AIG jumped 26 percent to $33.65 after Benmosche said in an interview in Croatia that “at the end of the day, we believe we will be able to pay back the government and we hope we will be able to do something for our shareholders as well.”
Why, you may ask, does the newly appointed CEO of AIG speak from Croatia? That is where Mr. Bob Benmosche is vacationing, at his million-dollar villa. Despite his weighty responsibilities as the newly-installed CEO of America’s most worthless insurance company, he decided not to interrupt his vacation to go to the office. You might also ask why Bob is so feisty and confident about his prospects when the US government effectively owns his company. The answer is simple. The government owns AIG, but has no effective control over it, and the ever-opportunistic Benmosche realizes this. He can do anything he pleases because the Obama administration desperately needs his cooperation to conceal the dimensions of the disaster at AIG.
There has been no investigation of the AIG debacle, and no effective accounting of the vast funds poured into this company. Now a strutting, blustering, rich CEO is taking over and telling the government to stop meddling in the business that it owns. Everything is back to normal and the inmates are running America’s financial asylum again.