Credit Crunch - The group that hides its name
WORKERS, DECEMBER 2008 ISSUE
The “rescued” American International Group (AIG) organised a seminar for executives and financial advisors in a luxurious and exclusive hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, on which it spent $343,000, the Cuban news agency ACN reports. It had previously organized a week’s vacation for executives in the exclusive Saint Regis, in Monarch Beach, California, paying over $440,000.
According to reports from ABC television, the insurance company tried to see that the event went unnoticed and even avoided using the company’s logo or any other element that would identify the group with the convention, and hotel personnel were not allowed to use the name AIG.
Still, AIG has plenty of money, courtesy of the US government, which put $85 billion its way late this summer when the credit crunch started to bite, then another $65 billion when it blew through the first handout. For comparison, that’s six times what the US car makers are (so far unsuccessfully) asking for.