Call To "Open Source" AIG Investigation

VValdo writes "As you may recall, the citizens of the US shelled out about $85 billion to bail out AIG and its creditors (Goldman Sachs in particular) last year. But as 80% owners of AIG, we still don't know what happened, exactly. That may change. In a new op-ed piece, former prosecutors (including former NY governor Eliot Spitzer) are calling for the US Treasury to force AIG to release its treasure-trove of emails to the public before allowing AIG to 'break free' of our control. As the prosecutors put it, 'By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of "open source" investigation. Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story.' Good idea?"

Comments

Yes.

[selven]

We own 80% of AIG, so 80% of AIG is technically part of the federal government. That means we should have open access to everything just like we should have open access to the Congress, senate, court system, etc.

Keep Dreaming

[arcticinfantry]

This will *never* happen. GS is far too powerful to let that happen. The AIG bailout was quite simply a giveaway to GS.

Re:Keep Dreaming

[maxume]

Insurance businesses are regulated in such a way that they are not supposed to go bankrupt, AIG managed to avoid those regulations and become bankrupt (but the government chose to dump money in rather than attempting to resolve it through the traditional process).

No

[cheesybagel]

No, not a good idea. What is the point in having a Cultural Revolution? Better to just split these companies which are too big to fail into smaller chunks, kick out the top management making sure they never work in that capacity anymore, enforce layers of separation between businesses and let them free. Restore the Glass–Steagall Act and separate commercial banking from investment banking.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

We need that and a 'Cultural Revolution' that fights back against the idea that the upper class knows what's best for the rest of us and that any attempt to eek out even 4% more of their wealth from them is not socialism at all.

Re:No

[trout007]

You have it completely backwards. I'm a libertarian but the one place the socialists have it right is that "some" of the rich steal it from the "workers". The problem as I see it with the socialists is that they don't distinguish how people get rich. There are people that get rich by making things that people value ie, computers, software, entertainment, machines, goods, services. Then there are those that actually steal it which are the bankers, lawyers, and investment houses. The bankers steal it because they have had laws written that allow them to create money out of thin air and lend it with interest. What happens when money is created out of nothing is a little bit is stolen from everyone holding that currency by inflation. So they can become famously rich without doing anything of value. And of course they gamble that money they created at 30 to 1 leverage which makes them even richer. And when the whole gamble fails to pay off they just run to their lawyer friends in DC and get bailed out claiming that if they go down so will the country. Well I call BS. If they were allowed to fail we would have a serious deflation with all of their fake money getting destroyed. As long as minimum wage laws were repealed all prices would drop and those that were thrifty and saved money would do much better because those dollars would be worth more. But of course we can't have that so the Federal Reserve creates even more money (stealing it through inflation) to give to their buddies.

Re:No

[causality]

I agree, the public is just going to crucify the company. We need to move forward, fix the problems, and make sure they don't happen again.

On the other hand, this might be a great learning exercise for academia. It might be nice if accredited institutions could review a portion of the details in the interests of study cases; particularly a business ethics class (no that's not an oxymoron).

Business ethics: if it's legal, do it for short-term profit with no regard for side-effects, long-term losses, or harm that it might cause to other people. If it's not legal, grease the right palms until it becomes legal.

Wonderfull Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Put PJ in charge! :)

The Risk

[Anonymous Coward]

As purported owners of 80% of AIG, shouldn't taxpayers also be concerned that the information released could compromise the viability of their investment necessary to regain their lost billions?

I'd love to know what happened but I also want the money they took from me plus an onerous amount of interest. I think the interest will discourage them (and anyone who looks up to their executives as examples of how to rape taxpayers) from repeating their greed/mistakes. Of course what they really deserved was to sink like the anchors they were... Seriously, if you divide the TARP bailout money it comes out to $20,000 per US citizen. My savings and investments can't cover that level of corporate charity disguised as taxes.

Re:Superheroes

[countertrolling]

A corporation's, or any other authority's "right to privacy" should be much more limited than it is. And even more obviously, we shouldn't be giving it rights as a person. What an absurd concept! But since we always try to put a human face on everything, from god on down, it seems inevitable. And vigilantism becomes inevitable when the confines of the law aren't applied equally and the system breaks down.

Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

We know exactly what happened... a few *idiots* in AIG's derivatives trading department thought they could sell credit default swaps on mortgage backed securities without keeping *anything* in reserve. It's actually a great strategy... unless housing prices go down, in which case you will take huge, mind-boggling losses. Essentially a few people in one department of an otherwise well run institution took down the whole thing by drastically underestimating risk.

Credit default swaps are an insurance product. If you sell them, then you had better keep proper reserves to cover claims AND you had better buy reinsurance in case there is a market downturn. AIG did neither and went kaput.

It is a great idea, but...

[WindBourne]

Lets break them up. The last thing that we need is have companies that are 'too big to fail'. We need more competition. If these companies that 'required' and accepted help, then we should break them up into at least 3 companies so that if any are ran into the ground again, we let them die.

Of COURSE it's a good idea

[popo]

As many accountants have said: Show me a company who does not get audited, and I will show you fraud.

There are only two options here:

Option1: We the People get ripped off.
Option2: We the People are allowed to see exactly where OUR money went.

All other options are Option 1 in disguise.

It's a start

[mbone]

I have no doubt that there is a lot of dirty stuff in those emails, so releasing them would be good.

Since clearly not everything could be released (HIPPA stuff, personal bank account numbers, etc.), this raises the question of who would remove the private information, and whether they could be trusted. Clearly, if this was done by AIG, an amazing amount of stuff would presumably be declared personal and private and not for release.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Grandstander Eliot Spitzer thinks its a good idea

[Attila Dimedici]

Ordinarily, I would think this might be a good idea. However, Eliot Spitzer is among those calling for it. In the past there were several times where he called for "public accountability" of various corporations. Those seemed like good ideas too. They turned out to just be shakedowns and/or publicity opportunities to advance his political career, not attempts to serve the public interest. If an organization has Eliot Spitzer as a member, I will not believe that they are seeking something in the public interest. This is about serving the personal interests of the people calling for it, not about serving the public interest.

Re:Yes, it's Bad Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between having 80% ownership of a corporation and owning indebtedness of 80% of a loan for the agreed value of a property. The bank can only ask you to satisfy the debt owed, not vote upon your decisions dealing with the property nor claim ownership before foreclosure.

Re:Not quite

[Ramze]

Nope... you and whomever modded this as +5 informative needs a course in business law. Owning 51% or more in a company gives you complete and unquestionable authority over what actions a company can take unless a signed contract says otherwise or your shares are specifically "non-voting" stock. If the Fed. govt. as 80% owner decided to release all documents or even liquidate the company, the owners of the other 20% would have no say at all and no legal recourse.

Re:Will this be like the CRU emails?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Let me guess, I suppose none of you find it strange or noteworthy (or obvious like a sore thumb) that public (government-run) schools generally do not teach the well-known fact that under the Federal Reserve system, dollars represent debt and not wealth. They don't teach that if all debt were paid off there would be no money in circulation. They don't make it clear that when money is created out of thin air and has interest attached to it the moment it is created, there is not enough money in circulation to pay off all debt.

Another Zeitgeist victim. Here's a tip; read a book on basic finance. Better yet, just read a book. Any book. The Great Crash. Animal Farm. I don't care. Stop getting your information from YouTube and the odd polemical internet site.

Every single one of the arguments applied to "fiat money" can be just as easily applied to supposed "hard currencies" like gold. Remember, when gold or platinum or what have you is mined out of the ground, from a currency standpoint, that's exactly equivalent to some new dollar bills being printed. Dollars, euros and yen are worth money because they are (relatively) rare. It has sweet FA to do with debt. The circulation money has nothing to do with debt levels. Debt is not "created" by printing bills or mining metals. Debt is created when people spend more than they earn; which is what western society has been doing economically for 20 or more years. We'd be in debt if we used fiat money, the bren-whatever gold muck-about, or else just traded in bottlecaps.

Strong individuals can do their own research, process their own information, and obtain their own understanding. Helpless sheep need someone to both provide and interpret information for them.

And brainless fools require someone to pre-digest their information into a pseudo-intellectual web-video so it can be masticated into their waiting mouths. Learn to chew.

Re:Not quite

[Late Adopter]

Neither of you cited your claims, but I'm fairly sure it's actually the GP who has it right. Dodge v. Ford established that even a majority shareholder has some basic responsibility to the minority holders, which would preclude actions that would harm the shareholders for no clear benefit to the company. This is sometimes raised out of context on Slashdot to falsely claim that a business must by law maximize profit, but the basic principle is of a similar vein: you can't just water down the value of your shareholder's shares for nothing (as in the Ford case).