[zdrummond]

Super interesting insight, and fascinating walkthrough of the finance side..

However, you paint the whole thing as a corrupt failure. Hasn't smoking use dropped dramatically? Sure, lots of people got paid/power along the way, but we did make a large dent in the problem.

[Tuna-Fish]

As a part of the deal, the tobacco companies were "exempted from private tort liability regarding harm caused by tobacco use". A much more just settlement would have allowed everyone who was harmed by tobacco (at least the ones who started smoking in the period between when the tobacco companies knew that tobacco was harmful, and when the publicly acknowledged it) to sue the companies for the cost of their harm.

This would of course have immediately bankrupted every tobacco company.

[twakefield]

The perverse outcome of the tobacco MSA was that state's payments were tied to tobacco usage. So if tobacco usage went down, so did their payments.

This pretty much obligated the states to transfer their interests to investors of the securitizations in order to reduce the obvious conflict of interest.

[twakefield]

Yes, my rant tag was trying to be a subtle admission of the bias.

I'm sure there were some good aspects of the MSA that I failed to mention. The restrictions on marketing is one that comes to mind without a lot of thought.

I think the biggest problem (that I remember) was money getting allocated to pay for things other than programs to help the original victims.

[scott_karana]

That's probably why it's so successful. Pockets get lined and the deal is seen publically as a moral victory.

It would be politically hard to oppose the arrangement without looking pro-Tobacco, or at least without getting smeared that way by the beneficiaries...