Word: greenbergs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Last week, however, the p.r. team went on the attack. It came on the eve of ex-chairman Maurice (Hank) Greenberg's congressional testimony critical of the firm's current leaders and the bailout strategy. Reporters were given a document outlining Greenberg's role in creating a ruinous AIG unit and his 2005 ouster. A press release questioned why he should have "any credibility." Ashooh said the document was prepared internally, not by p.r. firms, and was intended to correct "misinformation" spread by Greenberg...
...Greenberg's lawyers, Lee S. Wolosky, said the document appears to reflect the work of outside firms, representing a possible misuse of government funds. "I understand using a public relations firm as a place for reporters to call for basic information about the company and its current plans," he told TIME. "But when you're using taxpayer money to fund a campaign that attacks specific individuals by name, that is particularly egregious. Even if the screed was done entirely in-house, it still constitutes a questionable use of taxpayer money, since the in-house staff is essentially government employees. There...
...cash payments to CDS [credit-default swap] counterparties should never have occurred," Greenberg told a House oversight committee. Greenberg is not alone is raising questions about profits that financial firms have been making on the unwinding of AIG's derivative bets. Last week New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo said he was looking into AIG's trading records to examine whether the payments the company made to other financial firms were improper. (Read "How to Know When the Economy Is Turning...
...Greenberg and others argue that AIG should not have made good on many of those contracts. These critics say it should have been obvious to the sophisticated financial firms who bought that insurance that AIG had no ability to pay out on such claims. So when AIG ran out of money, buyers of its insurance should have been forced to settle those claims for a fraction of what they were due. Instead, AIG took money from the government and paid the claims in full. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...plan to [liquidate AIG] has also been highly controversial and in some cases puzzling," Greenberg told Congress. "It would have been more beneficial for the American taxpayer if the Federal Government had ... provided guarantees to [AIG's] counterparties rather than putting up billions of dollars in cash collateral to those counterparties...