Please Securitize Me

Reading last week about the 'alternative alternatives' investment sector - weather derivatives and so forth - it came to me that the markets are missing out on the biggest and most stable income flows of all, that's to say your salary and mine.

Right now the banks won't lend, stock markets are in terminal free fall, and most countries are going to go bust, so it's really hard for all those unemployed brokers and analysts to earn enough money to feed their Porsches and keep their lovers in cocaine. So here's my idea.

Let's say you're a Belgian dentist, with an income flow of a quarter of a million dollars a year (you're not a very good dentist) and you need extra cash to buy a new high-tech chair. You go to the dentists derivative agency and they rate your future income stream and bundle it with all the other Belgian dentists' income streams. Hey presto, there's a new security called Belgian Dentists A which can be bought, sold or traded.

You get an issuance fee of the present value of 1% of the forward income stream, say USD100,000, which buys your new chair and then some, and agree to pay 1.5% of your annual income to the broker for ever. The broker then sells Belgian Dentists A to the market, making his turn, and makes a market in it.

A whole industry has been invented overnight, with brokers, analysts, underwriters, traders, rating agencies, credit default swaps, you name it. You're home free, because you don't owe anybody anything. If you decide to go AWOL and grow tomatoes in Wales for a living then Belgian Dentists A will take a hit, but AIG will pick up the tab courtesy of the US Treasury.