rssRichard Holbrooke Was an AIG Board Member Until Last Year
Friday, March 20, 2009 at 10:14 am
- 5 Comments
This is more embarassing than damaging, but it turns out that Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and co-chair of its Af-Pak strategy review, was on the board of AIG from 2001 to 2008. Here’s the what-did-the-administration-know-and-when-did- it-know-it:
Obama named Holbrooke as a special envoy on Jan. 22, two days after taking office. [Spokesman Tommy] Vietor said administration officials were aware of Holbrooke’s work for AIG during background checks this year — when AIG already had benefited from federal intervention.
“Disclosure of past board membership is part of the vetting process,” Vietor said.
It’s unclear apparently unclear whether AIG’s decision to award the $165 million in bonuses to its executives ever came before the board Holbrooke sat upon. Vietor told The Associated Press that Holbrooke “had nothing to do with and knew nothing about the bonuses.” And needless to say, AIG has nothing to dowith Afghanistan or Pakistan. Still, Matthew Yglesias observes:
[It] points toward the rotten nature of corporate governance in America, as well as the incestuous relationships between our overlapping elites in big-time politics and big-time finance. One assumes Holbrooke had nothing to do with any substantive aspect of AIG’s business—he was just there so AIG could fill the board seat with someone important and unlikely to make any trouble for whatever anyone at the firm was doing.
Something for everyone, in other words. AIG gets to claim a big, important geopolitical player and dyed-in-the-wool establishmentarian whom even a Republican administration won’t want to antagonize. Holbrooke gets a lot of money — something like $800,000, according to The Associated Press. I’ll not say anything more, because this isn’t an issue I know about, but nothing in Holbrooke’s history suggests he’ll back off his envoyship.
Update: Ben Smith notes that Holbrooke has hit the banking trifecta:
A colleague points out that Holbrooke also received a “friends of Angelo” mortgage and was a managing director at Lehman, which is quite a trinity.
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5 Comments
Comment posted March 20, 2009 @ 9:48 am
Richard Holbrooke, the Democratic Henry Kissinger, just a benchwarmer? Yeah right. Sounds like a boardroom full of Perkinsian economic hit men. We have covert military ops, so why not even consider the possibility that we also use covert financial and economic black ops?
Via Harper's Scott Horton:
The Associated Press’s special report on Pentagon “influence operations” can be read here. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office has been one of the last redoubts of the Neoconservatives. Burrowed Bush era figures remain in key positions in the office, which had responsibility for implementation of some of the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s most controversial strategies in which
**the American public was targeted with practices previously associated with battlefield psy-ops.** [Emphasis obviously added.] http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004359
Why would they shrink from black econo-ops?
When the same people keep popping up in the very boardrooms where disaster capitalism's policies are set, why give a free pass to people like Holbrooke? Why assume that finance is exempt from black ops? Look at Holbrooke's CV, and ask yourself, who are today's EHMs, and who's giving them their marching orders?
“Nothing to see here” just doesn't cut it. “Typical backscratching” doesn't either. Like wars, which require a lot of planning, don't economic hit jobs take planning, too?
How 'bout those AIG kickbacks, huh? Wink wink, nudge nudge. This is how we do it: oversell people on infrastructure, burden them with unforgiveable debt, then take over when they default.
Or are all boardmembers magically transmogrified into “honest” members? WTF, Ackerman, am I just not getting some sly joke here? Please pardon my stupidity if I am.
Pingback posted March 20, 2009 @ 11:58 am
[...] Good Stock placed an observative post today on Richard Holbrooke Was An AIG Board Member Until Last YearHere’s a quick excerptUpdate: Ben Smith notes that Holbrooke has hit the banking trifecta: A colleague points out that Holbrooke also received a “friends of… [...]
Comment posted March 20, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
Richard Holbrooke, the Democratic Henry Kissinger, just a benchwarmer? Yeah right. Sounds like a boardroom full of Perkinsian economic hit men. We have covert military ops, so why not even consider the possibility that we also use covert financial and economic black ops?
Via Harper's Scott Horton:
The Associated Press’s special report on Pentagon “influence operations” can be read here. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office has been one of the last redoubts of the Neoconservatives. Burrowed Bush era figures remain in key positions in the office, which had responsibility for implementation of some of the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s most controversial strategies in which
**the American public was targeted with practices previously associated with battlefield psy-ops.** [Emphasis obviously added.] http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004359
Why would they shrink from black econo-ops?
When the same people keep popping up in the very boardrooms where disaster capitalism's policies are set, why give a free pass to people like Holbrooke? Why assume that finance is exempt from black ops? Look at Holbrooke's CV, and ask yourself, who are today's EHMs, and who's giving them their marching orders?
“Nothing to see here” just doesn't cut it. “Typical backscratching” doesn't either. Like wars, which require a lot of planning, don't economic hit jobs take planning, too?
How 'bout those AIG kickbacks, huh? Wink wink, nudge nudge. This is how we do it: oversell people on infrastructure, burden them with unforgiveable debt, then take over when they default.
Or are all boardmembers magically transmogrified into “honest” members? WTF, Ackerman, am I just not getting some sly joke here? Please pardon my stupidity if I am.
Pingback posted March 24, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
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