By Jack Gerson
It doesn't get much better than this. According to the NY Times's
"Dealbook" section, AIG, the giant insurance group that was bailed out
with a huge amount of public money four years ago, is considering
joining a lawsuit claiming the handout wasn't big enough. The lead
plaintiff in the lawsuit, Maurice ("Hank") Greenberg, is a former AIG
CEO who was forced to resign in disgrace in a share-price-inflation
scandal more than a decade ago.
Greenberg is still one of AIG's
biggest shareholders, and is a long-time ally of Los Angeles billionaire
Eli Broad, former CEO of AIG Retirement and the leading U.S. proponent
of the "business model" for public education. Although the Dealbook
article (below) doesn't mention Broad, I'm pretty sure that he is also a
plaintiff: four years ago, Greenberg and Broad led a group of investors
(including several big-time Wall Street investment bankers) to protest
the paltry $182 billion in taxpayer money being shoveled to AIG in the
government bailout.
Eli Broad and "Hank" Greenberg are big
on demanding accountability from public schools, from workers, from
unions. But when it comes to themselves, their businesses, and their
money -- well, that's another story altogether. They claim that they
deserve big salaries, huge bonuses, and gigantic returns on investment
because of the "risks" they take. But when their investments don't pan
out, they demand to be bailed out and insist that they're entitled to
profit at the public's expense anyway. And meanwhile, they insist that
the rest of us -- the 99% -- pay for all of this through harsh austerity
cuts to jobs, pensions, social security, health benefits and Medicare,
essential services for children, the elderly, and the disabled.
Shared sacrifice indeed. There's another term for this: Privatization of profit, socialization of loss.
Or: They got bailed out. We got sold out.
Here's a link to that New York Times Dealbook article:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/rescued-by-a-bailout-a-i-g-may-sue-its-savior/?nl=business&emc=edit_dlbkam_20130108
1 comment:
Neither Broad nor Greenberg worked for AIG when the financial crisis happened. They hadn't been at the company for years. When govt interferes ala Elliot Spitzer (client #9), you can see what happens. Those gentlemen had their nest eggs in AIG. Had they been steering the ship, instead of the govt, AIG probably wouldn't of been in the mess at all. You'd be concerned about your nest egg, so were they.
Post a Comment