In addition to telling the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today that he didn’t even want his $300 million bonus but AIG forced him to take it because he was so awesome, that he truly believed what he said in 2007 about “not losing a dollar” on credit default swaps, and generally acting as though the multi-billion-dollar bailout of the insurer was not even nearly his fault, former Financial Products head Joe Cassano hit the commission where it hurts:
Cassano told commissioners that he wished he had stayed on beyond his retirement in March 2008, when A.I.G.’s then chief executive asked him to leave. He said if he had been A.I.G.’s “chief negotiator” when banks asked for more collateral, he would have extracted concessions from the banks and greatly reduced the amount of taxpayer money the insurer needed…“I would have gone to the counterparties, and I think even then I would have been able to negotiate substantial discounts by using the rights available to us such that the taxpayer would not have had to accelerate the $40 billion to the counterparties,” Mr. Cassano said.
You know who else thinks they could have made it all better if they’d just had a little more time? Dick Fuld. Bernie Madoff. The guy with no pants standing outside of Harrah’s right now. Just throwing that out there.
Figure in A.I.G. Crisis Testifies [NYT]
You know who else thinks they could have made it all better if they’d just had a little more time? Dick Fuld. Bernie Madoff. The guy with no pants standing outside of Harrah’s right now. Just throwing that out there.
