ABC Catches AIG Executives Hosting Another Posh ‘Junket’ At Luxury Hotel

[ProSense]

ABC Catches AIG Executives Hosting Another Posh ‘Junket’ At Luxury Hotel

Last month, a House committee discovered that just one week after the federal government bailed out insurance giant AIG, company executives went on $500,000 retreat to a luxury resort. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) asked in astonishment, “Have you heard of anything more outrageous?”

But yesterday, just as the federal government agreed to increase its bailout package to AIG, ABC News’s Brian Ross reported that the company’s executives gathered last week at a posh resort in Phoenix for a business conference, complete with “cocktail parties, limousines, and dinner out at a top restaurant.” AIG “instructed the hotel to keep its involvement secret, no signs with its name allowed.” Watch the report:

(http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/12/ross-aig-junket/">Brian Ross reports new AIG junket)

AIG CEO Edward Liddy defended the extravagant conference on CNN last night, claiming that the lack of signage was a result of cost cutting measures. “(W)e are really cutting corners. We’re doing the same thing the American taxpayer is doing,” Liddy said. “We are tightening our belts. We didn’t use any signage.” Watch it:

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Cummings has now called on Liddy to resign. “That a firm already reliant on taxpayers’ funding would organize such an event is outrageous,” Cummings said.

This is why some of these people should go to jail.

[Neshanic]

1. Watch the video. The scumbags told staff to not even say the letters AIG

http://www.abc15.com/content/news/investigators/story.aspx?content_id=2703a8ff-104b-4e48-a36f-e43ca42690f4

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[PresidentObama]

3. Pardon my language but: THAT'S FUCKED UP n/t

[Lucky 13]

4. God damn it! Why are we giving these assholes ANY money?

:mad:

[THUNDER HANDS]

5. actually, it wasn't a junket

it was a conferece with investors. conferences have dinner parties and such. its really not that big of a deal. AIG was doing a business conference.

Oddly enough, I met two lawyers today at a deposition who were discussing this, both had done work for AIG, one of them is currently an active AIG attorney. He said the first junket was held a few days after the bailout, but it was planned months in advance, and would cost as much to cancel as it would to hold it - think of cancelling a wedding.

This one he said was definitely not a junket, but a conference with investors who were going to do business with AIG, so the cost of the conference, lets just throw out a number - might be $100,000. But then the investors pony up money and AIG ends up making $2 million in investments, it was a good thing for AIG to have the conference.


This lawyer also had a good analogy for the wall street bailout. He said it was like going to a casino, playing the craps table, and the government agreeing to cover your losses at the table. He also tossed out some financial terms that went right over my head, but it sounded like they weren't too impressed with it.

Oh, and they were both liberal democrats who supported Obama, and one of them was in the third row in Chicago for Obama's rally - he was a field organizer and helped set up his last campaign stop in North Carolina. I saw his facebook page before I went to the deposition, that's why I brought it up with him.