AIG.....REALLY

I am giving thanks for this weather.....28C on Sunday and I was sweating it out on the golf course...whew. It was sooooo good I did again yesterday to wear off some turkey calories. LOL

I hit the local winery after the game and stocked up for dinner. Val had made cranberry sauce the night before. We dined with my son and my golfing friend, John, who drove in from Dresden. The meal wrapped up with the usual pumpkin pie, and, an ice wine treat from John. It was delicious.

I am also giving thanks for the governments embracing principles that will save working folks pensions and savings. Pension funds and 401K lost almost 25% of their portfolios over the last 6 weeks. Many good folks university funds for the kids have dried up while corporate executives still practice lavish excesses. Did you hear the one regarding the retreat the globalized AIG funded ($450K) for its top sellers shortly after they were bailed out with $80B tax dollars??

Lehman Brothers was not so fortunate..... No one was lining up to rescue the highly publicized failure. Was it poor timing, political opposition, conservatism, public scrutiny or just corporate culture. Hearings squarely pointed to corporate principles for failing investors, It crystallized lots of finger pointing but no accountability except for "no bailout for you". Perhaps the heralded economic crisis was in early days and *socialism* was not yet an politically correct option???? For those who care...media reports confirmed Japan's bank brokerages have harvested a large portion of LB associates, which tells you it was not lacking talent that broke the company.....what was it?(rhetorical question)

Although some governments should go further to curtail the epidemic of greed and excess of multi-nationals and corporate executives, you cannot "through the baby out with the bath water" as my folks used to say. Call it bailouts, rescues, stabilization funds or whatever, I recognize good socialist principles when I see them.

Politicians and conservative academics can spin it anyway they like, but injecting public money any way your bag it....is socialism. What comes next if this fails? I guess I cannot realistically expect all these greedy bloated CEOs (and Board Directors complicity) to be charged or punished with extreme prejudice, for raiding the investors coffers in the form of bonuses, options, excesses and short term/quick reward business models before bankruptcy sets in and, all the while knowingly, leave investors (pension funds and 401K and Joe six-pack education funds) high and dry, but, all those execs should get publicly bawled out instead of bailed out. Why not, eh?

Even Conrad Black never broke his company (Hollinger) with his non-compete bonuses and lavish lifestyle funnelled through the business, but only because the investors raised enough hell to get the Board of Directors to stop being complacent. Lord knows if he was willing to sell out his citizenship for noble peerage, his adherence to morally principled business conscience was questionable. US courts incarcerated him for 6 years for obstruction. We should have 21st century laws for 21st century business models. I dont want to imply that the problems and the solutions are quite this simple, but business faculties and business academics should reflect and reconsider their values after this collapse. Or investor communities at least display some good ole common sense.