So, citizen, are you enjoying that four-fifths of a big-league insurance company that we all own now? That $165 million bonus package that AIG executives just received (which the government says it will block) shouldn't shake your confidence too much. Overall, we've pumped more than $170 billion into that sinkhole so far.
Hard feelings, dirty looks and rampant indignation can be found on both sides of the aisle. This white-collar bloodbath topped all other stories in today's newcasts, and it's easy to find an opinion on the subject no matter where you look or listen.
What's scarce is any constituency that supports, or even likes, AIG. The Web is alive with gripes about auto insurance claims, or old folks bitching about not being able to access their annuities... Can't get too sympathetic about that, I guess, but there is a grim side to to the AIG story.
Way back in '92, the company denied claims on homes that had been damaged by smoke when a nearby Safeway store (insured by AIG) caught fire in Richmond, Virginia. Smoke damage, they said, was actually a form of air pollution. In 2007 AIG had to be sued in Florida by PSCU Financial Services over identity theft claims to the tune of $2.4 million.
AIG recently refused to pay for a spinal fusion for mixed-martial arts fighter Tito Ortiz after a back injury, and they were in court earlier this year for not paying on a policy taken out by the Catholic Diocese in Brooklyn against pedophile priests. What won't these guys insure?
I suppose when you don't really intend to pay on a policy you'd be likely to write one up for damn near anything. So one can understand how insuring globally-dispersed mortgage-backed securities in a bubble market wouldn't make them flinch. Nothing really does.
In 2000, AIG went after a homeless man named Jesse Maxwell in Massachusetts for $9,000 worth of workmen's compensation, going so far as to pay an investigator to follow him around. Maxwell attempted suicide in 2001. But then AIG never claimed to be a good neighbor.
That's what we're in bed with, citizen, like it or not. Good night. Sleep tight.
(Don't let the bedbugs bite.)
pH 3.16.o9
1 comment:
AIG has many supporters among the mouth-breathing seal-boffing writers of LTTE's though. Because if those executives don't get our tax money in their bonus checks, free market capitalism will go the way of the Edsel.
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