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Matching entries from Houston's Clear Thinkers
Considering the whole man
Over the years, I've written quite a bit (for example, here, here and here) on the questionable nature of the prosecutions of the executives who were involved in the AIG/General Re finite risk transaction that prompted Eliot Spitzer to...
The Prince of Regulation
Get a load of the letter that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the new Prince of Regulation, sent to about ten Wall Street firms the other day: We believe that the Board of Directors is most appropriately positioned...
Spitzer is suffering?
So New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and his family just don't know whether the rough and tumble nature of politics at the state level of New York is worth the severe emotional toll. I wonder what Theodore Sihpol, Hank Greenberg,...
Institutionalized scapegoating
Two news items at the end of this week reflect the festering cauldron of resentment toward business in American society that government is manipulating to advance its troubling regulation-through-criminalization policy. First, there was the news that New York's Attorney General...
The Great Waste
As noted earlier here, I was able to attend the Lay-Skilling trial for several hours on a couple of afternoons this past week. As I watched Jeff Skilling defend himself against criminal charges amidst the overwhelming societal bias that exists...
Criminalizing the business reporters
The increasing criminalization of business took an interesting turn earlier this week when the Securities and Exchange Commission's San Francisco office subpoenaed email and other documents from several journalists, including one who works at Dow Jones Newswires, another at MarketWatch.com,...
"You're fired, but you better keep selling our products"
Let's get this straight. Last year, American International Group's board effectively canned its chairman and CEO, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg -- the man responsible for building the company into an insurance industry behemoth over the past generation -- in order to...
What? You mean there is discovery in a civil lawsuit?
This Wall Street Journal ($) article reports that New York AG ("attorney general" or "aspiring governor," take your pick) Eliot Spitzer is shocked, yes, shocked that he and his office may be subjected to discovery in the civil lawsuits that...
Winding up an Enronesque experience
This Wall Street Journal ($) article on Friday (USA Today article here) reports that government authorities led by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer are finalizing a settlement with American International Group under which the company would settle civil business...
The Lord of Regulation is unmasked as a dockside bully
Regular readers of this blog are well-acquainted with my position that New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer's tactics toward unpopular businesspeople are a grave abuse of justice and the rule of law, and this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed is...
Spitzer: "But I got him with the strawberries . . ."
Does anyone else get the sense that NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer is becoming Captain Queeg-like in his pursuit of former American International Group CEO, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg? The latest revelation in the Lord of Regulation's relentless campaign against the...
What's the big deal with the Lord of Regulation?
Matthew T. Bodie is a Hofstra law professor who is guest blogging over at the Conglomerate blog and, in this post, wonders why fellow law professors such as Stephen Bainbridge and Larry Ribstein are critical of New York attorney general...
Unintended consequences of indulging the Lord of Regulation
I wonder how many American International Group, Inc. shareholders are glad that the Lord of Regulation ridded the company of its supposedly fraud-indulging former CEO, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg? This Wall Street Journal ($) article reports on some interesting new competition...
Joseph Nocera on the Grasso lawsuit
You have to hand it to New York Times business columnist Joseph Nocera -- he has certainly come up with a reason that most folks would not have thought of for why New York Aspiring Governor Eliot Spitzer should drop...
Spitzer backs off criminal charges against Hank Greenberg
On my way out the door to College Station, I note that the Lord of Regulation simply cannot stay out of the news. After publicly flogging former American International Group, Inc. CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg for months (note earlier posts...
Life after Hank
Couldn't help but notice that American International Group Inc. announced yesterday that its third-quarter net income fell 36% to $1.72 billion (65 cents a share) as a result of recent large catastrophe losses. This comes on the heels of the...
More on criminalizing risk-taking
Robert Weisberg is Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and director of the Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University, where he teaches a course on white collar crime with David Mills, who is a senior lecturer there. In this...
The David Boies Copy Club
Let's see if we can keep this all straight. David Boies -- who champions himself as an advocate of honest corporate governance -- was Tyco's outside counsel in connection with investigating corporate fraud by Tyco management, and one of the...
George Melloan gets it
A couple of months ago, this post noted Wall Street Journal columnist George Melloan's op-ed on the Supreme Court's Andersen decision in which he harshly criticized the government's abuse of the rule of law to pursue currently unpopular businesspeople. Today,...
The Greenberg White Paper
This post from awhile back noted that former AIG chairman and Spitzer target Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and his legal team are preparing a "white paper" defending Mr. Spitzer's charges of bad accounting at AIG. Here are the previous posts on...
More Spitzer mischief
When one door for a misguided investigation closes for Aspiring Governor Eliot Spitzer, he just opens another one. Although misdirected, no one can say that Mr. Spitzer is not persistent. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern...
Hank fights back
With the criminal investigation of American Insurance Group, Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway unit General Re heating up earlier this week, former AIG chairman and CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg made his first detailed public comments regarding the propaganda campaign that New...
DOJ turns up the pressure on Milberg Weiss
Following on this post from over the weekend regarding the developments in the ongoing criminal investigation of lawyers in two firms who used to practice together in the well-known plaintiffs class action law firm formerly known as Milberg Weiss Bershad...
Does Hank Greenberg read Clear Thinkers?
This post from last week made the following comment about the "finite risk" insurance transaction that is at the center of Eliot Spitzer's investigation of AIG and Berkshire Hathaway unit General Re, and AIG's former chairman and CEO, Maurice "Hank"...
Criminalizing risk taking
Two columns in today's Wall Street Journal address one of the too little-discussed effects of this post-Enron era's criminalization of business -- that is, the chilling of beneficial risk-taking. In his weekly WSJ ($) column, Alan Murray examines the motives...
The increasing criminalization of business
This Wall Street Journal ($) article examines the increasing criminalization of business in the post-Enron era, which has been a frequent topic on this blog. Although the article does a reasonably good job of summarizing the troubling trend, it comes...
George Melloan on the Andersen decision
George Melloan is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he is responsible for the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Asian Wall Street Journal and writing a weekly column called Global View. Mr. Melloan...
The Lord sues AIG and Greenberg
New York AG ("Attorney General" or "Aspiring Governor," take your pick) Eliot Spitzer and the New York State Insurance Department filed a civil lawsuit today against American International Group, Inc and its two former top executives -- former CEO Maurice...
The Chronicle makes a point about DeLay that it failed to make about Enron
A good, old-fashioned snit between Texas political opponents gave the Houston Chronicle an opportunity this week to make a good point about the rule of law and the integrity of governmental investigations. But in so doing, the Chronicle highlighted its...
AIG is sounding more like Enron all the time
As noted earlier here and here, there are several characteristics of the structure of American International Group Inc. that are similar to the structure of Enron Corp. In particular, both companies' business is largely dependent on its customers' trust and,...
The Lord of Regulation's abuse of power
In this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed, Chief Executive magazine editor William J. Holstein addresses a common theme of this blog -- namely, the dubious motives and methods behind New York AG ("Attorney General" or "Aspiring Governor," take your pick)...
For goodness sakes, get on with it
Don't miss this Wall Street Journal ($) editorial today, which addresses the same issue that many of these earlier posts address in regard to the Lord of Regulation's ongoing public flogging of American International Group, Inc. and its former chairman...
The Lord of Regulation chats with the Oracle of Omaha
Let's review the landscape of regulating business for a moment. Various former executives of disgraced and insolvent Enron Corp. are under indictment for using structured finance transactions that independent lawyers and accountants approved to mislead investors regarding Enron's true financial...
You don't say?
Eliot Spitzer, the New York AG (i.e., "Aspiring Governor") made the Sunday talk show circuit yesterday in regard to his campaign against corporate wrongdoing generally and his ongoing investigation of transactions between AIG and a unit of Berkshire Hathaway (earlier...
Did Buffett rat out AIG?
In an extraordinary development in the unfolding criminal investigation of transactions between American International General, Inc. and Berkshire-Hathaway, Inc., this NY Times article reports that Berkshire chairman Warren Buffett -- in an effort to win leniency for Berkshire in an...
Enron-AIG-Berkshire: Regulating earnings management
Don't miss Wall Street Journal ($) columnist Holman Jenkins' Business World piece today. In analyzing the Lord of Regulation's assault on American International Group, Inc. and its long history of being rewarded by the market for its adroit management of...
The Lord of Regulation moves the market
In an effort to calm the harried investors in his latest target, American International Group Inc., New York AG ("Aspiring Governor") the reigning Lord of Regulation Eliot Spitzer announced yesterday that his office expects to reach a civil settlement with...
The Lord of Regulation goes after the Oracle of Omaha
Almost on cue, this Wall Street Journal article($) is reporting that Warren Buffett, the famed investor who is chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., will be questioned by regulators next month over his involvement in the transaction between Berkshire's...
The headhunter business of the Lord of Regulation
This Corporate Counsel article reports on the cottage industry in placement services that New York AG ("Aspiring Governor") Eliot Spitzer has developed in regard to his multiple investigations of big insurance companies. Seems as though a number of those companies...
The Lord of Regulation demands even more from AIG
In what is becoming a typical development in such sagas, this NY Times article reports that the board of financial services giant American International Group Inc. is considering a move to restate its financial statments as a result of suspected...
Meanwhile, over at AIG and Berkshire . . .
And while the business and legal worlds focus on the implications of the Ebbers conviction, this NY Times article reports on the uneasiness at Berkshire Hathaway as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer carves another notch in his anti-business...
CEO news
After a couple of years of shareholder unrest over the direction of the Walt Disney Co., the company's board yesterday named veteran Disney insider Robert Iger to replace Michael Eisner as the company's CEO. Mr. Iger was Mr. Eisner's choice...
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