Not only are the American tax payers paying for the bailout of the bankers and the hedge fund managers and implosion of the housing market thanks to overvaluation and speculating in bundled securities that proved to be worthless, now we have to listen to these criminals whine and bitch because we did not insure all of their winnings in the casino operation they were running when the dice finally rolled against them.
What incredible amoral blood-sucking useless excuses for human beings these people are.
Some people just don’t know when to shut up.
Greenberg asserts that the government took valuable property from him when, in return for providing tens of billions of dollars in aid, it took ownership of 80 percent of AIG. The lawsuit (which should have come with its own laugh track) claims the Feds violated the Fifth Amendment, which says private property can’t be taken for “public use, without just compensation.”
Now those of you still suffering from Traumatic Financial Shock Disorder may not remember exactly why the citizens of the United States came to own the company Greenberg founded. To recap: AIG had issued billions of dollars in insurance on bonds made out of subprime mortgages (also known by the technical term: crap). When it turned out that crap wasn’t in fact worth crap, a lot of folks called up AIG and asked for their money. Surprisingly, AIG didn’t have that money because AIG never ever ever thought that there was any risk in all that crap.
In September 2007, Joe Cassano — head of AIG’s financial products division — said during an earnings call, “It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario … that would see us losing one dollar in any of these transactions.” A year later, the U.S. government took over AIG in an $85 billion bailout.
Now to be fair to Greenberg, I should note that by 2007 he was no longer employed by AIG as chairman. He was then just a major shareholder. He had “resigned” in 2005 when, as Bethany McClean and Joe Nocera recount in their great book All The Devils Are Here, “accountants from PWC told the [AIG] board that it would no longer vouch for the firm’s books if Greenberg stayed on as CEO.”
