Ex-AIG Chairman: Bailout Has Failed

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chairman of the American International Group, said Thursday that the government’s $170 billion bailout had failed and that taxpayers would have been better off letting the company go bankrupt.

“It is clear that the current approach has not worked and cannot work in today’s environment,” Mr. Greenberg, who was ousted from A.I.G. in 2005, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “A.I.G., in my judgment, in the current plan, will not pay the taxpayers back.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/business/03aig.html?_r=1

Of course we would have been better off had AIG gone bankrupt or out of business, there's absolutely no reason for the government to bail out failed businesses. Mr. Greenberg also puts the blame squarely where it belongs, with the Federal Reserve and the federal government.

 

[editec]

The fact that wanker is alive to bitch at all is half the problem with this bailout.

 

[Yurt]

The fact that wanker is alive to bitch at all is half the problem with this bailout.

so saying things are not perfect is harmful to the economy and not smart and people should be killed or fired for that?

 

[DiveCon]

The fact that wanker is alive to bitch at all is half the problem with this bailout.

would you prefer firing squads or gas chambers?

 

[Xenophon]

Well duh.

 

[elvis]

The fact that wanker is alive to bitch at all is half the problem with this bailout.

would you prefer firing squads or gas chambers?

firing squads on national television.

 

[auditor0007]

The fact that wanker is alive to bitch at all is half the problem with this bailout.

would you prefer firing squads or gas chambers?

firing squads on national television.

Pay Per View; we could pay off the national debt if we executed enough of them.

 

[garyd]

Um the government essentially runs AIG at the moment. Please tell me how Mr. Green's assessment is in error and why he is responsible for a bailout that became necessary three years after he was fired quite possibly because he didn't wnat to get involved in these risky investments?

 

[Dr Grump]

Um the government essentially runs AIG at the moment. Please tell me how Mr. Green's assessment is in error and why he is responsible for a bailout that became necessary three years after he was fired quite possibly because he didn't wnat to get involved in these risky investments?

Or quite possibly that he was responsible for those risky investments? He might be in error if the bailout works.

 

[garyd]

Does it look to you like it is working. At the time Mr. Green was fired (2005) as far as anyone can say with certainty AIG was not in economic difficulty, making it far more likely that he was against those risky investments than for them.

 

[editec]

The fact that wanker is alive to bitch at all is half the problem with this bailout.

so saying things are not perfect is harmful to the economy and not smart and people should be killed or fired for that?

It's not what he said that pisses me off, sport, it's what AIG did while he ran it.

 

[garyd]

And you know what he did while he was running AIG how. It didn't go belly up till three years after he was canned. Seems to me much more likely that it was his succesors who bollixed things up.

 

[DiveCon]

And you know what he did while he was running AIG how. It didn't go belly up till three years after he was canned. Seems to me much more likely that it was his succesors who bollixed things up.

would seem that way to me as well

 

[PoliticalChic]

Um the government essentially runs AIG at the moment. Please tell me how Mr. Green's assessment is in error and why he is responsible for a bailout that became necessary three years after he was fired quite possibly because he didn't wnat to get involved in these risky investments?

Or quite possibly that he was responsible for those risky investments? He might be in error if the bailout works.

My question is when did a bailout ever work, historically? Never. And demonizing execs is totally wrong.

John Maynard Keynes, in a letter published in the NYTimes, December 31, 1933, warned “ even wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action.” Even Keynes saw the danger in treating the nation’s capitalists as an enemy, as “the unscrupulous money changers,” as FDR called them in his first Inaugural.

Warren Harding inherited one of the sharpest recessions in American history in 1921. By July it was over. Harding and Treasury Sec’y Mellon cut government expenditures by 40 %, allowing wages to fall, in a natural recovery to full employment. The cuts, and even sharper tax cuts under Coolidge, produced the long period of growth and rising living standards associated with the Roaring Twenties.

 

[mash107]

Bailouts rarely ever work out (actually I can't recall where it did ever work), and as was the case with Chrysler it just delays the inevitable restructuring that is necessary to occur. Beyond that, there's a tragic costs to these bailouts. Think of how many more people can be employed with the money lost due to bailouts? Think of how many people wouldn't have been laid off in the last 6 months if Washington hadn't bailed out their buddies? The money is gone, now, with nothing to show for it but unemployment.

 

[twogreen2c]

The fact that wanker is alive to bitch at all is half the problem with this bailout.

so saying things are not perfect is harmful to the economy and not smart and people should be killed or fired for that?

It's not what he said that pisses me off, sport, it's what AIG did while he ran it.

Greenberg wasn't the root of AIG's screwup. In case you are interested the link below is Greenberg's 10/7/08 statement to the United States House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the AIG collaspe.

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081007101332.pdf

 

[garyd]

Thanks for the support to what I've already tried to tell, Edit. Do seems to hate people that have more money than him juston general principles - genrally unfounded principals at that.

 

[Angel Heart]

AIG = East India Trading Company

 

[InrXeyelArkvst]

And you know what he did while he was running AIG how. It didn't go belly up till three years after he was canned. Seems to me much more likely that it was his succesors who bollixed things up.

A Tale Of Two Hanks back in the days of the roughshod 108th/109th is pretty much why we're in this mess.

Remember "income statement smoothing" and the $80 million penalty to the U.S. Department of Justice before that, both of which caused Buffett to pull Berkshire Hathaway out of the airfilled BS?

Remember Goldman Sachs' institutional naked shorting charge for which it was only fined $2Million in civil penalties while GSAMP soared to 15th biggest issuer of subprime-backed bonds by 2006 just as Paulson passed through the GovServ/PriSectRevolingdoor just in time to be the fox guarding the emptynesteggs?

It's no wonder that Greenberg bailed out GS' Global Equity fund in the wake of Bear Stearn's intial decline in the summer of '07 just prior to the Northern Rock run and the false 14,164.53 highmark that kept the ostrisheeple munching silica and bleeting "We'rrrr rrrrich!" all the way through the start of the depression only to come out whining "Wha'happen'!?!" full three quarters after the fact.

Two A$$holes' alma maters Reap Pot of guvmntgold

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[InrXeyelArkvst]

And you know what he did while he was running AIG how. It didn't go belly up till three years after he was canned. Seems to me much more likely that it was his succesors who bollixed things up.

A Tale Of Two Hanks back in the days of the roughshod 108th/109th is pretty much why we're in this mess.

Remember "income statement smoothing" and the $80 million penalty to the U.S. Department of Justice before that, both of which caused Buffett to pull Berkshire Hathaway out of the airfilled BS?

Remember Goldman Sachs' institutional naked shorting charge for which it was only fined $2Million in civil penalties while GSAMP soared to 15th biggest issuer of subprime-backed bonds by 2006 just as Paulson passed through the GovServ/PriSectRevolingdoor just in time to be the fox guarding the emptynesteggs?

It's no wonder that Greenberg bailed out GS' Global Equity fund in the wake of Bear Stearn's intial decline in the summer of '07 just prior to the Northern Rock run and the false 14,164.53 highmark that kept the ostrisheeple munching silica and bleeting "We'rrrr rrrrich!" all the way through the start of the depression only to come out whining "Wha'happen'!?!" full three quarters after the fact.

Two A$$holes' alma maters Reap Pot of guvmntgold

​

Wow! "Old" already. Huh?

Is that what happens when facts get in the way of fiction?

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