AIG: Why Tea Partiers Should Love Elizabeth Warren (UPDATE)
Creepy old man wants to touch your money in unwelcome ways: AIG’s Greenberg
**UPDATE: The board of AIG decided Wednesday not to join a shareholder lawsuit against taxpayers which challenges the terms of the bailout that saved the insurer from bankruptcy in 2008, CNN reports. The board did not detail the reasons for the decision, saying it will make that clear in court filings in the coming weeks. But when reports surfaced Tuesday that it was even considering joining the suit, it sparked widespread outrage against the company.
You paid your hard earned money into the coffers of a recklessly mismanaged company called AIG in 2008. You saved them from bankruptcy, from corporate extinction. You and your paycheck are the reason they’re still in business today. After helping themselves to your money, they’ve now come up with an innovative way to say “thank you.”
AIG wants to sue us, the taxpayers, for a cool $25 billion. Their former CEO, one Maurice R. Greenberg, doesn’t feel like he’s gotten a sufficiently sweet deal from us. Only in corporate America is the sense of entitled arrogance so cosmically vast that receiving $182 billion of other people’s money, to bail one out of an existential jam of one’s own creation, counts as harsh treatment.
But wait, it gets better. At the very time the corporate patient we’ve resuscitated is taking us to court, it is also carpetbombing the airwaves with—we kid you not—a slick, expensive Thank You America TV campaign that softpedals the image of our corporate betters. Selflessly helping the distraught, they really should be up for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Help is on the way: Elizabeth Warren sworn into the US Senate on Jan. 3, 2013.
Newly elected Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) had not been in office a week before engaging Wall Street greed and malfeasance in her first, pitched battle on our behalves.
“Taxpayers across this country saved AIG from ruin, and it would be outrageous for this company to turn around and sue the federal government because they think the deal wasn’t generous enough,” Warren said in a press release. “Even today, the government provides an ongoing, stealth bailout, propping up AIG with special tax breaks—tax breaks that Congress should stop. AIG should thank American taxpayers for their help, not bite the hand that fed them for helping them out in a crisis.”
2008 and now: “Baby, I’ve changed. It’s gonna be different this time.”
Of course it’s outrageous, but the beauty of social media is that it’s numbers—not corporate ad budgets—that count. To let the corporate brass know how you feel, tweet at their official address:
@AIG_LatestNews
Use the hash tag #AIGvsUSA
I also plan to send Sen. Warren my thanks (@elizabethforma). Ms. Maddow also just gave her some well deserved props.
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if not for the governments investment, AIG would have been liquidated and its investors and shareholders would have gotten squat. now after investing close to 200 billion in saving the company, this doofus wants to sue the feds, claiming hes been mistreated? gall doesnt begin to cover it. this guys deserves to be in an orange jumpsuit.
One of my best friends worked as a teacher in NJ, starting in a middle school English class in 1967. About a decade ago, he moved to a high school. He was such a great teacher that he postponed retirement — not once, but three times — because the kids needed him.
When he finally retired, his pension was much, much smaller than it should have been, much smaller than he was promised. Why? The teachers’ pension fund was very heavily invested in AIG.
Guillotines are too good for them.
This old gent is looking like a greedy fool, and embarrassing himself….!
I just donated to Elizabeth Warren..
A wily greedy fool- why didn’t he sue AIG itself for accepting the US govt terms since that is what he is ticked about as a “poor” shareholder?
I think it is all very strange given where it originated.
“Maurice R. Greenberg, A.I.G.’s former chief executive, who remains a major investor in the company, filed the lawsuit in 2011 on behalf of fellow shareholders. He has since urged A.I.G. to join the case, a move that could nudge the government into settlement talks.”
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/rescued-by-a-bailout-a-i-g-may-sue-its-savior/
This is the same person who created the arm of AIG which got it into so much trouble.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/03/us-aig-greenberg-idUSTRE5222EV20090303
“But the risks also grew exponentially as the unit, driven by a thirst for greater profits, racked up guarantees on CDS worth a total of about $450 billion. Cassano boasted in 2007 that the company did not expect to realize even $1 in losses on the portfolio.
“AIG jumped into the high-beta world of credit default swaps when there was a low default environment,” said Whalen. “But when the market goes bad it all goes bad, and with the kind of exposure that AIG wrote, it is just rancid.”
Mr Greenberg started the unit which bit him in the patoot and helped pushed him out of AIG management and then grew into a monster which bit all of us.
He can shut up-now.
Corporations have more than duties than merely maximize profits to shareholders . We let these doofs borrow money and pay it back without hauling their buns into court and working through duty of care law- they should not join their old CEO in this suit and the suit should get the boom lowered on the Mr Greenbergs in our society.
Alaska Pi,your comments are always spot-on. I appreciate the additional information you provide. Excellent again, AKM.
AIG has all the balls of a brass monkey! I’ve had personal experience with these turkeys, and they are sleezeballs from the word ‘go’.