AIG article, an insiders perspective

This is an e-mail sent to many agents in Sussex County from Chris Schell and with his permission.

Very interesting reading, enjoy

I feel morally obligated to send this out since I wrote in my recent email to you all how disgusted I was with AIG’s irresponsibility regarding Credit Default Swaps. Anyway, as you’ll see in the NY Times article below (the Positive Growth Alliance sent this out earlier today), not everyone at AIG played a role in the bad decisions made by AIG. In fact, I bet there was only a small handful of people who knowingly risked AIG’s future in Credit Default Swap market. Sure, many others were involved but most were following the direction of their superiors. If you have time, please read the article below about a resignation letter written from an AIG employee to the CEO of AIG:

www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

In challenging economic times, it is natural human behavior to go on a massive “witch hunt” to find the culprits of our economic pain. This is almost always counterproductive. In addition, most of the people who are being blamed for this mess were just as surprised as the rest of us that the economic downturn became this severe. Had they been aware that their decisions would lead to such problems, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they would have made different decisions. Sure, some people knowingly did things that were illegal, or at least, immoral, but I would argue that most of those being blamed for this mess are not the bad people they are being made out to be.