Greenberg’s Lawyer Says U.S. Demonized, Extorted AIG Shareholders in Bailout

By , and | September 29, 2014

  • September 30, 2014 at 12:50 pm
    Libby says:
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    He’s got to have the biggest balls I’ve ever seen.

    • October 1, 2014 at 6:27 pm
      DoctorJ says:
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      You’ve actually seen his balls? Ewww… j/k

  • September 30, 2014 at 1:23 pm
    Bob says:
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    They just don’t get it. After running the company and the economy into the ground where they needed a $180 billion bailout, they have never accepted any responsibility or culpability. Now, they want $40 Billion more because Uncle Sam didn’t let them go down the toilet. What a slimeball.

    • October 1, 2014 at 6:28 pm
      DoctorJ says:
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      I guess you don’t have a government employee pension. And let’s put blame squarely where it belongs – on Alan Greenspan and Barney Frank. Do the research.

    • October 1, 2014 at 6:30 pm
      Don't Call Me Shirley says:
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      He’s a sweet innocent little angel who deserves a tax cut. The only reason that he is suing is because his tax rate is too high; it’s not his fault. The evil socialist liberals are taxing him to death, so he has to do this.

      • October 6, 2014 at 6:50 pm
        bob says:
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        This above is why you know nothing about politics.

        You can’t stop with the hate toward class warfare and tax rates.

        I’m quite sure this has nothing to do with tax rates. Labeling all the wealthy who say tax rates are too high, based on this scenario, is quite a poor comparison.

        The tax rates in this country are too high, corporate rates especially. The effective tax rate is quite irrelevant. Lower marginal rates with less deductions are better than high marginal rates with hordes of deductions that only your buddies can jump through (like green energy, solyndra, etc).

        The socialist liberals are certainly deciding that oil companies can have a “morality” tax rate of 44% when compared to world wide revenues.

        Whereas these wealthy folks, for the most part, want them lower across the board and removed preferential treatment to various firms.

        Get over it. Lower tax rates are better.

  • September 30, 2014 at 1:48 pm
    Crain says:
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    His ego is bigger.

  • September 30, 2014 at 1:55 pm
    Barry Rabkin says:
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    Greenburg is correct in his argument. The government was, and still is, engaged in a witch hunt. I don’t see why individual consumers who signed mortgage instruments they thought were “too good to be true” are not as responsible for the financial crisis as the financial service companies? We either like to forget that one of the key principles this country was founded on – individual responsibility – is as equally important as individual freedom and individual liberty.

    • September 30, 2014 at 4:17 pm
      J.S. says:
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      I respectfully disagree. If not for AIG and “credit default swaps”, those loans would not have been made because the banks would have had skin in the game. The boom that preceded the bust was fueled by people buying homes using mortgages guaranteed by AIG.

      When the bust occurred, the homeowners who couldn’t pay lost their homes, and in many cases, their financial futures. To me, that’s taking personal responsibility for their mistakes.

      AIG on the other hand, was never required to take responsibility for it’s mistakes. Despite being the single largest cause of the financial collapse and making billions from the sale of the credit default swaps, they were bailed out by the taxpayers allowing them to continue operations and even reward many of the individuals directly involved with large bonuses.

      So, please spare me the AIG sob story. They are lucky that they were so overwhelmingly incompetent that it was necessary to save their hide. Not something to be proud of.

      • October 7, 2014 at 12:28 pm
        bob says:
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        Banks didn’t have skin in the game?

        Considering how many banks failed, I think you are incorrect.

        Credit default swaps were not the problem. Bad loans were.

        If we never gave bad loans, it wouldn’t matter how many credit default swaps occurred. We could have infinity at a failure rate of 0% and be fine.

        Now as for why did the banks give the loans? You believe it was because of credit default swaps?

        No. It was because of CRA regs. The banks who did credit default swaps only did them on actual bad loans, to make up for the fact that the government made them give bad loans. WAMU (Now Chase) expanded by over 20 locations after they met CRA regulations for how many low income borrowers they serviced. Look up the CRA ratings for them. It is listed in their report.

        Every bank that failed, became large by getting better CRA ratings. They were given high marks for giving loans to borrowers with “little to no income documentation” for low income borrowers.

        Yes. The banks then traded those loans. Why would they make loans that they then traded? You say because they didn’t have skin in the game. That doesn’t even make sense. How do they make money by trading a loan to another company, which is otherwise not a good loan? The amount of points earned by the time loans are switched (which I bought a house, it was switched right off the bat) would be near to nothing. They made the loans to be considered having made the loans (giving them a higher CRA rating and then freeing up their ability to grow), and swapped them, in order to not have them when they failed. They didn’t make them to make money. That doesn’t even make sense, considering they swapped them immediately after making the loan.

        So full circle: Do we get mad at AIG for trying to take care of the mess the government made, and then needing their help financially? Or do we get mad at the government for forcing a need for credit default swaps, and then encouraging AIG that there were no issues of financial soundness in such a market and to go ahead and continue with their blessing?

        I go with the government. Not AIG.

        • October 7, 2014 at 12:35 pm
          bob says:
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          In other words: They traded because they had skin in the game, and would otherwise lose all their skin making those loans.

          But they needed to make them to grow.

          To make money, they had to make bad loans. If they made bad loans, they would go bankrupt.

          But then…credit default swaps, force by the government, not AIG, gave them an out.

          But focus on the fact that if they didn’t need to make low income loans to grow, they wouldn’t even need a credit default swap, and the government told banks that certain ratios of credit default swaps would never make a bank/insurer fail. They were quite wrong.

          They bailed out the firms because the government messed up in that theory.

          • November 11, 2014 at 2:51 pm
            JJ says:
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            Bob, You must be kidding.

            The US government “forced” AIG to issue credit default swaps? Do you really believe that to be true?

            No person or government “forces” a publically traded company to “grow”. Companies grow when they think they can make a profit. They choose not to grow if they think they will lose money. This is basic Capitalism 101.

  • September 30, 2014 at 2:07 pm
    OMNISURE says:
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    Hey, I’m suing the FED’s TOO… The FED’s ie:(Tax Payers) nor anyone else ever even made an OFFER to “Bail Me Out” when I RAN MY COMPANY INTO THE GROUND!

    When is LEHMAN BROS going to sue, they didn’t get bailed out either. I LOVE when FREE MARKET CONSERVATIVE CAPITALISTS “pander like poor slobs” to the The FED’S ie: (TAX PAYERS) for THEIR “Government Subsidies”.

    EVERYONE IS or SHOULD BE “ON THE GOV DOLE”….
    This is SURREAL! What country do I live in? Where is the honor, ethos, pride, work ethic, humility? Where is JOHN WAYNE?

  • September 30, 2014 at 2:09 pm
    Crain says:
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    Greenburg may or may not be correct in his argument. Would the economy have fallen harder if AIG was left to fail? I don’t know and neither does Greenburg. He simply has the means to gamble an attempt to garner a significant windfall if he can make his case. Many of us disliked the bailout, but we don’t know enough to determine if it was necessary. If the interest rates were unfair, refund the necessary amount or donate it to charity on behalf of AIG. What rate did Chrysler pay for their bailout? I thought that it was the same or very similar.

    • September 30, 2014 at 3:07 pm
      Libby says:
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      The point is, without the bailout Greenburg has NO company. His stock is worth NOTHING. And here he is biting the hand that fed AIG and kept it from going under. It’s outrageous.

      • September 30, 2014 at 3:29 pm
        Agent says:
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        I agree with you on this one Libby. Greenburg presided over an outlaw company for many years and was caught with his hands in the cookie jar on the Marsh Mc bid rigging scandal. I don’t think AIG had a gun held to their head to participate in the sub prime mess. Now, all he does is sue, sue, sue and to my knowledge has not won yet. Had he stuck to his core P&C business, he might not have had all the trouble.

        • October 2, 2014 at 4:53 pm
          Nebraskan says:
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          Hell froze over.

          • October 3, 2014 at 2:10 pm
            Questionning says:
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            I noticed it too Nebraskan….these two agreeing and both highlighted due to so many others agreeing. Is this Bazarro World?

  • September 30, 2014 at 6:33 pm
    Baxtor says:
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    Go get them Hank. When is it fair that shareholder’s get nothing, but the people that brought a company into the ground, get bonuses all the while our government is bailing them out? The only time shareholder’s get nothing is when the company files bankruptcy. In the same event, the people that brought the business into the ground won’t get bonuses either. The creditor’s get paid first. So I’m with Hank on this one. If they were going to bail out a company and allow people to get big bonuses, then they should have paid the shareholder’s something as well. Of course if it were left to fail like it should have, then it would have been divided up into many smaller companies throughout our country.

    • October 1, 2014 at 2:11 pm
      J.S. says:
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      Baxtor, let me see if I can help with your question. The taxpayers bailed out AIG. Then, using that money, the Board of Directors of AIG (as voted in by the shareholders)decided that it would be appropriate to pay those bonuses you object to.

      Your problem shouldn’t be with the U.S. Government, the people that kept your shares from being worth nothing. Instead, you should be upset with the Board of Directors that you voted for.

      • October 1, 2014 at 4:28 pm
        Baxtor says:
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        J.S., the government did have to approve those bonuses, which in most cases they did. I guess I’m still fired up about the US government getting involved at all. It should have been allowed to take it’s natural course and if it was to fail, then fail. Sometimes I wonder how big the company I work for would be right now if AIG failed. Think of all the business all of our employers would have right now that would have had to obtain insurance elsewhere. We would definitely have had to hire more staff for the extra workload, as other employers would have had to also. Then all the big bonuses would not have been paid. Would have been a good lesson for other corporations that think they are too big to fail.

        • October 1, 2014 at 4:50 pm
          J.S. says:
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          Yes, the government did have to approve the bonuses but it still started with the Board of Directors who thought they were a good idea in the first place.

          Should AIG have been allowed to fail? As much as I am annoyed by them and especially their arrogance since being bailed out and as much as I agree with your comments on all those employers who would today be insured elsewhere, I have to say “yes”, bailing them out was necessary.

          This is because of just how deeply they were involved in the credit default swaps. In many cases, the value given to the bundled mortgages was dependent on AIG being rated A or better. If they lost that rating, all of the banks with bundled mortgages guaranteed by AIG would have had their assets greatly reduced, in many cases causing the bank to instantly follow AIG into bankruptcy. This included many of the largest banks in the world. If this had happened, the depth of the economic downturn would have been exponentially greater than it was and it would have made the Great Depression look like a walk in the park.

          So, I really don’t think there was any other choice.

          • November 11, 2014 at 2:41 pm
            JJ says:
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            J.S.,

            I agree completely with your analysis. And if we were to take this discussion one step further; if AIG went under, I suspect that Baxtor’s employer would not have written any new policies or hire any new employees because very few (if any) people would have been able to afford new insurance policies. In fact, I suspect that we would have experienced a world wide Depression several times greater than the 1929 Great Depression. The potential for a mass failure of the global financial system was quite real and, thankfully, we will never know what could have happened if AIG had failed.



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