As a former CEO, I have little patience for the self-serving myths that former leaders spout. Hank Greenberg today joined Dick Cheney, George Bush and a host of others prancing from forum to forum, attempting to rewrite history, unable to accept their own limitations and culpabilities, ignoring their own mistakes, blurring timelines, and blaming those who were left to clean up their messes. As I explained in the March 13 post, it takes at least 3 to 5 years for the consequences of CEO decisions to become evident; the larger the organization the longer the delay. AIG was the 18th largest publically held company when Greenberg, on March 15, 2005 was forced to resign by his board. George Bush and Dick Cheney were forced (by Constitutional fiat) to resign on January 20th of this year and the bitter fruit of their first term decisions has ripened; their second term failings will become more apparent with time.
Sadly enough there are too many political extremists and members of the financial media and other lazy thinkers, who are eager to bless these perverted versions of recorded history to avoid desperately needed changes in their own personal beliefs and actions.
Hank Greenberg failed to prevent foolish bets on the housing market, paid exorbitant salaries to himself and to his underlings for decades and thereby bled the health out of AIG while playing legal games with AIG’s books that kept investors and a too compliant board in the dark.
Who knows, maybe Bernie Madoff will resurrect himself from prison and claim that he actually ran a healthy Ponzi scheme, one that was ruined by the interference of those pesky government regulators. At least, Bernie will have the decency to wait a few years before doing so.
