Michael Lewis on A.I.G.

A good read: The Man Who Crashed the World

[LargoWinch]

Re: Michael Lewis on A.I.G.

A good read: The Man Who Crashed the World

Thanks xela for posting. Lewis is quite an entertaining read.

[xela]

Re: Michael Lewis on A.I.G.

Another good one by Spiegel-Online about the chief economist at the BIS, the central bank for central banks: The Man Nobody Wanted to Hear

[cobben]

Re: Michael Lewis on A.I.G.

Quite possibly the "true story" I would say, never underestimate the human capacity for blowing up one's own importance way out of proportion.

Not only humans, having been involved in horse breeding for many years I have encountered all sorts of "horsey" personalities, including a Welsh sec. B prima donna. Henry Blake in his "Talking with Horses" had a self-important racing horse who always had simply fantastic explanations of why he lost the last race but would certainly win the next one.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Michael Lewis on A.I.G.

This is a movie well worth waiting for.

But what it highlights better than any story told so far is the way financial institutions have moved away from acting in the savers best interests, and towards their being in the business of making money for themselves.

Yes, you can say that is a contradiction, as, until TSHTF, everything was hunky dory; but that neatly brings one onto another, so far unrecognised aspect of these dealings and the profits they were generating... government.

We have recently been watching a great TV series about the development of North Sea Oil. One of those side issues that came out of the program was that dear old government saw the oil industry and banking as the only profit centres they had and, with so many "public servants" requiring to be paid and then, because of the contrived collapse in the heavy industrial base of the UK by Thatcher, here in the UK we had enormous extra costs related to the rapidly rising unemployment rate.

So government was never going to take a close look at where the tax was coming from. All they wanted was more of the same.

I would suspect that the same applies with the peradventures of recent US history.

By creating such otherwise impossible revenues for AIG they were in turn creating the same scenario for taxation income.... No one was going to say anything to stop the goose laying golden eggs.

So, whomever sits down to write the script for the movie can include the other side of the scam, government turning a blind eye to where all that fantastic tax income was coming from and what they were using for their "adventures".

Now, that will be a movie to watch!