More Michael Lewis

Insurance companies, John Seo says, are charging customers too much — or avoiding their customers altogether — instead of sharing their risk with others, like himself, who would be glad to take it. New Orleans, as a result, is slower than it otherwise would be to rebuild. “The insurance companies are basically running away from society,” he says. “What they need to do is take the risk and kick it up to us.” They need to spread it as widely as possible across the investment world and, in the process, minimize the cost of insuring potential losses from catastrophes.