Not long ago I read the novel DEATH BENEFIT by Robin Cook. The set up is this: after the financial crisis of 2008, two newly unemployed bankers started LifeDeals Inc. Their business plan? selling annuities to people with known illnesses, and given their database about the medical facts along with the tendency of many humans to be excessively optimistic about their own longevity, they could do so on terms profitable to themselves. The two principals of LifeDeals are distinguished as characters: Russell is the quant and computer geek, Edmund the hale alpha male. The key to the plot is that LDI is heavily dependent on its settlements with patients with diabetes. Thus, a breakthrough in research into the regeneration of the pancreas using stem cells could destroy it. Another business entity that enters into the plot is called Big Skies. This seems to be a multi-strategy hedge fund, and it is shorting LDI in the credit derivatives market (in oth...