MIXED MOTIVES.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 08-NOV-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

When Americans are asked to rank professions in terms of honesty and ethics, insurance agents routinely end up near the bottom of the list--somewhere between politicians and car salesmen. Generally, insurers are seen as clever hucksters who prey on insecurity and ignorance to sell people what they don't need at prices they shouldn't have to pay. So you might have thought that the industry's image couldn't get much worse. Then Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, filed a lawsuit against the giant insurance broker Marsh & McLennan, describing instances of bribery, price-fixing, and all-around corruption. The suit forced the resignation, last week, of Jeffrey Greenberg, Marsh's C.E.O., and, by implicating Marsh's collaborators and rivals, made the insurance game appear even seamier than before.

At the heart of this new...

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