Former AIG CEO still spinning

The CEO’s are still spinning like their lives depended on it. (seen on bloomberg TV)

Hank Greenberg, former CEO of AIG, is still saying that mark to market shouldn’t be used in a thin market. He still thinks his former company should be given a pass on mark to market so they can recover over time. I think we all maybe could use a suspension of mark to market because the market is thin, but we aren’t getting it. Why should we give it to AIG? I can’t believe the hubris of these people. They actually believe they deserve such special treatment because they are so important or “too big to fail”. It is completely ludicrous. The federal government has fleeced us all to try and save this horribly run institutions because they couldn’t afford to cover all of the toxic crap they have amassed over the years. They government is coming out and saying that this companies are too big to fail but what they are really saying that they can’t afford to fix the mess they are in so they need to just wait it out. It is complete smoke and mirrors. The banks are getting treated as if they are arms of the government—and yes I am sure you could make an argument that all banks are arms of the government, not just Fannie and Freddie—but the reality is that the banks want to get tomorrows pricing today and believe that they deserve to be bailed out while individual home owners are left in the bank bailout dust. Geithner comes out and says all of this help is not for the banks. He said that it is all for the American people. His nose grew about 3 inches during the 10 second clip and I am sure his integrity shrunk like an inverse s& p etf the past year.

It is complete and udder lies that this is for the American people. Nothing is being done for the America people who are holding the bag in trillions of dollars in real estate losses. The banks refused to write down principal and are dragging the economy down every single day. Another talking head that usually seemed to be for the people, Steve Forbes, has turned into a shill for the big banks as he pounds the table for suspending mark to market accounting. It is hard to believe that so many “brilliant minds” are so self serving and working so hard to try and pull the wool over the eyes of the public. The new era of change has become the same old same old era as we dig deeper into our own pockets to passive the cry babies running the banking system. Any single ceo that says they took money from tarp funds although they didn’t need it because the government forced them to take it should be fired immediately. Any ceo that says they needed it then and don’t need it now or that they didn’t use it for their lavish throw downs and golf shin digs should be fired as well. Ken Lewis should fired for saying such stupid things like Merrill Lynch and Country wide are going to be stars of the year for Bank of America. What does stars mean anyway? Does it mean they will only need 10 billion in government bailout money this year? Good for Ken. I hope they are his stars of the year but he still needs to get his head screwed on straight not say such stupid things in public. I think he would have learned his lesson back in 2009 when he said what a tremendous deal he pulled off when purchasing Merrill Lynch. He may be right about his acquisitions but his public relations grade is still a major F. One thing he has in his favor is that he can keep saying how great his company is over and over again as long as the fed will bail them out when the truth is revealed that the company is really terrible. Eventually, enough government money will allow him to be right. It may be 5 years or 10 years but looks like there will be no disaster bad enough to removed him or any CEO of a major bank. If this current meltdown hasn’t removed them, nothing will in the future. All of Obama’s tough talk has become all bark and no bite and the banks now have ceo’s that are as entrenched as government employees.