I was originally going to headline this piece “Run, Sarah, Run.”  But then I realized what a joke it was—and a one-liner at that—so I had to turn to something else to fill the space.

And then I thought: How about the American Council of Life Insurance’s February 3 statement regarding life settlement securitizations, which uses the now-familiar Palin-esque technique of making unfounded allegations to make noise and get noticed.

The ACLI’s comment drew quick and scornful responses from life settlement industry participants.  And rightfully so.

For years now the ACLI has been engaged in a very deliberate campaign to conflate legitimate life settlements with stranger-originated life insurance transactions. 

In the early days this succeeded, largely because both settlements and STOLI were relatively new and unfamiliar and people had difficulty sorting out the two.  But people wised up as the gulf between the two widened.

Part of ACLI’s campaign has been to imply that the life settlement business as a whole is in favor of STOLI and as a whole is behind these transactions.

This of course is not true.  The Life Insurance Settlement Association has fought to have STOLI transactions banished in the various states with as much fervor as the ACLI. 

The life settlement business realized long ago that STOLI was a poison that would choke off the growth of legitimate business if it were not prohibited and thus controlled.

Might there be some “bad apples” in the settlement business who would try to promote STOLI transactions nonetheless?  I’m sure there are.

But this leads me to a dirty little secret that ACLI has been loath to even acknowledge; this is that STOLI transactions have to be done through life insurance companies.  Who else writes life insurance policies?

It is hard to believe that life insurers, whose underwriting is truly sophisticated, (and let’s face it, underwriting is involved in any policy large enough to be worthy of settlement) cannot identify an application that is made for STOLI purposes and the agents who consistently bring in these types of apps.

For years there’s been scuttlebutt that certain companies—hungry for business—had little compunction about accepting apps that had STOLI written all over them.

So, I’d like to know more about what type of self-policing the ACLI has encouraged among its members.  I’d like to hear more from companies about what actions they’ve taken against any agent who is involved in promoting STOLI.

It’s hard for me to believe that some evil STOLI promoters in the life settlement business are consistently pulling the wool over the eyes of life insurers—especially to the degree the ACLI would have you believe.

ACLI, in its comments, makes some legitimate points about securitization.  But it so seriously undercuts its case with these STOLI allegations that its credibility is damaged.

There is always going to be tension between the life insurers and the life settlement business.  Just wishing, on ACLI’s part, is not going to make settlements go away—they have, after all, proved their value to consumers.  But scurrilous allegations directed toward the entire life settlement community are not going to work either—one would think that would be obvious to the ACLI by now.

But then again, Sarah’s still at it.

By this time we all know how very very difficult it is to get anything done in the U.S. Senate, so it is not surprising that Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was upset about President Obama’s proposals regarding banks—what businesses they can or cannot be in under certain conditions and how big they should be.

One can understand the annoyance of the soon to be retired senior senator from the Nutmeg state who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.  After all, members of his committee have been paired off for months working on different facets of financial reform so that the Senate can have a bipartisan solution to hold up to the world.

Never mind that by the time Dodd’s committee finally puts something out, whatever the plan is will have taken longer to gestate than an elephant.  And the similarity, friends, is not likely to end there. 

So much time will have gone by that we will almost have forgotten what the impetus for financial reform was—and maybe that’s the point.  After all, banks are minting money again (although still not lending it), bank bonuses are in the pre-meltdown range (if not higher) and money from bank lobbyists is gushing. 

It’s obviously ‘What, me worry?’ time again in the good old U.S.A.

So what does the president do when these months-long negotiations between Banking Committee members are reaching a critical point?  He comes along and crashes the party.

I guess he didn’t realize just how delicate these negotiations are, how their fragility could be shattered by wanting too much from the legislation.

The New York Times quoted Dodd as saying that the administration was “’getting precariously close’ to excessive ambition for the legislation.” 

Dodd added: “I don’t want to be in a position where we end up doing nothing because we tried to do too much.”

While I feel your pain, senator, I’m also thinking that maybe the president has seen how unrewarding it has been to pretty much hand over major initiatives on health care reform and financial services reform to Congress.  Maybe he has seen the error of his ways and decided to start flexing a bit of executive power.

Maybe he just wants to get something done.  And let’s face it, that hasn’t seemed to bother you or your fellow committee members very much.

Funny how one election has thrown everything up in the air.

Of course I’m talking about the election of Scott Brown as the Republican senator from the bluest of states, Massachusetts, on January 19. The result has been that Democrats of all stripes are running scared, while Republicans can’t stop crowing about the renewed vigor that Brown’s victory has brought to their party.

I happened to be in Massachusetts the weekend before the election and believe me there was hardly any time for music on any station because the competing ads for Scott and his opponent, Martha Coakley, were going nonstop like some insanely repetitive, yet inescapable, loop.

Brown, as it happens, did not run as a Republican; indeed, he seemed at pains to mention his party affiliation at all.  No, he was an independent. 

One of Coakley’s ads, in fact, identified him as Republican Scott Brown as if this in and of itself was enough in the Bay State to ensure a politician’s defeat.  Sorry, Martha.

But think about it, have you heard much, if anything, about health care reform in the wake of Brown’s victory?  Compared to the nonstop barrage of news that kept coming out of Washington for close to a year, the silence on the issue after the Massachusetts verdict is not a little startling.

Of course, there’s probably a ton of stuff going on in the back rooms of the House and Senate and White House, but any clear sense of direction is not to be found.   Not even in the president’s State of the Union message.

If, as a result of this upset election, nothing or very little comes of nearly a whole year of trying to reform the health care system, there’s no doubt the president will take a body blow.  Even though he did a terrible job of leading the fight on the issue and never truly made it clear what exactly he wanted in the final bill, it is nonetheless the issue that has defined his first year in office.  And if it comes to nothing, what was all the sound and fury about?  And further, what about all the other pressing issues that were back-burnered so that health care reform could take precedence? 

Many people will be only too happy to see the end of any kind of health reform effort, but the fact remains that the system is not going to heal itself and the major problems that were there a year ago are still with us, only worse.

The silence that I referred to above has not only descended on Washington.  There’s been hardly any comment from the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical business or health care providers.

The first two, in particular, had a lot to gain from reform because they were looking forward to millions of new customers paying premiums and buying prescription drugs.  That promised revenue went a long way toward easing the pain of some of the restrictions that the reform plans intended to put in place.

If some kind of “reform” is salvaged after all, it’s likely to be aimed at making changes that affect health insurance regulation.  Insurers could very well end up being subject to many of the restrictions that were in the grand schemes, but without the palliative effect of those millions of new customers.

Trying to forestall this result might be worth insurers bringing some verbal life support to health care reform now.  In fact, reiterating support of reform could well capture the imagination of the public and politicians to good effect.

Without making some noise now, is anybody going to care what they have to peep about later on?