Free Republic

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...

Red-faced and reeling insurance giant AIG admitted yesterday its balance sheet reflected shoddy accounting going back as far as 14 years. The improper treatment of dozens of reinsurance deals, with Warren Buffett's General Re and other companies, resulted in shareholder equity being inflated by as much as $1.7 billion, or 2 percent of market capitalization, the company said. AIG said the accounting for the deals with General Re in 2000 and 2001 "was improper" because there was no evidence any transfer of risk existed. The mea culpa comes less than 24 hours after Buffett went on the offensive and declared...