Saturday, April 10, 2010
The Guy Who Brought Down AIG - and Maybe the World Economy - Gets Off Scott-Free, and Gets to Keep $315 Million in Loot
Jospeh Cassano, the guy who brought down AIG - and maybe the world economy - with trillions in risky derivatives deals which AIG couldn't back up, is getting prosecuted ... and the government will claw back all the money he made, right?
Uh, no.
In reality, Cassano is walking away scott-free with $315 million.
As Cent Uygur points out:
Prosecutors will likely not charge him with fraud. They are not going to try for clawbacks to get some of the money back. In the end, he gets away scott-free. But it's better than free, he gets to keep all the money he never really made in the first place ...
I told you about his $35 million thank you note [his exit bonus] for robbing the place clean. But how about the original robbery? How much did he make for himself from 2000 to 2008 by gambling with the company's money? Only $280 million.
In the end, he walked away with over $315 million for destroying the company and maybe the whole economy. So, why wouldn't he do it again? Well, next time it won't be him. We're on to him, so he's going to have spend his retirement on his yacht. It'll be someone else. It'll be another Cassano. And we'll fall for it then as well.
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Posts
Where are the Boondock Saints when you need them?
ReplyDeleteI still assert that the "UBS Swiss Banker"
ReplyDeleteBradley Birkenfeld, provided the US Goverment with the Golden Opportunity (think: Al Capone) to get these swine using the "back door", as in tax fraud prosecutions. He and his lawyer, Stephen Kohn (head of the National Whistleblowers Assn.)gave the Goverment the names of 4,400+ of these secret, big, Swiss Bank account holders. And, of course, Obama offers this sleaze Amnesty (as in: De Facto Pardons)!!
Mr Cassano can have a drink with Michael Milken on his way to his yacht. They might have a few funny stories to tell each other.
ReplyDeleteWhat did Mussoulini call fascism?
ReplyDeleteThe merging of government and the corporate state? And it's not government winning that war of wills.
Rather than finding a solution to the cycle of boom, bust and bailout, our politician seem more focused on partisan bickering. Although I appreciate the efforts of Carl Levin to investigate Goldman Sachs, and the other Democrat initiatives to mitigate the banking failures , I believe the recent efforts at legislating financial reform has resulted in exaggerated partisan recrimination rather than serious and thorough regulation and oversight. The GOP criticizes the Dems for being negligent and wasteful, as if the Troubled Assets Recovery Plan (TARP) wasn't created during the George Bush Jr. administration. Meanwhile the Tea Partiers, led by Fox and friends' Sarah Palin, seem disturbed by the Federal Reserve's flagrant deficit spending but don't seem to have a coherent answer to these problems besides gun totting and wanting smaller government as long as their Medicare isn't affected.
ReplyDeleteAmerica is in desperate need to reconsider it's approach to "welfare for the rich" bankers and their lobbyists. TARP may cost taxpayers over a hundred billion dollars, while benefiting those corrupt financial organizations who created the economic recession by marketing the financial derivatives that precipitately lost value when it was realized that their triple A ratings were undeserved as the bonds were backed by home mortgages tottering on default. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, nicknames for two quasi-government mortgage clearing houses, also lost us billions of dollars as they were the bankers' buyers of last resort for the mortgages nobody else wanted. AIG, the world's largest insurer, who foolishly insured these worthless derivatives and now has a debt larger than the national debt of France, has become the dubious property of the American taxpayer due to TARP.
While Washington politicians and bureaucrats fiddle around while our economy burns to the ground, the taxpayers are losing their homes, jobs, and patience. Big Government and Big Business need to realize that reform of the fast and lose deregulation of the past decades led to this economic catastrophe, just as earlier deregulation in the Carter and Reagan years led to the collapse of the FLSIC and the Savings and Loan debacle. It's time for change, and not just punditry, sound-bytes and sloganeering.