Hank Greenberg: Labor Day Man of the Year!

Welcome to TishTrek - THE JOB BLOG!

Introducing my pick for 2010 Labor Day Man of the Year: Hank Greenberg!

Let's honor former AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg who created 50 years of labor opportunities while satisfying millions of customers around the globe!

This weekend, as unemployment soars to numbers not to be believed - it's important to remember The House that Hank Built and to understand why celebrating Mr. Greenberg is long overdue:

The Wall Street Journal's 8/13 editorial "Eliot Spitzer's Last Admirer" reads like The Murder on the Orient Express. There is someone powerful connected to the destruction of American International Group in every car.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo followed Eliot Spitzer's lead as the proverbial trainman - the new collector of fares in the largest public conveyance of our time. They jumped in and targeted AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg mostly because at least twenty-four corporate counter-parties (and gubernatorial supporters) needed to funnel 100% of their risk through someone else's company in order to execute the calculated CDO-subprime business that hammered the economy. If you ever worked at AIG, then it's crystal clear that AIG employees on the inside and their counter-parties on the outside could never have collusively infested our financial system with fraudulent transactions off the back of AIG without getting Mr. Greenberg out of the way.

For 40 years, Hank Greenberg was a fierce and tenacious global leader who created competitive advantage which improved the lives of millions of consumers and employees around the world. Having said that, he was often wholly despised by the power-elite deal-makers in Manhattan because when a financial deal crossed his desk at 70 Pine Street with risks he refused to assume or representing a penny less than the profit he demanded for his shareholders, he stood up and walked away from the transaction leaving lots of commission-hungry fast-money types angry and disappointed.

Agatha Christie wrote, “The whistle means that help is near, Madame," so how come Attorney General Cuomo isn't following the stench and blowing his whistle to identify the real public officials, HUD executives, lending institutions, rating agencies, and traders whose actions were shrouded by clandestine alternative investment vehicles built to defraud others? The WSJ's advice to AG Cuomo is correct: Before that trip to Albany, he should embrace transparency and turn over the 700,000 pages of documents and deposition testimony of those key witnesses who helped all the faceless people destroy The House that Hank Built. But no one's holding their breath because Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Greenberg remind all of us that there are two types of men in this world - those who build things up and those who tear things down.


Respectfully submitted,
TishTrek
Former Manager, Professional Staffing
American International Group, Inc.
72 Wall Street
New York, NY