No special treatment for insurers

At a speech to the annual seminar of the International Insurance Society (IIS), Julie Dickson thwarted insurers that demanded regulation to recognize their distinctiveness. On the contrary, the Superintendent of Financial Institutions endorsed the convergence of the bank and insurance sectors.The IIS seminar illustrated that life and health and P&C insurers worldwide all fear being disadvantaged by regulation better suited to banks than insurers.

Ms. Dickson also dashed the hopes of advocates of special treatment for insurers compared with banks in the new regulation. The Superintendent pointed that the lessons of the crisis apply to insurers and banks alike.

She noted a lag on the global scale in development and adoption of oversight and regulation standards. After her speech, Ms. Dickson was barraged by questions fromdiscussion of the evils of wage/price and other government-imposed controls, where he uses the historical example of Germany just after World War II. Due to the efforts of economist Ludwig Erhard, Germany rose from a modern Dark Age that had occurred as a result of the war to become one of the world’s most prosperous nations. This was a dramatic change that took place in a mere 25 years, but only after the wage/price controls imposed by the Nazis were lifted, taxes were lowered, and inflation was stopped.

The importance of the historical perspective cannot be understated in a study such as Penny Candy presents. It is impossible to grasp the full impact of concepts like inflation or wage/price controls without understanding the historical significance of what happens when