Tad bit late on this one but still valid:
This week’s article is Joseph Cassano: the man with the trillion-dollar price on his head by Tim Rayment in The Sunday Times. Following is a small excerpt and link to the print friendly version of the article. I recommend reading the print friendly version since it’s easier to read instead of having to continuously load a new page:
They were frightened for a long time, then suddenly they were angry. For millions of Americans, anxiety about a jobless, debt-laden future turned to disbelief when it emerged that AIG, the company at the centre of the world’s financial crisis, was handing out £300m in bonuses. It was the superpower’s Sir Fred moment. Just as Britain reacted with fury to the disclosure that Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension pot had been doubled as his bank neared collapse, so the US was shocked. The death threats came soon after. “I want them dead!” said one of a stream of messages that caused AIG staff to travel in pairs, park in well-lit areas, and dial 911 if followed. “I want their spouses dead! I want their children dead! I want their children’s children dead! I want the earth upon which they have walked salted so nothing will ever grow again!”
This was one of the greatest bailouts in history, after the biggest corporate loss in history, during the most serious challenge to world stability since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. And here was AIG, the recipient of so much taxpayers’ money that the cheques exceed the value of the gold reserves in Fort Knox, paying bonuses to the very people who engineered the catastrophe.
Protesters toured the posh houses on Long Island Sound, an estuary northeast of New York City, with letters for AIG executives describing the plight of homeowners. But they were in the wrong place. Because the man who knows most about AIG’s troubles lives in a stucco-fronted house 3,000 miles away. Some call him Patient Zero: the virus that infected the world financial system was transmitted from a genteel square near Harrods. If you wait patiently in Knights-bridge you will see him, and he appears not to be a risk-taking type. He puts on his red crash helmet and cycles greenly off across the city, politely declining to comment on global calamities. This does not look like a person waiting at the curtains for the arrival of the FBI.
Can one man in London really be to blame for the collapse of capitalism?
……
Runner-ups:
- Potential Funding Worries Send Shudder Through Markets
- Sold To You, SUCKA!
- Do Be Wary of Green Shoots
Related posts:
- Article of the week (13/2009): The Big Takeover Since I read anywhere from 20 to 100 articles on...
- Article of the week (20/2009): My Personal Credit Crisis This week’s article is My Personal Credit Crisis by Edmund...
- Article of the week (18/2009): Geithner, Member and Overseer of Finance Club This week’s article is Geithner, Member and Overseer of Finance...
- Article of the week (14/2009): My Manhattan Project This week’s article is My Manhattan Project by Michael Osinski...
- Article of the week (23/2009): The Crisis and How to Deal with It This week’s article is The Crisis and How to Deal...
