Like Lando Calrissan said in the Empire Strikes Back, “This deal is looking worse and worse all the time.” AIG shold have been allowed to fail back in 2008.
As the losses keep mounting and the stock keeps dropping, how is the government ever going to get the money back. The taxpayers got hosed once again. The money has been flushed down the drain.
Finally we found something Bush did wrong! The market takes care of itself and does not need government intervention. Govt is here to put the Madoff’s in jail for cheating the system.
AIG is so messed up they can’t even get a good writer for the article. I believe we could have read this article in half the length and obtained all of the information. The editor must have been out to lunch when this was posted.
I have written extensively on AIG, and called their collapse in writing a year before it occurred. They never should have been bailed out, while a systemic risk, the world would not have come crashing
down. Counterparties would have taken loss, and some would have actually found some basis of recouping losses. If Chartis needs to place 3 or 4 billion more in reserves, which is a good possibility in either the 2nd or I’m calling 3rd quarter, then Fitch, Moody’s and S&P will have no other alternative than to down grade them to -A which will be their end. I have written that I would be surprised if they were not in run off by 1st Quarter 2012. Insurance capacity is sufficient now and was then to re-underwrite their book, albeit at different terms and conditions and pricing.
We can thank Elliot Spitzer for forcing out the only guy who really understood the risk to that behemoth institution well enough to recognize it, Hank Greenburg. Once Greenburg was kicked out, the boys in London and Connecticut used rating arbitrage on the institution that Hank built to pocket millions personally.
Lots of bad people contributed to the demise of that once great institution, but I put Spitzer at the front of the line.
The only thing Greenburg was good at was sweeping the garbage under the rug. This blowup was not a matter of if, it was a matter of when. The incentives (pressures) Maurice gave his people to grow at any price were all going to come out sooner or later. These constant increases in loss reserves are the side effect of decades of poor underwriting under Greenburg’s and his follower’s watch.
This was never an AIG thing (the bailout that is). It was a Goldman Sachs thing. The guy who engineered it was their ex-CEO, as were other high up decision makers. You can blame Bush if you want to but I guarantee he had no clue on what was going down here. He should have, but his limited ability to grasp complex issues held him back on this situation.
I agree D that we have a lot of bad actors in play with both AIG and Goldman Sachs with all the bad paper being sold to people that were greedy enough to swallow the bait. It was kind of like the Bernie Madoff scandal. If it is too good to be true, it probably was. In Bush’s case, he was probably unaware of what was going on because his SEC head was asleep at the switch. By the way, he warned Congress 17 times that Fannie & Freddie was out of control and Barnie & Chris insisted they were sound and had no need of further regulation. I don’t agree that Bush had a limited ability to grasp issues. He just was not made aware. By the way, our current President has a tougher time grasping complex issues. All he wants to do is fly around on AF1 and make campaign speeches and hope the problem goes away or assigns it to hairplug Joe who is an imbecile.
Like Lando Calrissan said in the Empire Strikes Back, “This deal is looking worse and worse all the time.” AIG shold have been allowed to fail back in 2008.
As the losses keep mounting and the stock keeps dropping, how is the government ever going to get the money back. The taxpayers got hosed once again. The money has been flushed down the drain.
Finally we found something Bush did wrong! The market takes care of itself and does not need government intervention. Govt is here to put the Madoff’s in jail for cheating the system.
AIG is so messed up they can’t even get a good writer for the article. I believe we could have read this article in half the length and obtained all of the information. The editor must have been out to lunch when this was posted.
You think THIS was the only thing Bush did wrong? Not to beat a dead horse but…..Really!?
I have written extensively on AIG, and called their collapse in writing a year before it occurred. They never should have been bailed out, while a systemic risk, the world would not have come crashing
down. Counterparties would have taken loss, and some would have actually found some basis of recouping losses. If Chartis needs to place 3 or 4 billion more in reserves, which is a good possibility in either the 2nd or I’m calling 3rd quarter, then Fitch, Moody’s and S&P will have no other alternative than to down grade them to -A which will be their end. I have written that I would be surprised if they were not in run off by 1st Quarter 2012. Insurance capacity is sufficient now and was then to re-underwrite their book, albeit at different terms and conditions and pricing.
Be well all.
Pete
We can thank Elliot Spitzer for forcing out the only guy who really understood the risk to that behemoth institution well enough to recognize it, Hank Greenburg. Once Greenburg was kicked out, the boys in London and Connecticut used rating arbitrage on the institution that Hank built to pocket millions personally.
Lots of bad people contributed to the demise of that once great institution, but I put Spitzer at the front of the line.
The only thing Greenburg was good at was sweeping the garbage under the rug. This blowup was not a matter of if, it was a matter of when. The incentives (pressures) Maurice gave his people to grow at any price were all going to come out sooner or later. These constant increases in loss reserves are the side effect of decades of poor underwriting under Greenburg’s and his follower’s watch.
This was never an AIG thing (the bailout that is). It was a Goldman Sachs thing. The guy who engineered it was their ex-CEO, as were other high up decision makers. You can blame Bush if you want to but I guarantee he had no clue on what was going down here. He should have, but his limited ability to grasp complex issues held him back on this situation.
I agree D that we have a lot of bad actors in play with both AIG and Goldman Sachs with all the bad paper being sold to people that were greedy enough to swallow the bait. It was kind of like the Bernie Madoff scandal. If it is too good to be true, it probably was. In Bush’s case, he was probably unaware of what was going on because his SEC head was asleep at the switch. By the way, he warned Congress 17 times that Fannie & Freddie was out of control and Barnie & Chris insisted they were sound and had no need of further regulation. I don’t agree that Bush had a limited ability to grasp issues. He just was not made aware. By the way, our current President has a tougher time grasping complex issues. All he wants to do is fly around on AF1 and make campaign speeches and hope the problem goes away or assigns it to hairplug Joe who is an imbecile.