Call the President!

The indispensable John Jansen has hit upon a way of preventing the next teetering shoe in the financial crisis from going thunk. So far, we've heard surprisingly little from the long maturity financial intermediaries — insurance companies (excluding the counterfeiters at AIG FP) and pension funds. Apropos, JJJ notes

Metropolitan Life announced that in its holdings of corporate bonds they are sitting unceremoniously on $14 billion in losses. I suspect that they are now hoping that advances in medical science will render current actuarial assumptions void and vacuous and the time value of money will work in their favor.

Really, Mr. Obama, has there ever been a better time to fund a Manhattan Project to invent immortality! Kill two birds with one stone. It's immediate stimulus, quick-start investment in a sector where the USA retains a comparative advantage, high-tech medicine. Plus it's a nearly bottomless, um, well of employment opportunity for less skilled workers, who could comb the Lake Okeechobee environs in search of the Fountain of Youth. If successful — and of course it would be successful, this is America, can do, yes we can, shut up we can too — it would save the financial system from the slow tremors of unfunded baby boom retirements and unpayable life insurance obligations. No, Mr. Dole, building a better Viagra doesn't cut it. However, an appeal to the patriotism of Dr. Carlisle Cullen might yield rapid progress.