WSJ: Spitzer vs. Shareholders - AIG investors can read this white paper and weep.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has claimed credit for all kinds of improvements in corporate behavior -- better ethics, fewer "conflicts of interest" -- that are said to benefit shareholders. He's now getting a spirited rebuttal to those claims regarding his biggest target -- insurance giant AIG and its former CEO Hank Greenberg.

It comes in the form of a white paper from Mr. Greenberg's legal team examining the charges of bad accounting at AIG on the ex-CEO's watch. We've seen a copy of the paper, which is now in the hands of regulators, and it makes a compelling case that AIG's new management took financial decisions detrimental to shareholders -- and for no other purpose than to shift blame to past management and kowtow to Mr. Spitzer.

...But if the white paper is even half accurate, Mr. Spitzer has done more harm to AIG holders than Mr. Greenberg ever did.

The Greenberg riposte is especially notable because it is being offered at some personal risk. Mr. Spitzer has named him and AIG in a civil suit, but the AG has also publicly said Mr. Greenberg committed "fraud" that was "illegal" and is notorious for threatening indictments against targets who dare to fight back. Certainly Mr. Greenberg, who spent 38 years turning AIG into a $155 billion titan until he was forced out in late March, deserves to have his arguments considered carefully by a press corps that has treated every accusation from Mr. Spitzer as holy writ....

What isn't at all clear is how AIG's shareholders have benefited from this. Mr. Spitzer is making up the rules as he goes along -- rather than leaving that job to the legislators and regulators who are charged with it -- and investors are footing the bill....

The WSJ has had editorials about Spitzer for some time. The last one was an individual who didn't just knuckle under, but fought back -- and was acquitted by a jury in near-record time.

I gather from the WSJ that Spitzer's MO is to accuse companies or individuals of "illegal" business practices that aren't actually illegal (however much Spitzer dislikes them) and then to force them into a "settlement" to avoid prosecution. Shouldn't Spitzer be in jail? How does he get away with it?

Certainly Mr. Greenberg . . . deserves to have his arguments considered carefully by a press corps that has treated every accusation from Mr. Spitzer as holy writ....

The saying that "You never get into an argument with people who buy ink by the carload" explains why "the press corps" is arrogant. But the fact that journalists are afraid of other people who "buy ink by the carload" reveals that they are cowardly as well. And the combination of arrogance and cowardice is the classic recipe for a bully.
The "press corps" is made up of bullies, and Democratic politicians are not leaders but followers of them, and bullies like them. Mr. Spitzer's antics are a fine example, and right up the press corps' alley. He creates wonderful headlines for them, dripping with negativity which makes it hard for the passerby to resist reading the story to find out if that headline affects him. And Spitzer of course thinks that the headlines are all that matter - the idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.
But you don't see Mark Spitzer going after Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Clubs for self-dealing and violations of McCain-Feingold for "lending" eight hundred thousand of dollars of putatively charitable donations to Air America, and $30,000 to Air America's founder. To do so would be to attack a bullying liberal propaganda outlet. Which, all self-serving protestations of "objectivity" to the contrary notwithstanding, is precisely what the press corps members are.
The only distinction between Air America and "the press corps" is that Air America proclaims that it is liberal wheras "the press corps" jealously guards its PR advantage of being assumed to be objective. If anything, then, Air America helps position "the press corps" as somehow being other than liberal propagandists. So there would be no possible PR advantage in it for Mark Spitzer to attack Air America. Who cares if it is an egregious scofflaw?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.