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Looks Like AIG's Chief Risk Officer Still Has A Job!

It seems safe to say that if your job at AIG was to ensure that the company was managing its credit risks effectively, you failed.

Which is why it's interesting that the man who has had that post since at least 2000, Bob Lewis, still appears to have the job today.

An official list of AIG execs obtained by TPMmuckraker and created after CEO Ed Liddy took over last September shows Lewis as the firm's Chief Risk Officer and an executive vice president.

And a letter that looks to be from an employee of AIGFP's Paris office, obtained by the blog Clusterstock and posted earlier today, asserts:

By the way, the head of Risk Control for the whole of AIG, Bob Lewis, is still working in that role today.

Lewis may be one of the prime culprits of AIG's collapse. According to Robert Arvanitis, a former top AIG exec and a risk expert, what caused the firm's downfall was that, in addition to its credit default swaps, its investment division was heavily exposed to the sub-prime market, just like so many other banks were. When AIG's credit rating was downgraded, the Financial Products unit was forced to post more collateral to its counter-parties. But the investment division was unable to provide AIGFP with collateral in the amounts needed, because of its own sub-prime losses. It would have been Lewis' job, said Arvanitis, to have a global view of the company's risk exposure, and make sure it didn't get into that position.

Lewis himself would seem to agree. As Clusterstock notes, back in 2000 he told one trade magazine: "The CCO's ultimate responsibility is to see that credit risks are managed appropriately throughout the worldwide organization."

"Based on the results, I'd say he missed it by a wide mark," Arvanitis told TPMmuckraker, in what seems like an understatement.


6 Comments

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What Risk? They've been bailed out. Sounds like he is batting a thousand to me.

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Of course he still has his job. His actions have brought in close to $200 Billion for AIG.

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Of course he's still got a job. The people who caused the disaster are the only people with the detailed expertise to unravel it, remember? And besides, no one could have anticipated that investors would use aircraft... Oh, wait.

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I used to live in New Hampshire. New Hampshire used to have the Man in the Mountain, a natural rock formation in the White Mountains that looked like a man in profile. It's on their quarter.

A few years ago it fell down. The rocks just fell right off the mountain. There was a guy (a geologist or civil engineer, I don't remember which) employed by the state whose sole job was to make sure that didn't happen.

Bob Lewis is like that guy except some genius built the world economy at the bottom of the mountain.

"Helluva job, Lewie! Helluva job!"

(Getting back to the guy in NH, how the hell do you explain that at your next interview? "So why did you leave your previous job?" Awkward.)

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Yes, yes, of course, this makes perfect sense to me, and the clear logic of it all leaves me wondering if I should fall down on my knees and praise Jesususus...if a fox is stealing my chickens, then hire the fox to protect my chickens from other foxes...yeah, yeah, thats the ticket, right there!
BRILLIANT!
Wow, geniuses and rocket scientists all...okay, so tell me again, why I, a tax-payer, should not feel like I'm being scammed by these people on Wall Street, and the Government?

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You (the US taxpayer is) are being scammed.

Obama is quickly becomming a part of the problem by continuing the policies, with the same people in charge as were there under Bush.

This is not change we can believe in and it is where change is needed the most.

Supply side,trickle down economics has failed and those still in charge are still trying to revive that dead horse by feeding it massive amounts of tax dollars.
.

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