Academic

My august employer self-insures, so all employees must take a driver?s education test if they plan to use vehicles on the company dime. It was an accordingly nostalgic morning for me last week. Accident fatality statistics, ghoulish videos of car wrecks, state Department of Transportation documents (sample advice: ?NEVER take your anger out on someone else on the road?), and the sort of recommendations from insurance companies that make you wonder how entrepreneurs like Hank Greenberg and Warren Buffett ever made their acquisition-oriented buccaneering ways to the top of the industry. Do you, for example, turn off the radio and crack the window when traffic gets heavy, so you can hear all and avoid distractions? Do you stay four seconds behind other drivers at all times (up from two seconds when I first got my license)?

It wasn't easy for me to learn how far I am from that level of ultra-responsibilty. But who I really felt bad for were the purchasers of bond insurance.  It's important to drive safely.  But when you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars packaged in pretty esoteric ways?  Consider of all the slide shows, re-enactments, and paeans to the power of the certificate of deposit that they must all go through!