After two years of silence, AIG’s former Financial Products head Joe Cassano is now speaking in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. His hair is combed and he looks rested and tanned. In his opening statement, he urges the commission not to blame his former employees for the fact that their unit ill-advisedly sold billions of dollars in credit default swaps, requiring the government to bail the company out to the tune of $182 billion and counting. “Don’t criticism them, criticize me,” he says. That’s big of him, but we bet they would have liked him to say that two years ago when people were threatening to strangle them with piano wire. Anyway, the FCIC is like, “Cool.”
1:09 p.m. Speaking about Goldman’s early collateral call on the company for $1.8 billion, Cassano tells the committee that if he digresses, “just probe me again.” What kind of hearing did he think this was going to be?
Live exciting coverage! The Role of Derivatives in the Financial Crisis [FCIC]
Cassano’s Statement [FCIC - PDF]
