[Darkwolf377]

"It may have started here, but it's an American company," Sugar said. "It just happened to be their place where plots were threaded." Sugar said that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- a "good friend of mine," he said -- "secretly blames the American businesses, banks that Europe looks up to." Sugar described the American fiscal atmosphere before the crisis as "over enthusiasms in business, greed. You maxed out over there, as you say."

It's pretty funny how quickly some Brits, who are so quick to brag about any connection, however tenuous, to any good thing on the planet, are even quicker at distancing themselves from any part in a disaster.

What's that about failure being an orphan?

[agere_contra]

Cassano: an American citizen working for an American company dealing with financial objects based on American mortgages.

And every CDO sold is legally rolled back to the seller if the credit for the mortgages was obtained fraudulently. Which an astonishing proportion of them were. So the America Government which backstopped AIG is legally required to repay the buyers every penny.

America, America, America all the way. But oh no, AIG sold through an office in Britain. So its a British problem?

[nyconse]

Britain can kiss my fanny...there is a reason why AIG left the US and located in England...they could not engage in their risky behavior here...there were not enough regulations but but there were some. They wanted to make sure the US could not impede their risky strategy in any way...no worries in Britain apparently. Really, AIG crashed the world economy with their CDS mess with Britain’s help. We could just as easily blame the UK.

[Winniesboy]

It's pretty funny how quickly some Brits, who are so quick to brag about any connection, however tenuous, to any good thing on the planet, are even quicker at distancing themselves from any part in a disaster.

If you substituted 'some Americans' for 'some Brits' in that sentence wouldn't it be equally true? Or indeed some citizens of a good few other countries...Isn't it a pretty well universal, and on the whole fairly harmless characteristic in countries with any pretensions to extensive international influence?