Halloween is still a month away, but ghouls, ghosts and other grotesque creatures are already roaming America's streets, possibly preparing to knock at your door. What makes them so scream-out-loud horrifying is that they are the newly issued spawn of - shriek! - Wall Street.

The very same greed-fueled bankers who brought us the disaster of 2008's financial crash have created another exotic financial horror to replace their securitized subprime-mortgage packages that exploded all over us.

Wall Street wizards have been down in their corporate basements working furtively to fabricate some new, get-rich-quick financial gimmick, and - Holy Frankenstein! - they've done it.

It's a scheme based on the mundane (but huge) life insurance market. Wall Street intends to tap into the $26 trillion-worth of life insurance policies that Americans hold, using a financial mechanism called "life settlements."

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/142986/wall_street_plans_to_tap_into_%2426_trillion_life_insurance_market%2C_cashing_in_when_people_die