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CBS NEWS has learned that former AIG executive Joseph Cassano - the prime focus of the investigation into its collapse - will meet with Department of Justice attorneys next week in what will likely be an end to the two year criminal investigation into the company. Sources tell CBS News that the criminal case against Cassano - once called "the Man who Crashed the World" - has "hit a brick wall" - meaning that it is likely no one will be held criminally liable for the downfall of the company that triggered a $182 billion dollar federal bailout. Sources tell...

The Boom-Time Bums These operators capitalized on regulatory gaps and used financial gimmicks to engineer quick profits and inflate share prices. Then they cashed out—leaving the rest of us with the bill. Among the notables: * Joe Cassano As president of AIG's financial products division, Cassano pioneered the insurance giant's sale of credit-default swaps, which allowed investors to buy insurance on packages of risky subprime loans they didn't even own. In one 2007 investor conference call, Cassano boasted that "it is hard for us … to even see a scenario that would see us losing one dollar in any of...

They were frightened for a long time, then suddenly they were angry. For millions of Americans, anxiety about a jobless, debt-laden future turned to disbelief when it emerged that AIG, the company at the centre of the world’s financial crisis, was handing out £300m in bonuses. It was the superpower’s Sir Fred moment. Just as Britain reacted with fury to the disclosure that Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension pot had been doubled as his bank neared collapse, so the US was shocked. The death threats came soon after. “I want them dead!” said one of a stream of messages that caused...

AIG Apr 28 2009, 06:40 PM EDT 1.34 Change % Change -0.06 -4.29% There have been a few false alerts about criminal probes into AIG (AIG) executives, but it seems like only a matter of time before AIG Financial Products mastermind Joe Cassano is slapped with criminal charges. After all, you don't just engineer a near world-ending, regulatory arbitrage scheme and get away with your millions. Prosecutors will always find something. The latest comes from CBS News, which reports that the DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into three executives: Cassano, and two deputies, Andrew Forster and Thomas Athan. Not...

SO maybe Eliot Spitzer did kill AIG, after all. Nobody doubts the in surance giant is basically kaput, or that the promix ate cause is billions in losses in obscure instruments known as credit-default swaps, or CDSs. But American International Group didn't go deadly deep into CDSs until after New York Attorney General Spitzer had forced out Maurice "Hank" Greenberg out as CEO. GO back to March 2005, just days after Spitzer scored his biggest scalp during his eight-year tenure as the Sheriff of Wall Street by compelling Greenberg's departure. The new CEO, long-time AIG executive Martin Sullivan, held an...

SO maybe Eliot Spitzer did kill AIG, after all. Nobody doubts the in surance giant is basically kaput, or that the promix ate cause is billions in losses in obscure instruments known as credit-default swaps, or CDSs. But American International Group didn't go deadly deep into CDSs until after New York Attorney General Spitzer had forced out Maurice "Hank" Greenberg out as CEO. GO back to March 2005, just days after Spitzer scored his biggest scalp during his eight-year tenure as the Sheriff of Wall Street by compelling Greenberg's departure. The new CEO, long-time AIG executive Martin Sullivan, held an...

U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd is trying to rewrite a developing script that attempts to cast him as a politician too closely entwined with AIG and the beleaguered financial services industry. But for the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, that's been an increasingly difficult task. Dodd came to Farmington Monday to talk about the Metacomet, Monadnock and Mattabesset hiking trails. But afterward, he faced a flurry of questions about a report that a top AIG executive sent an e-mail to employees in November 2006 urging them make a donation to the senator, who was poised to take over as...

The Market Ticker Commentary On The Capital Markets Tuesday, March 31. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Regulatory at 08:22 (Page 1 of 284, totaling 852 entries)» next page Yoo Hoo! Yes, Mr. Cop - Over THERE! (AIG) Hmmm..... this is interesting.... "He is the golden boy of the casino," said Rep. Speier. "They basically took peoples' hard earned money and threw it away, gambled it and lost everything. And he must be held accountable for the fraud, for the dereliction of his duty, and for the havoc that he's wrought on America." Oh, I see.  There's that nasty...

There is a whiff of Fascism emanating from the Obama White House. Reports say that the head of GM is quitting under duress from the Obama administration:

Atlantic, Rolling Stone give their takes on the government's roleNEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Out of the mouths of ...? Two very fashionable non-financial magazines have just published powerful analyses of the current financial crisis. The implications are grim.Although radically different in tone, both articles ( "The Big Takeover," by Matt Taibbi in the April 2 Rolling Stone, and "The Quiet Coup" by Simon Johnson in the May issue of Atlantic) reach remarkably similar conclusions. As Taibbi puts it in his brilliant but unquotable-in-MarketWatch Gen X style: "People are [expletive deleted] about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're...

Following in the footsteps of martyr to truth Jake DeSantis, another AIG Financial Products exec just can't help himself from going public about how unfairly he's being treated by just about everyone from his employer, to Congress, to Andrew Cuomo. But a blog post by his wife may be even more interesting.... The blog Clusterstock has posted a long rant from London-based Paul Harriman, which originally appeared on the site Live Journal. The predictable gist: Harriman complains that without his bonus, he won't be able to afford his $10,000 a month apartment and his kids' school fees. There's also this...

WASHINGTON, Mar 30, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- U.S. investigators are looking into possible criminal fraud by a former American International Group Inc. executive, ABC News reported Monday. Federal prosecutors and FBI agents are investigating Joseph Cassano, 54, who ran AIG's Financial Products Division, the U.S. network reported. The department lost hundreds of billions of dollars and Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., told ABC Cassano "almost single-handedly is responsible for bringing AIG down and by reference the economy of this country." ABC said its own investigation determined Cassano set up dozens of companies -- some off-shore -- to keep transactions off...

Joseph Cassano Made More Than $300 Million at the Insurance Firm He Virtually Bankrupted The FBI and federal prosecutors are reportedly closing in on the AIG executive whose suspect investments cost the insurance giant hundreds of billions of dollars. The government is investigating whether or not 54-year old Brooklyn-native Joseph Cassano committed criminal fraud in virtually bankrupting the company. "He almost single-handedly is responsible for bringing AIG down and by reference the economy of this country," said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Ca.) Cassano, who lives in London, made more than $300 million running the infamous Financial Products Division of AIG where...

As Democrats prepared to take control of Congress after the 2006 elections, a top boss at the insurance giant American International Group Inc. told colleagues that Sen. Christopher J. Dodd was seeking re-election donations and he implored company executives and their spouses to give. Getty Images Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has lost some political standing heading into re-election because of his ties to American International Group Inc. The message in the Nov. 17, 2006, e-mail from Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products chief executive, was unmistakable: Mr. Dodd was "next in...

The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

Feds, Brits Probe AIG's London Office on $500B Losses Ground zero for AIG's spectacular implosion, which has soaked up more federal bailout money than any other entity, appears to have been a small London branch office that may have lost nearly half a trillion dollars in bad deals. The disastrous deals were built up in a decade and, when the crisis hit, the man who ran the unit for the last eight years retired after making $280 million for himself and leaving with a $1 million-a-month consulting contract. The struggling New York-based insurance giant has avoided collapse with the massive...

> Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, 83, claimed in papers filed in federal court in Manhattan Monday that the company, once the world's largest insurer, has ruined his fortune by lying about its financial health. >

Federal Reserve Board data show that: _ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions. _ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year. _ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

Reforms are defusing the danger in the credit-default swap market. AS THE GLOBAL CREDIT CRISIS GRINDS ON WITHOUT seeming relief, worries grow that a mishap in the once obscure credit-default swap market could trigger an even more lethal financial meltdown. ..... It's easy to understand why credit-default swaps, which have been called financial weapons of mass destruction, can engender hysteria. These quasi-insurance policies allow buyers to insure all manner of debt instruments, including corporate and sovereign-nation bonds, various bond indexes and securitizations, against any credit losses from defaults. Demand for them grew explosively during the past decade's credit boom. According...

Two days after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sought bankruptcy protection, an explosive rumor spread that another big Wall Street firm, Morgan Stanley, was on the brink of failure. The chatter on trading desks that Sept. 17 was that Deutsche Bank AG had yanked a $25 billion credit line to the firm That wasn't true, but it helped trigger a cascade of bearish bets against Morgan Stanley. Chief Executive Officer John Mack complained bitterly that profit-hungry traders were sowing panic. Yet he lacked a critical piece of information: Who exactly was behind those damaging trades? Trading records reviewed by The Wall...