action… what happens is… the immune system comes in and it just mops the floor with with these little invaders.
In the process, it also KILLS THE CANCER.
Pretty cool eh?
It’s being hailed as “the next wave” in cancer treatment… getting the body’s own immune system to do the bidding of the oncologists.
Except… it’s not new.
Dr. William Coley invented the method in… wait for it… the 1800s.
What’s old is new again.
Reminds me of all the hoopla about interest rates these days.
Turn on the schnews. Open up your favorite Interwebs browser. Fire up the Fakebook.
You’ll see it almost everywhere… interest rates are bottoming out and we’re almost at 0%… and when that happens… all h*ll will break loose.
“We’re in uncharted territory.”
Economists are outraged (OUTRAGED, I SAY!) at the state of the economy.
We’re headed for the end of days…
Except… we’re not.
What we’re going through now? …it has already happened in the 1930s during The Great Depression.
Short-term interest rates were 0% and in some cases negative.
Long-term interest rates were between 2%-3%… some long-term rates fell to near-zero.
Is that bad?
Uh… well… yeah it’s pretty bad.
But it’s not the end of the world.
See… after the 40s, interest rates began their long climb upward, peaked in the early ‘80s and then slid back down again over the next 36 years.
Don’t get me wrong… you, me, everyone else… we don’t want to stay in this environment.
It’s VERY destructive to the stock market… bond market… to most businesses… and it can suck up investment capital like a Hoover on steroids.
Very few businesses can survive sustained low interest rates.
Eventually, a massive correction happens… stock market tumbles… banks get wiped out… mom and pop shops go belly up…
… but a few institutions stick around.
One of those institutions is life insurance.
A very “boring” industry.
Boring and consistent.
One of the reasons they’re able to weather these kinds of epic financial storms is because of their MASSIVE cash reserves… and various methods of distributing earnings (dividends) like “pegging,” “substitution,” and “dividend smoothing.”
It’s rare for an insurer to lose money in any given year… but when it happens… or (more likely) when an insurer has lower than expected earnings… those “losses” in the insurer’s investments from one year are not immediately felt by policyholders.
The cash reserves act as a “buffer” so that insurers can provide a consistent dividend from year-to-year.
That dividend is not always the same every year and it can (and does) change over time, but many companies have figured out how to minimize variances from year to year.
Anywho, this is something my clients benefit from year in and year out and it lets them buy cars, pay off debt, take vacations, pay for weddings, make investments, and a ‘ho bunch mo’ on THEIR terms, not someone else’s.
And like Dr. Coley’s cancer treatment… none of this is new. In fact, it’s as old as the U.S. of A.