Dear Brad, This is the person you say we "don ‘t have time" to worry about

My Loyal Reader sends another example of those glorious, worthy individuals about whom “we do not have time” to worry:

Former [AIG] Chief Executive Officer Maurice “Hank” Greenberg may try to end government involvement in the company “as prompt [sic] as possible,” his attorney David Boies said in an interview this week. Greenberg…has said the takeover might have been avoided if AIG got a bridge loan, tapped private investors and sold assets.

“Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon!“

Did I mention that Greenberg has frequent contact with AIG’s Board of Directors of AIG, so assuming that he’s stupid enough to only be suggesting this now is a real stretch? Did I mention that the Fed Rule cited specifically restricts their action to “unusual and exigent circumstances”?

Did I mention that the odds that Hank Greenberg was deliberately deceiving some reporter (and that his deception was cited as reality by a rather optimistic Bloomberg scribe) probably approach infinity?

The sainted 83-year-old Trilateral Commission member continues:

“How can it be the right move if shareholders lose 80 percent of their equity?” he said in a Sept. 17 interview. Greenberg, the CEO for almost four decades until [he was ousted in] 2005, controlled about 11 percent of the shares through personal holdings and investment firms he runs before the takeover agreement, the largest stake.

Yep, I really want to bail this guy’s company out, since clearly shareholders “losing 80% [or 79.9%] of their equity” would never happen to any public company. (Yes, I picked obvious ones.)

Apparently, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg believes we have time, and he’s a lot more involving in the genesis and exigesis of the current crisis than we are. So why would we disagree with him? The return to the “good” intertemporal equilibrium may be at stake.