, at that point in our lives it would have taken us many years to save up the money to replace everything. By paying a relatively low amount of money for the insurance, we were protected against a relatively catastrophic loss. And if the insurance company would have decided not to pay up, I’m sure my Uncle Mort would have recommended a lawyer to go after them because it’s illegal for insurance companies to not pay claims. At least in the world of honorable people insurance can work.

So… Back about fifty years ago when the heavily mustached and vodka-doused Russians were ready to expand their empire to the west into countries like Germany, Austria, and France, someone thought up a new kind of insurance plan called NATO.

At this point in history the Russians could have easily taken over these hobbled and weak countries mostly known for fine wines, warm beer, and large families of singing kids with ex-nuns. That would have definitely been considered a relatively catastrophic loss for them all.

These European countries must have had an Uncle Mort, too, because they scrambled to take out an insurance policy to protect themselves from these wild Russians.

As I understand this NATO thing, and while I do claim to be an expert on 7-Eleven donuts (the selection and consistency is much better before 10:30 in the morning), I do not claim to be an expert on international relations; it’s just a big insurance policy. All the members commit to protect each other in the event of an act of war. Simply put, an attack on one of the members was treated as an attack on all the members. Anyone loaded up with enough Vodka to attack Germany would all of a sudden be staring down the gun barrels of a dozen or so countries -- most notably including the USA. For over fifty years the USA has had a large contingent of troops and equipment on the ground in Europe ready to fulfill their NATO commitment.

This NATO thing worked because as far as I can see, from reading my kids’ history books, the Russians left Europe alone. I’m pretty sure if a Russian invasion would have happened I would have seen something on CNN – owned by Time Warner (TWX) – or read about it in USA Today – published by Gannet (GCI). The threat of facing some of the most powerful countries in the free world pretty much kept the Russians from trying to expand their iron curtain flavor of home decoration much farther than a few outlying countries like Cuba. I guess having a few hundred thousand American troops in Germany sitting in tanks and fighter jet cockpits was enough to keep the Europeans warm and safe so they could kill themselves by smoking too many Marlboros – a product of Phillip Morris (MO). And so the world was in balance… Euro Disney (DIS) was built, they finally built that tunnel under the English Channel, and they launched a new casino chip called the Euro.  Then on September 11th, 2001, out of nowhere, the United States was attacked. The attackers were not some heavily-armed super power. They were a bunch of crazy middle-eastern guys armed with high-tech box cutters who learned how to fly passenger jets during their summer vacations.

NATO Soldiers in Afghanistan… “Where is everyone else?”

And, as we all know now, Afghanistan was harboring the rest of the team of bad guys providing them a safe place to plan, train for, and equip themselves for their next attack on the United States. We knew this because these crazy people had video cameras and knew how to use them. They loved making home movies of themselves telling the world how much they hated Americans and how they were going to kill us all one by one.

I think that could be considered an act of war.

Since then, the United States has been under siege. If you doubt this, try entering or leaving the country and see what you have to go through. For that matter, try entering about any large office building. You will be stopped, searched, and electronically prodded.

So all along people thought it would be Europe that would be attacked, but it turned out to be the good old USA.

And…  We knew the bad guys were in Afghanistan (or Pakistan) so we had to go in there and get them. And now President Obama has made a commitment to put enough troops in the country to get the job done right, not just push these maniacs up into the mountains so they can come back down when the troops leave.

Maybe this insurance company could get things done in Afghanistan?

The problem is this war stuff is expensive business at a time when the USA is saddled with some huge economic problems. A recent estimate from the New York Times (NYT) said that each soldier Mr. Obama sends to Afghanistan costs about $1 million per year to train, equip, feed, and support.  All I can think about when I see numbers like that is how long it is will take my grandchildren to pay off that debt. This would have been a great time to call our NATO insurance representative and collect on that 50+ years of insurance payments we have been making.  And about a week ago that’s just what we did.

Mr. Obama sent Hillary Clinton, his plucky, persistent Secretary of State, to call on NATO and get them to really live up to their end of the bargain for once. She came back with a commitment for 7,500 NATO troops.  Not nearly enough. As this Afghanistan thing starts to drag on into the next century, people will look back and say we needed more troops there to do the job. There are a lot of hills, valleys, and country roads to cover in Afghanistan and a lot of places for these crazy bombers to hide. We are not going to beat them with technology alone. The Afghan people are too afraid of the Taliban to even stand up for themselves. More soldiers are needed on the ground there -- a show of visible force along with enough troops to finish the job. Until that happens, the USA will be under siege.

So what happened to our NATO insurance policy? Why didn’t these Europeans live up to their side of the bargain? Where are they when we need them? Why do we even have to ask them twice for help on this?

If the Europeans need to be reminded about what we did for them when they were under attack, let them get their noses out the air and visit a few of the American war cemeteries that dot the European countryside. They will find way more than 7,500 soldiers there who spilled their blood when Europe was under siege.

The USA is under siege this century. We need help. For Europe to live up to their side of the NATO insurance bargain, they must willingly help us hunt down those enemies that would do us harm so that for the next fifty years Americans can sleep better at night.

f you have any ideas on where Osama Bin Laden is hiding so we can get this thing over with, email me at LeeAllen@InvestorsObserver.com.

 

Usually a tribute page is only for dead people or really good baseball players. Lee is not dead and his wife swings a bat better than he can. Usually she is swinging the bat at Lee. Read one of his articles and see why.

Lee seldom writes what most people would consider “Politically Correct” but he always seems to get a different point of view across. Sometimes Lee even has something to say on personal finance and his refreshing perspectives are never tainted by the kind of tedious extensive research that can clutter up other articles.

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