Category: Risk

Why You’re Losing More to Casinos on the Las Vegas Strip

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-youre-losing-more-to-casinos-on-the-las-vegas-strip-73f6f3ab?st=x02m0zq2rrmv5sj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink&fbclid=IwAR22FpxvLhFtnRbQ0YaEwFgHqN764ULdkADv9QXOGc-PKpeTbds8nUrIUs0

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Casinos on the Vegas Strip are making it costlier to play and harder to win.  

Payouts are lower for winning blackjack hands. Bets on some roulette wheels are riskier. And it is taking more cash to play at many game tables.

Blackjack players lost nearly $1 billion to casinos on the Strip last year, the second-highest loss on record, after 2007, according to data from the Nevada Gaming Control Board. 

Some Las Vegas casinos cut back the number of blackjack tables with dealers, raised minimum bets during busy times and lifted their advantage over players in some games—doubling-down on a prepandemic practice of making subtle changes that favor the house, according to industry executives, researchers and gamblers.

….

Blackjack, a fast-paced card game, historically paid out a ratio of 3:2 when a player hit 21 on the first two cards. That means a gambler wins $15 for every $10 bet. Now, many blackjack tables on the Strip pay out at 6:5, which means that same $10 yields only $12.

John and Kristina Mehaffey, owners of gambling-news and data company Vegas Advantage, have been cataloging these changes since 2011, walking miles-long routes through casinos to record the number of blackjack and roulette tables set outside of VIP areas.

According to the Mehaffeys’ data, more than two-thirds of blackjack tables on the Strip currently offer 6:5 payouts, as opposed to 3:2.

….

Las Vegas visitors on vacation might not notice—or might not care—about the casinos’ increased advantage, says Bill Zender, a casino consultant who focuses on table-game management. But casinos risk losing business over time, he says. 

“If you go into a casino and gamble, and you lose your money fairly quickly, almost every time, you don’t feel you’re getting the bang for your buck,” Zender said.

Author(s): Katherine Sayre

Publication Date:29 May 2023

Publication Site: WSJ

Paying more for less

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://allisonschrager.substack.com/p/paying-more-for-less

Excerpt:

Between the controversies at Disney, Bud Light, and Target, I think we need a return to shareholder primacy.

In 2019, many of the biggest American CEOs signed a manifesto declaring the end of shareholder primacy and embracing a new stakeholder model. With shareholder primacy, the main objective of a corporation is to maximize profits, both long- and short-term profits, because that is what boosts share prices and dividends, and shareholders like that. With the stakeholder model, a corporation has many other objectives: worker well-being, the environment, and the good of society. That may sound nice, but often, these stakeholders have competing objectives, and choosing who gets priority is a question of values.

When Milton Friedman argued for shareholder primacy, he said that a CEO should not forgo profits to exercise his personal values. It is not his money to spend, and not everyone shares his values, nor should they. And worse, I blame the multi-stakeholder model  for making everything feel more political.

Now, I realize even before 2019, companies were getting more political, but it got ramped up several notches in 2020. And now, everything you buy feels like a political statement. And even innocuous well-intentioned marketing campaigns that aim to give visibility to marginalized groups are taken as an explicit endorsement of a more divisive political agenda. I think shooting Bud Light cans in protest is stupid. But I get that people feel frustrated that everything is political and often not their politics.

And even if corporations mostly did pursue profits after 2019, and the stakeholder manifesto was a cynical ploy to appease young workers, get ESG capital, or avoid regulation, rhetoric matters. Before 2019, people could shrug at corporate pandering because it all seemed like a marketing ploy, and who can argue with selling lawn chairs and beer to the trans community? It is a growing demographic.

But in the context of announcing that you are doing it to make the world a better place, it strikes a different tone. And since stakeholder capitalism is about choosing between competing values, it is political. And now everything is worse for profits and society, since it adds to division and rancor.

Milton Friedman was right; shareholder primacy is better for corporations and society.

If CEOs really want to save the world, they should do the brave thing: announce an end to stakeholder capitalism and go back to just worrying about profits.

Author(s): Allison Schrager

Publication Date: 5 Jun 2023

Publication Site: Known Unknowns at substack

Why Insurers Are Fleeing California

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-farm-homeowners-insurance-california-2a934a22?st=0vc5cbqwbedf0b2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Excerpt:

State Farm General Insurance Co. last week became the latest insurer to retreat from California’s homeowners market. The culprit isn’t climate change, as the media claims in parroting Sacramento talking points. The cause is the Golden State’s hostile insurance environment.

The nation’s top property and casualty insurer on Friday said it won’t accept new applications for homeowners insurance, citing “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.”

In other words, State Farm can’t accurately price risk and increase its rates to cover ballooning liabilities. Other property and casualty insurers, including AIG and Chubb, have also been shrinking their California footprint after years of catastrophic wildfires, which are becoming more common owing to drought and decades of poor forest management.

Author(s): Editorial Board

Publication Date: 30 May 2023

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Statement of CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, Member, FDIC Board of Directors, on the Proposed Special Deposit Insurance Assessment on Large Banks

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/statement-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-member-fdic-board-of-directors-on-the-proposed-special-deposit-insurance-assessment-on-large-banks/

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First, we need to simplify our rules while strengthening them. Too many areas of regulation across our economy have become so complicated with weird formulas, dizzying methodologies, and endless loopholes and carveouts. We need simpler rules to prevent future disasters. A better alternative is to create bright line limits, with clear sanctions, including size caps and growth restrictions. Clearly observable metrics make it easier to monitor and increase consistency.

Second, we need to stop subsidizing the largest and riskiest banks by giving out free deposit insurance. When small banks fail, they rarely lead to much cost to the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund, since they can be fairly easily wound down or sold. But when large banks fail, the costs to the Deposit Insurance Fund and broader economy can be steep. To make matters worse, those institutional clients with the biggest deposits feel they can get around insurance limits by going to the biggest banks. In other words, people perceive that the biggest banks get free deposit insurance over the legal limits by way of their too-big-to-fail status.

Fixing our deposit insurance pricing structure is just one small step that could help address this problem. Large, riskier banks should pay more and small, simpler banks should pay less. We should also make the framework countercyclical, so that we aren’t in the position of raising rates when banking conditions are weak.

While today’s proposed special assessment will not fall on small, local banks, the failure of First Republic Bank will be a direct hit to the Deposit Insurance Fund that is not being recouped through this special assessment. It’s a reminder that we need to fix the fund’s pricing over the long term.

Finally, as Swiss policymakers made clear regarding the recent turmoil involving Credit Suisse, more people are saying the quiet part out loud: the current resolution plans filed by the largest financial institutions in the world, which purport to show how the firms could fail without a government bailout or economic chaos, are essentially a fairy tale.5

The latest failures are another reminder that we must work to eliminate the unfair advantages bestowed upon too-big-to-fail banks. New laws and old laws alike provide a roadmap to end too-big-to-fail and the resulting risks to financial stability, fair competition, and the rule of law.6

Author(s): Rohit Chopra

Publication Date: 11 May 2023

Publication Site: Consumer Finance Protection Bureau

Car insurance prices soar in Illinois, Rep. Will Guzzardi aiming to crack down on insurers

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wbez.org/stories/car-insurance-prices-soar-in-illinois/b46209a7-5606-4bf4-8f15-806689c76e28?utm_source=Wirepoints%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=387e2a5fbc-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_895ee9abf9-387e2a5fbc-30506353

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The five biggest auto insurers in Illinois have raised automobile insurance rates a whopping $527 million since January, an analysis by two consumer groups shows.

That follows about $1.1 billion in rate increases last year by the top 10 Illinois car insurers.

The analysis by the nonprofit Illinois Public Interest Research Group and Consumer Federation of America looked at auto insurance rate increases by the five largest companies in Illinois: State Farm, Allstate, Progressive, Geico and Country Financial, which together make up 62% of the Illinois market.

…..

Now, state Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, has introduced legislation to address those issues and crack down on insurers. Guzzardi’s bill would:

  • Require automobile insurers to get prior state approval for rate hikes.
  • Ban “excessive” insurance increases.
  • Prohibit using gender, marital status, age, occupation, schooling, home ownership, wealth, credit scores or a customer’s past insurance company relationships in setting car insurance rates.

It’s already illegal to use race, ethnicity and religion in setting rates. That would continue under Guzzardi’s proposal.

Author(s): Stephanie Zimmermann | Chicago Sun-Times

Publication Date: 6 May 2023

Publication Site: WBEZ in Chicago

Bond prices mean revert after all

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://allisonschrager.substack.com/p/bond-prices-mean-revert-after-all?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Excerpt:

On day one of Fixed Income School, you learn that bond prices mean-revert. While a stock or a house’s price can continue to increase as the company or land becomes more valuable, yields can only go so low. Nobody will pay to lend someone else money, or at least, they won’t pay much to do that. Bond prices can only climb so high before they fall. While some evidence shows that yields trended downward slightly as the world became less risky, they still tended to revert to a mean greater than zero.

It’s easy to blame Silicon Valley Bank for being blissfully ignorant of such details. They purchased long-term bonds and mortgage-backed securities when the Fed was doing QE on steroids! Did they expect that to last forever? Well, maybe that was a reasonable assumption, based on the last 15 years, but I digress.

Many of these smaller banks, particularly Silicon Valley, are in trouble because they were particularly exposed to rate risk since their depositors’ profit model relied on low rates. So, when rates increased, they needed their money—precisely when their asset values would also plummet. It’s terrible risk management. But, to be fair, even the Fed (the FED!) did not anticipate a significant rate rise. Stress tests didn’t even consider such a scenario, even as rates were already climbing. Why would we expect bankers in California to be smarter than all-knowing bank regulators?

According to the New York Times, Central Bankers still expect rates to fall back to 2.5%. Why? Because of inequality and an aging population. But how does that work, and what’s the mechanism behind it? No good answer, or not one that squares with data before 1985, but we can hope. Sometimes we just want something to be true and for it to be true for politically convenient reasons.

Author(s): Allison Schrager

Publication Date: 20 Mar 2023

Publication Site: Known Unknowns at Substack

Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full

https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6

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Background

Viral epidemics or pandemics of acute respiratory infections (ARIs) pose a global threat. Examples are influenza (H1N1) caused by the H1N1pdm09 virus in 2009, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) caused by SARS‐CoV‐2 in 2019. Antiviral drugs and vaccines may be insufficient to prevent their spread. This is an update of a Cochrane Review last published in 2020. We include results from studies from the current COVID‐19 pandemic.

Objectives

To assess the effectiveness of physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of acute respiratory viruses.

Search methods

We searched CENTRAL, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and two trials registers in October 2022, with backwards and forwards citation analysis on the new studies.

Selection criteria

We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and cluster‐RCTs investigating physical interventions (screening at entry ports, isolation, quarantine, physical distancing, personal protection, hand hygiene, face masks, glasses, and gargling) to prevent respiratory virus transmission. 

Data collection and analysis

We used standard Cochrane methodological procedures.

Main results

We included 11 new RCTs and cluster‐RCTs (610,872 participants) in this update, bringing the total number of RCTs to 78. Six of the new trials were conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic; two from Mexico, and one each from Denmark, Bangladesh, England, and Norway. We identified four ongoing studies, of which one is completed, but unreported, evaluating masks concurrent with the COVID‐19 pandemic.

Many studies were conducted during non‐epidemic influenza periods. Several were conducted during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and others in epidemic influenza seasons up to 2016. Therefore, many studies were conducted in the context of lower respiratory viral circulation and transmission compared to COVID‐19. The included studies were conducted in heterogeneous settings, ranging from suburban schools to hospital wards in high‐income countries; crowded inner city settings in low‐income countries; and an immigrant neighbourhood in a high‐income country. Adherence with interventions was low in many studies.

The risk of bias for the RCTs and cluster‐RCTs was mostly high or unclear.

Medical/surgical masks compared to no masks

We included 12 trials (10 cluster‐RCTs) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness (two trials with healthcare workers and 10 in the community). Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence. Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported (very low‐certainty evidence).

N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks

We pooled trials comparing N95/P2 respirators with medical/surgical masks (four in healthcare settings and one in a household setting). We are very uncertain on the effects of N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks on the outcome of clinical respiratory illness (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.45 to 1.10; 3 trials, 7779 participants; very low‐certainty evidence). N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks may be effective for ILI (RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.03; 5 trials, 8407 participants; low‐certainty evidence). Evidence is limited by imprecision and heterogeneity for these subjective outcomes. The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection (RR 1.10, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.34; 5 trials, 8407 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Restricting pooling to healthcare workers made no difference to the overall findings. Harms were poorly measured and reported, but discomfort wearing medical/surgical masks or N95/P2 respirators was mentioned in several studies (very low‐certainty evidence). 

One previously reported ongoing RCT has now been published and observed that medical/surgical masks were non‐inferior to N95 respirators in a large study of 1009 healthcare workers in four countries providing direct care to COVID‐19 patients. 

Hand hygiene compared to control

Nineteen trials compared hand hygiene interventions with controls with sufficient data to include in meta‐analyses. Settings included schools, childcare centres and homes. Comparing hand hygiene interventions with controls (i.e. no intervention), there was a 14% relative reduction in the number of people with ARIs in the hand hygiene group (RR 0.86, 95% CI 0.81 to 0.90; 9 trials, 52,105 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence), suggesting a probable benefit. In absolute terms this benefit would result in a reduction from 380 events per 1000 people to 327 per 1000 people (95% CI 308 to 342). When considering the more strictly defined outcomes of ILI and laboratory‐confirmed influenza, the estimates of effect for ILI (RR 0.94, 95% CI 0.81 to 1.09; 11 trials, 34,503 participants; low‐certainty evidence), and laboratory‐confirmed influenza (RR 0.91, 95% CI 0.63 to 1.30; 8 trials, 8332 participants; low‐certainty evidence), suggest the intervention made little or no difference. We pooled 19 trials (71, 210 participants) for the composite outcome of ARI or ILI or influenza, with each study only contributing once and the most comprehensive outcome reported. Pooled data showed that hand hygiene may be beneficial with an 11% relative reduction of respiratory illness (RR 0.89, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.94; low‐certainty evidence), but with high heterogeneity. In absolute terms this benefit would result in a reduction from 200 events per 1000 people to 178 per 1000 people (95% CI 166 to 188). Few trials measured and reported harms (very low‐certainty evidence).

We found no RCTs on gowns and gloves, face shields, or screening at entry ports.

Authors’ conclusions

The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. There were additional RCTs during the pandemic related to physical interventions but a relative paucity given the importance of the question of masking and its relative effectiveness and the concomitant measures of mask adherence which would be highly relevant to the measurement of effectiveness, especially in the elderly and in young children.

There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection. Hand hygiene is likely to modestly reduce the burden of respiratory illness, and although this effect was also present when ILI and laboratory‐confirmed influenza were analysed separately, it was not found to be a significant difference for the latter two outcomes. Harms associated with physical interventions were under‐investigated.

There is a need for large, well‐designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk of ARIs. 

Author(s): Tom Jefferson, Liz Dooley, Eliana Ferroni, Lubna A Al-Ansary, Mieke L van Driel, Ghada A Bawazeer, Mark A Jones, Tammy C Hoffmann, Justin Clark, Elaine M Beller, Paul P Glasziou, John M Conly

Publication Date: 30 Jan 2023

Publication Site: Cochrane Library

The Currency Swaps Time Bomb in Global Finance – Rob Johnson

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/01/the-currency-swaps-time-bomb-in-global-finance-rob-johnson.html

Excerpt:

Yves here. While this post gives an introduction to the problem of the magnitude of currency swaps, I suspect readers will find it a bit frustrating because it raises more questions than it answers. I feel I should provide far more than I do in this intro, but it is a big topic to address properly, so I hope to keep chipping away at it over time.

Some initial observations:

First, the size of the dollar-related swaps market belies the idea that the dollar is going to be displaced all that soon.

Second, and not to sound Pollyannish, but there was a lot of currency volatility last year, yet nothing blew up. That may be due to dumb luck. But also recall that the Bank of International Settlements has been a Cassandra. It first flagged rapidly rising housing prices and related increases in lending as a risk…in 2003.

Third, interviewer Paul Jay keeps pushing on the idea that shouldn’t this activity be regulated? Wellie, it never has been and I don’t see how you can put that genie in the bottle. Foreign exchange trading has always been over the counter.

And non-US banks are regulated not by the US but by their home country under what is called the “home host” practice. So it is France’s job to see that French banks fly right, even when they are trading dollars and other non-Eurozone currencies. If a French bank gets in trouble, even on its dollar exposures, it is France that has to bail them out or put it down. That is why, during the financial crisis, when French and even much more so German banks bought a lot of bad US subprime debt and CDOs and then had a lot of losses, they needed dollar funding to cover the holes in their dollar book (as in no one would provide them with short-term dollar funding to keep funding these dollar assets and no one would buy them at any reasonable price if they had tried to sell them). But the ECB could only lend dollars to these Eurobanks, which would not solve this funding problem. So the Fed opened up big currency swap lines with the major central banks. These central banks then swapped to get dollars so they could provide emergency dollar funding to their banks.

Author(s): Yves Smith, Rob Johnson, Paul Jay

Publication Date: 3 Jan 2023

Publication Site: Naked Capitalism, theAnalysis.news

Emails Show CDC Removed Defensive Gun Use Stats After Gun-Control Advocates Pressured Officials in Private Meeting

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://thereload.com/emails-cdc-removed-defensive-gun-use-stats-after-gun-control-advocates-pressured-officials-in-private-meeting/

Excerpt:

The Centers For Disease Control (CDC) deleted a reference to a study it commissioned after a group of gun-control advocates complained it made passing new restrictions more difficult.

The lobbying campaign spanned months and culminated with a private meeting between CDC officials and three advocates last summer, a collection of emails obtained by The Reload show. Introductions from the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s (D., Ill.) office helped the advocates reach top officials at the agency after their initial attempt to reach out went unanswered. The advocates focused their complaints on the CDC’s description of its review of studies that estimated defensive gun uses (DGU) happen between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the United States–attacking criminologist Gary Kleck’s work establishing the top end of the range.

“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” Mark Bryant, one of the attendees, wrote to CDC officials after their meeting. “It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value – even as an outlier point in honest DGU discussions.”

Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), argued Kleck’s estimate has been damaging to the political prospects of passing new gun restrictions and should be eliminated from the CDC’s website.

Author(s): Stephen Gutowski

Publication Date: 15 Dec 2022

Publication Site: The Reload

State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo Issues New mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Guidance

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/FLDOH/bulletins/3312697

Guidance: https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221007-guidance-mrna-covid19-vaccines-doc.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Analysis: https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221007-guidance-mrna-covid19-vaccines-analysis.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

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Today, State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo has announced new guidance regarding mRNA vaccines. The Florida Department of Health (Department) conducted an analysis through a self-controlled case series, which is a technique originally developed to evaluate vaccine safety.

This analysis found that there is an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group. Non-mRNA vaccines were not found to have these increased risks.

As such, the State Surgeon General recommends against males aged 18 to 39 from receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Those with preexisting cardiac conditions, such as myocarditis and pericarditis, should take particular caution when making this decision.

Author(s): Joseph A. Ladapo

Publication Date: 7 Oct 2022

Publication Site: Florida Dept of Health

Drowning Prevention: How the American Academy of Pediatrics is failing our children

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://authenticpediatrics.substack.com/p/drowning-prevention-how-the-american

Excerpt:

In June 2021 I co-authored an article with drowning prevention parent advocate Nicole Hughes on the subject of water competency in 1-4 year old children and which national swim lesson program methodology aimed to teach this highest risk age group survival skills to best protect against an unplanned submersion.

The purpose of this article was to provide parents and primary care pediatricians with a direct comparison of popular formal swim lesson curriculums of the American Red Cross, YMCA, and Infant Swim Resource (ISR) to inform them on which program better aligns with the parent’s goals for water competency for their young child.

A secondary objective of this commentary was to highlight the methodology of survival swim as a type of formal swim program that in many ways appears superior for this high risk age group due to its ability to teach independent back floating and swim float swim without flotation devices. Despite being the only prominent formal swim lesson program that does this for the under 4 year olds, the AAP without any evidence has come out guns blazing against it.

This is evidenced by the recent parent article in JAMA Pediatrics which states: “Teaching children to swim is important, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended swim lessons as early as age 1 year to provide another protection layer. However, infant swim classes such as Infant Swimming Resource have not been shown to lower the risk of drowning. As an alternative, families may seek out parent-child water play classes to gain familiarity and comfort with being around water together.”

Yet despite the lack of data on benefit vs. harm for each type of formal swim lessons, the AAP feels justified to advocate against ISR survival swim while advocating for Mommy and Me group swim lessons with the goal of comfort over survival.

One year after the publication of our article, the American Academy of Pediatrics authors of the 2019 Policy on Drowning Prevention submitted a Letter to the Editor to Contemporary Pediatrics criticizing our article to which we responded in an Author Response. For unexplained reasons neither letter was published by the journal of record.

Due to the importance of advancing this conversation to better understand the likely benefit and lack of harm of survival swim as a crucial layer of drowning prevention protection, I will publish both the AAP Letter to Editor and Author Response below. It is my hope that you read both. When reading, please do so within the context of an AAP that willingly advocates for non-pharmacological interventions (NPI) such mandatory masking of children for prevention of COVID-19 – stating that there is no evidence that it causes harm or developmental delays while willingly advocating against ISR survival swim – stating that it is harmful and lacks evidence of benefit without any such evidence to make either claim.

Author(s): Todd R Porter

Publication Date: 1 Oct 2022

Publication Site: Authentic Pediatrics at substack

NAIC 2021 Annual/2022 Quarterly Financial Analysis Handbook

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/publication-fah-zu-financial-analysis-handbook.pdf

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Excerpt:

The risk-focused surveillance framework is designed to provide continuous regulatory oversight. The risk-focused approach requires fully coordinated efforts between the financial examination function and the financial analysis function. There should be a continuous exchange of information between the field examination function and the financial analysis function to ensure that all members of the state insurance department are properly informed of solvency issues related to the state’s domestic insurers.

The regulatory Risk-Focused Surveillance Cycle involves five functions, most of which are performed under the current financial solvency oversight role. The enhancements coordinate all of these functions in a more integrated manner that should be consistently applied by state insurance regulators. The five functions of the risk assessment process are illustrated within the Risk-Focused Surveillance Cycle.


As illustrated in the Risk-Focused Surveillance Cycle diagram, elements from the five identified functions
contribute to the development of an IPS. Each state will maintain an IPS for its domestic companies. State
insurance regulators that wish to review an IPS for a non-domestic company will be able to request the IPS from the domestic or lead state. The documentation contained in the IPS is considered proprietary, confidential information that is not intended to be distributed to individuals other than state insurance regulators.

Please note that once the Risk-Focused Surveillance Cycle has begun, any of the inputs to the IPS can be changed at any time to reflect the changing environment of an insurer’s operation and financial condition.

Author(s): NAIC staff

Publication Date: 1 Jan 2022

Publication Site: NAIC