Interspace Commerce

[Xoria]

Interspace shouldn't be trading at all

And I suppose that life insurance companies shouldn't own orange groves, and banks shouldn't own cars and houses.

Which would be wrong, because they do. Frequently, logically, and predictably.

When you make a deposit in a bank account or pay an insurance premium, the money does not just sit there. It appears to sit their because you see the amount of your deposit or premiums paid listed somewhere, but the money is actually gone. The financial institution takes it and invests it, primarily in the form of a loan to someone else, who uses it to buy something which they want. They may buy a car or house with it, or they might use it to buy equipment or inventory to use in business. That loan, or mortgage, is paid back to the financial institution over an agreed upon time frame, with interest, which is the price the loanee pays for the use of the loaners money. The financial institution then pays it's depositors or policy holders a dividend, which is a portion of the interest collected from loanees.

That's what happens when everything works according to plan. But nothing ever works according to plan 100% of the time. Sometimes the loanee cannot or does not repay the loan, and then the financial institution forecloses on the collateral to recover the investment. The collateral is often made up of whatever the loan was used to purchase.

So in the state of Florida where I live, insurance companies have been some of the primary mortgage holders for Florida's orange groves, because insurance companies have much greater financial resources than most banks do, and agricultural operations require vast amounts of money to start up. When the orange market tanked in the 1980's, insurance companies foreclosed on thousands of acres of orange groves, which they could not sell, and instead continued to operate. So when you drink orange juice, chances are that it may have been produced by an orange grove owned by a life insurance company. In his career in agricultural investment for life insurance companies, my father managed orange groves, farms, and even a 7,000 acre sod farm (growing grass for new lawns), all of which were owned for many years by insurance companies as a result of foreclosure.

In Sirius it would be no different. After centuries, Interspace Commerce would own through foreclosure an untold number of agricultural, industrial, and transportation operations. Some would be sold off when possible, while some would be unsellable or retained as a hedge against market uncertainty in the insurance industry, which is an economic technique called diversification. If the insurance industry performed poorly, then Interspace Commerce's diverse business portfolio could continue to produce sustainable profits to keep the company as a whole financially solvent.

Interspace Commerce would not only be an insurer of shipping, but would also be a prime financer for shipping companies. When those shipping companies cannot repay the loans, then IC would become the owner of the shipping company's assets and would find itself in the shipping business itself.

The name "Commerce" instead of Insurance ought to be a clue. So of course Interspace Commerce would be involved in shipping, transportation, production, processing, agriculture, finance, and any other sector of the economy depending on it's history of investment and economic fluctuations. There is literally no limit to the business sectors that Interspace Commerce would be involved in as a result of its investments and loan portfolio.

And that's a guarantee you can take to the bank.

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