The Insurance Federation of New York, Inc.’s Annual Luncheon is a remarkable event, bringing together as it does so many leaders in the field. I have often said that if everyone with the title President would stand up at that luncheon the entire house would be on its feet. This year’s installment featured Hank Greenberg as speaker, complementing Warren Heck, the Free Enterprise Awardee. In looking back at the Insurance Advocate it was precisely 25 years ago that Mr. Greenberg last spoke to the group; he is also among the past Free Enterprise Awardees. A more worthy award recipient then Mr. Heck would be hard to find. He is a gentleman and a man of accomplishment, whose company started as he said “from insuring tenements on the lower Eastside to a position of stature today in the New York marketplace.” Mr. Greenberg’s remarks were a bit shy in the opinion of some observers who wanted him to come out and take a stab at vindication in the form of attacking certain politicians, or even the structures established to regulate the insurance business and to regulate the movement of capital in the marketplace. Mr. Greenberg, probably as a sign of wisdom that comes with age and experience, instead struck a very balanced view of the business. While optimistic, he tempered his remarks and balanced every observation with the potential for its opposite. In a sense, the very fact that he appeared at the podium is a remarkable vindication right on Wall Street. Mr. Greenberg, it will be recalled, was vilified in the media as a consequence of a media trial imposed upon him by former Attorney General and later Governor Spitzer. The vindication has come for Mr. Greenberg in a soft and refined way and he is today seen as no less a figure then before. Mr. Spitzer’s fate has been quite different and no amount of television exposure would seem to be able to vindicate his image from where it was to where it is. We are happy that the Insurance Federation of New York, Inc. gave its podium to Mr. Greenberg and that he did not use it as a soapbox… The extent to which faith belongs in public discourse and in the business workplace is always a matter of question and controversy. One holiday upon which everyone seems to agree however is Thanksgiving; the basis for Thanksgiving, of course, if a prayerful one, one that does not lack for connections between heaven and earth. We find that the Wall Street Journal’s approach every year is a very beautiful one, in that it runs the same editorial annually before Thanksgiving, to mark the significance of the very sense of Free Enterprise that is hailed each year at the Insurance Federation of New York’s Annual Luncheon. It is no accident that the luncheon this year drew a crowd of better than 500 to witness Warren Heck’s award and to listen to Mr. Greenberg. In fact, the reaffirmation of the values the Wall Street Journal’s annual editorial presents still strikes a chord on Wall Street and in the bastions of U.S. power, where the connection between who we are and what we do is undeniably at the center of this country’s progress. Independent insurance agents and brokers, insurance executives, insurance “architects”, and planners, insurance providers and insurance staff, need be thankful for a country in which there are risk takers and in which there is an entrepreneurial spirit that merits underwriting…On that note, we wish all our readers a Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving together with all of your families