Congressman (Rep. Ackerman, D-NY) Says AIG Sold Snake Oil Without Even Having The Oil

[jordi_fanclub]

Source: The Business Insider

Without a doubt, the best line of the session came from Congressman Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York. He actually uses three fun analogies to describe the AIG CDS products.

"Most members of Congress didn't know what CDS is. I want to make sure I understand it," Ackerman said. "Two guys on a life raft. A storm blows up. There are sharks in the water and waves 10 feet high. First guy says, I'm scared, so the second guy sells him a policy. You're selling something with nothing to back you up, no money in wallet, if everything goes right, you're collecting a premium."

"It's like snake oil salesman, and they don't even have the oil in the jar".

"There's a great company called I can't believe it's not butter. This is insurance without being insurance, but if they called it "I can't believe it's not insurance" maybe nobody would buy it. How is this suddenly an industry?...How did we allow this to happen? You're playing "I can't believe we're not regulators." And we're playing "we can't believe we're not oversight."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/congressman-says-aig-sold-snake-oil-without-even-having-the-oil-2009-3

[eleny]

1. At least snake oil usually usually contained a little hootch

[Seedersandleechers]

3. or laudanum

perhaps.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Real snake oil, back in the day, was real Medicine from the Medicine People

But that's a long story. For the record, snake oil was perverted by the republicon-minded crooks of yesteryear, and so came to have a bad reputation - and the crap the hucksters SOLD probably didn't have any genuine snake oil in it. But the real Medicine People of the Americas knew the healing power of the real stuff, which has always been hard to come by, and they used it wisely for healing before the Colonials came to Turtle Island (North America) and everything began to change.

[Catshrink]

2. Enron all over again.

The more we hear about this the more it looks like Enron.

[zogtheobvious]

6. This is way bigger than Enron

[damntexdem]

5. And the snake was a fake.

So sliced and diced that not even the fangs still existed -- just the toxins. ;-)

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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[Baby Snooks]

8. And what will Congress do?

Nothing. They will probably hand them another $170 billion in taxpayer money. They should demand prosecution. But of course everything everyone at AIG did was legal. Just ask Phil Gramm and Bill Clinton.