Illustration by Victor Juhasz

The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone

It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

Read more »

it's right here ;)

Gothamist has some photos of 175 Water Street in NYC — which until recently proudly displayed the name and logo of the American International Group. What happened?

Well, it seems that there’s a little rebranding going on. AIG told the NY Post that “the company had decided to replace the large AIG sign — outside the entrance to its property-casualty offices — as part of its plan to change that operation’s name to AIU Holdings Ltd”

From the NYPost:

A rebranding to distance the giant insurer’s sprawling operations across 130 countries away from the AIG name are likely to continue.

“I think the AIG name is so thoroughly wounded and disgraced that we’re probably going to have to change it,” Liddy told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last Wednesday.

Any suggestions for him?

it's right here ;)

Rescued by Taxpayers, $440,000 for Retreat Including “Pedicures, Manicures”

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

read more…

it's right here ;)

it's right here ;)