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AIG Responds On PR Expenses: We'll Give Congress What It Wants, And Then Some
AIG has responded to the letter from Rep. Ed Towns requesting information about the company's PR expenses, that we first reported on yesterday -- and which has now been picked up by Reuters, Bloomberg, and ABC News, among others.
Here's the statement they sent us:
In more than 30 media appearances since the beginning of the year and elsewhere, Mr. Greenberg and his lawyers have made false and misleading statements about AIG, including his role in creating AIG Financial Products and its credit default swap business, as well as the circumstances surrounding his forced departure from AIG during an accounting fraud investigation. We look forward to providing Congressman Towns with background on why it has been necessary to correct these and other misstatements, which are both misleading to the American public and damaging to AIG and its ability to repay taxpayers.This issue is not about AIG's corporate public relations expenditures, which are down sharply since last year. It is about correcting Mr. Greenberg's false and damaging statements.
Asked to clarify whether this meant that AIG intended to give Towns everything he's asking for, spokesman Nicholas Ashooh responded, via email:
The point about "background" is that, in addition to responding to Rep. Towns' questions, we will explain why it is important for AIG to correct Mr. Greenberg's false and misleading statements, which, as the statement says, are damaging to AIG and our ability to repay taxpayers.
So that would seem to be a yes, but we'll have to see what happens.

















The old switcharoo.
Change the subject and hope that nobody calls them on it. Provide plenty of information concerning the switched subject to confuse the issue, but little of use about the original questions.
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April 15, 2009 9:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder how much the PR firm got paid for that note.
It's all very bizarre if you stop and give it some thought. Almost worthy of a Philip K. Dick novel - in the future, rather than companies paying for advertising people will pay the company to explain why they want to buy their products. Oh, and Geithner is a replicant (actually that would be too predictable for Dick).
April 15, 2009 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even if we grant AIG the reasonableness of this need to defend the corporate honor, how does it explain the need to hire an outside PR firm? are there no employees of AIG qualified to do so? Who is it exactly who writes the statements that are usually reported as "Megacorp inc. says XYZ?" This is all of a piece with the many ill effects of corporate personhood. They have an unlimited lifespan, and if any illegality is committed, the employees are fired, but the corporation remains; the corporation has first amendment rights, even though it is hard to characterize anything that a corporation would "say" as other than advertisement.
April 15, 2009 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
AIG and other corporations would have us think that decision making does not involve individual human beings. Doing so might just hold real people accountable. Like those real people who make massive sums of money because they have so much responsibility. People may consider themselves members of a company in good times, but they morph into mere unattached employed individuals when things go bad. So where are all the team players that get hired? I guess when the team loses everyone becomes a free agent.
April 15, 2009 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink