Big Shitpile

Remember yesterday, when AIG CEO Edward Libby said that AIG’s other insurance businesses were just fine thank you?  Not so fast:

Thomas Gober, a former Mississippi state insurance examiner who has tracked fraud in the industry for 23 years and served previously as a consultant to the FBI and the Department of Justice, says he believes AIG’s supposedly solvent insurance business may be at least as troubled as its reckless financial-products unit. Far from being “healthy,” as state insurance regulators, ratings agencies and other experts have repeatedly described the insurance side, Gober calls it “a house of cards.” Citing numerous documents he has obtained from state insurance regulators and obscure data buried in AIG’s own 300-page annual reports, Gober argues that AIG’s 71 interlocking domestic U.S. insurance subsidiaries are in hock to each other to an astonishing degree.

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yes i am actually paid to write this shitFrom his fainting couch, Richard Cohen clutches his pearls and complains that Jon Stewart was mean to CNBC and Jim Cramer:

What Jon Stewart needs is Jon Stewart. He could use a droll comedian to temper his ferocity and correct him when he’s wrong, as he was about the financial media, particularly CNBC and its excitable analyst Jim Cramer. They didn’t cover up the story of financial shenanigans. They didn’t even know it existed. 

Setting aside the fact that lots of people knew – shouldn’t CNBC have known about the problem? They’re the experts.

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So if we understand this correctly, Jim Cramer’s only sin was to make some optimistic calls in a “bull” market — one that was recognizably overvalued, recognizably a bubble, and recognizably a Ponzi scheme.

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greenberg_hank_apWe just gave AIG $30 billion.  AIG is also suing us over a tax matter, so we’re paying to sue ourselves.  And now we’re going to pay for AIG to defend itself from … its former CEO:

This is sad and kind of awesome. Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the man who built up AIG into the global powerhouse, before being forced out by Eliot Spitzer, is suing his old company for securities fraud. Greenberg says that mirepresentations by the company caused him to overpay for the stock.

It’s as though he killed his own parents and is now complaining because he’s a fucking orphan.

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Huggy, Kuddly Kutee-Pie Talibunny Yerns for GOP Victory and Apocalypse

Huggy, Kuddly Kutee-Pie Jesunazis Were Just Misunderstood. Can't We Be Friends, America, Even If You're Under the Control of the Anti-Christ?

The Jesunazis are having a hard time finding love and acceptance after working as indefatigable footsoldiers to the psychoconservative Right whose wanton corruption, diabolical greed and insatiable violence has Western civilization poised on the brink of irreparable catastrophe. The lastest game by the Jesufascist Right is: Who us? We’re not genocidal monsters who’ve spent the last 30 years calling for the transformation of America into a lilywhite, evangelical theocratic dystopia and the complete annihilation of the non-white, non-evangelical world. We’re just these huggy people who go to a building once a week to talk about God, yeah, that’s right, just like the Jewish people, the Mormons, the Orthodox and the deceived slaves of the Scarlet Whore of Rome the Catholics. Yeah, we’re just one big huggy, snuggy like bugs-in-a-ruggy gang of God-loving people.

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Little Johnny Boehner, age 6, throws a tantrum:

ow

Left.  Right.  Left.  A&B.  A&B.  File petition and First Day Motions.  Left.  Right.

Big Banker Wins — FATALITY!

Midway, Mortal Kombat creator, files for bankruptcy (Chicago Tribune)