<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>chicken_littl2</author><text>Completely glosses over the fact that whatever subsidiary they run their life insurance and annuities out of is going to have to hold a statutory reserve for liabilities like this that would fall under their &amp;quot;assets under management&amp;quot;. It also glosses over the fact that they are state regulated by all states they run business out of, not just NJ. I&amp;#x27;m sure they issue policies in NY, the NY insurance commissioner typically will oversee their valuation methods for stat reserves to make sure they meet industry standards. I would be &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; surprised if they took a loss on their life line of business that puts them out of business, statutory reserves are a very conservative valuation method, where you use NAIC prescribed mortality tables, so there&amp;#x27;s no fudging around the numbers very much.&lt;p&gt;Long story short, this is really sensationalist back of napkin math from a reporter talking about a very regulated and complicated industry that they seem to know nothing about. No wonder is such garbage.&lt;p&gt;Edit:
Upon further reflection, this doesn&amp;#x27;t even cover reinsurance that they might have that cover abnormal losses across individual, blocks of business, and across the entire company.&lt;p&gt;Even in the event they didn&amp;#x27;t have the capital to pay off their life insurance liabilities due to loss, they would probably liquidate their inforce blocks of business by auctioning them off to other insurance companies to cover their remaining losses.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s just so much ignorance and sensationalism here, it&amp;#x27;s hard to comprehend.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Looming Danger of Non-Banks</title><url>https://www.axios.com/prudential-non-banks-future-financial-crises-f21319bf-7104-4109-9f11-a8d369110e0c.html</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>peterburkimsher</author><text>The article is about Prudential life insurance being too big to fail, because their assets are worth $3.7 trillion = 20% of US GDP. The article also claims that &amp;quot;unexpected mortality&amp;quot; of 1.1% of its portfolio could bankrupt it. If a lot of people die suddenly, this could cause another economic crisis in the US.&lt;p&gt;How many deaths? Based on their acquisition of The Hartford $135 billion = 700,000 in force life insurance policies, each policy is worth $192,857. The article claims Prudential could be bankrupted by losses of $42 billion = 217,778 policies.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a lot of deaths for peacetime. Flu only kills about 36,000 people in the US each year [1]. Terrorism killed only 3191 people in the US in between 2000 and 2016 [2]. However, it&amp;#x27;s not a lot in a war. The Vietnam War claimed 1.3-4.2 million lives. [3]&lt;p&gt;Conclusion? Stop American politicians from trying to start a war. Please work for peace, even if it costs your job (c.f. Project Maven military AI at Google [4])&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Influenza#Epidemic_and_pandemic_spread&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Influenza#Epidemic_and_pandemi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ourworldindata.org&amp;#x2F;grapher&amp;#x2F;fatalities-from-terrorism?country=USA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ourworldindata.org&amp;#x2F;grapher&amp;#x2F;fatalities-from-terrorism...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Vietnam_War&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Vietnam_War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.engadget.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;google-project-maven-employee-protest&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.engadget.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;google-project-maven-emp...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Looming Danger of Non-Banks</title><url>https://www.axios.com/prudential-non-banks-future-financial-crises-f21319bf-7104-4109-9f11-a8d369110e0c.html</url></story>