Edward Liddy-- Longtime Corporate Criminal Spins One In Today's Post

Edward Liddy-- best & the brightest? Or a vicious, dangerous predator?

I know President Obama's Stimulus Package favors "shovel ready" construction jobs but he would be doing the capital, and anyone interested in politics anywhere in the country, a great service if he offered the Washington Post a small stipend to hire a fact checker since, apparently, they can no longer afford one on their own. Either that or they just don't care. This morning many of us woke up to find a column penned by Satan himself-- or, more likely, by one of his p.r. firms, Our Mission at AIG: Repairs, and Repayment.

Edward M. Liddy is a contemptible career corporate criminal and we should all, collectively, hold President Obama to his campaign promise to fire him (following the exposure of the $440,000 corporate executive retreat at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, a celebration of the first AIG bailout-- 84 billion taxpayer dollars which included $23,000 in spa treatments and $150,000 worth of chow. Then Senator Obama: "The Treasury should demand that money back and those executives should be fired.")

In today's Post Liddy, a maxed out donor to John McCain, says he understands our "palpable wave of anger." His company has beefed up its security forces with armed guards in case the palpable becomes the bloody. "The anger," he writes, "is understandable, and I share it. I have been fortunate in more than three decades in business to see firsthand the wealth creation that well-managed American companies bring to their employees and their communities. I have seen the good side of capitalism."

Yes, the good side of capitalism! For Liddy the good old days were when he, as CFO, and his pal Don Rumsfeld-- yes that Don Rumsfeld-- took pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle-- maker of Metamucil, NutraSweet and Celebrex into the bigtime by engineering a sale of the company to Monsanto. Following the standard predatory capitalist script Liddy and Rummy fired 60% of the company's employees-- the people, unlike themselves, who had build Searle's value over decades-- to make it a more attractive purchase to cost-conscious Monsanto. In return Liddy and Rummy became very, very wealthy men. Rummy moved on to opening torture chambers all over the world and Liddy went to work as president, CEO and Chairman of Allstate where his best known accomplishment was denying homeowners in Katrina-struck New Orleans insurance coverage. In the eyes of the Bush Regime that made him the perfect candidate to take over the job that had been held Hank Greenberg (from 1968 'til 2005 when he was fired in a complex financial scandal). An RNC donor, Liddy was just what the Bush Regime thought would be perfect in June of 2008 as the financial world was collapsing.

Yesterday Tim Geithner-- forever the Wall Street shill-- sent a letter to the congressional leaders defending Liddy. “I know," he wrote, "that much of the public ire has fallen on Mr. Liddy, which is understandable, since it is his name on the door. But it also is unjustified. Mr. Liddy was put in place as the CEO of AIG last year at the request of the U.S. government to help rehabilitate the company and repay taxpayer funds. He inherited a difficult situation, including these AIGFP retention contracts, which were entered prior to his or the government’s involvement in AIG. As long as he is there, we will work with him on measures to wind down AIG in an orderly way and protect the American taxpayer.”

One of Liddy's first acts after Bush got him his current job, was to give Goldman Sachs a fat cut of the bailout money the Treasury gave AIG-- in fact, the fattest cut of all. And why not? Liddy was of the Goldman Sachs Board of Directors. He needs to be fact-checked, not just by the Washington Post but by the U.S. Department of Justice. Today he's been hauled before the House Financial Services Committee. You think we'll be covering that? Paul Hodes (D-NH) summed up AIG right from the beginning pointing out that to American taxpayers AIG "stands for arrogance, incompetence and greed."

Meanwhile, watch Edward Liddy wrapping the always credulous Larry King around his finger last November:




UPDATE 1: LIDDY TESTIFIES

Liddy is the most deceitful hack I've ever heard read a prepared statement. He started by saying he took the job at AIG out of a sense of patriotism. His 4 p.r. firms (+ the in-house p.r. department) wrote it for him and it was sickening. He offered Congress a compromise on the bonus money he stole; they'll voluntarily give up half of the stolen loot. I wish they could lock him up directly after the hearing. Shameful GOP hack, Scott Garrett (R-NJ), the ranking Repug member on the subcommittee started his "questioning" by commiserating about how poor Liddy and his family have had to put up with the indignities of public anger and threats.

UPDATE 2: JUDGE ORDERS MERRILL LYNCH TO COUGH UP THE BONUS INFO

Bank of America was ordered to stop obstructing Andrew Cuomo's investigation of improper use of taxpayer money for Merrill Lynch bonuses for top executives. Does Liddy keep threatening that the losers working at AIG are going to resign? Do they plan to collect unemployment insurance? Move to Shanghai? Do these losers think they're going to be hired by anyone? Of course, they are so rich now-- thanks to their pals in the GOP-- that they don't need to work anyway. Bill Posey (R-FL) just hit the nail on the head, saying AIG employees aren't going to get hired anywhere and should consider tehmselves lucky they're not in prison yet.