We 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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Jacob Frenkel – AIG vice chairman, former Israeli central banker, and wanker:

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — At the World Economic Forum two years ago, Nouriel Roubini warned that record profits and bonuses were obscuring a “hard landing” to come. “I really disagree,” countered Jacob Frenkel, the American International Group Inc. vice chairman and former Israeli central banker.

No more. “Roubini was intellectually courageous, and he called the shots correctly,” says Frenkel, whose AIG survives only on the basis of more than $100 billion of government loans. “He gained credibility, and he deserves it.”

This is what happens when you fuck with Roubini.

Roubini See Global Gloom After Davos Vindication [Bloomberg]

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So your retirement account has been wiped out?  Your largest asset is now the half tank of gas left in your Honda?  Nice to know that AIG is spending your money on things that will make your life better:

Even as the company was pleading the federal government for another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week.

Again?

Reporters for abc15.com (KNXV) caught the AIG executives on hidden cameras poolside and leaving the spa at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, despite apparent efforts by the company to disguise its involvement.

Optics, optics, optics …

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AIG executives went on luxurious retreat one week after receiving $85 billion bailout.

I say it’s time for that revolution Jefferson kept talking about.

Today, the House Oversight Committee discovered that, just one week after the federal government bailed out insurance giant AIG, company executives went on a retreat to a luxury resort. The executives spent nearly $500,000 on manicures, facials, pedicures, and massages, among other things. During a hearing today, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) asked, “Have you heard of anything more outrageous?”:

CUMMINGS: Let me describe for some of you the charges that the shareholders, taxpayers, had to pay. AIG spent $200,000 dollars for hotel rooms. Almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon. They were getting manicures, facials, pedicures and massages while American people were footing the bill. And they spent another $10,000 dollars for I don’t know what this is, leisure dining. Bars?

I want heads on pikes over the East River.