Four months before Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, President Obama quietly signed legislation expanding the federal program that offers taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance to ocean-front homeowners. The law extended the National Flood Insurance Program for five years while also opening the program for the first time to multi-family properties like beachfront condominiums...The extension got virtually no mainstream press attention. It was covered extensively, however, in Insurance Journal, a trade publication that caters to the industry with headlines such as "Agents, Insurers Cheer Congress OK of Flood Insurance Reform Bill."
It's probably not a great idea to borrow money from China to subsidize people to live in areas vulnerable to flooding. It's all covered in my column this week. Please check it out at Reason (here) and at the New York Sun here. The column also was mentioned in a story in Time.