“Only 370 points…”
07
October
10/7/2008:
“In the long run, this economy will be just fine” is what George Bush said yesterday about Monday’s roller-coaster Wall Street Ride.

As of this writing (5:04am) – I overheard the TV news in the background saying that the London Markets started out a bit higher – but have fallen since…
Today, the U.S. economy will:
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October 8th 2008 - 12:20:42 |
costume wrote:
Actually, my thought process being more of a misery loves company/at least inflation won’t be as bad type of thing.
Jesus.
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October 8th 2008 - 12:36:24 |
Katie_Scarlett wrote:
If I had to guess, I’d bet your thinking is eerily similar to the people you were criticizing in your original post.
“I don’t like em so eff em”
but who am I to say whats going on in that head of yours….
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October 8th 2008 - 12:41:42 |
ron- Nah, I like most of the rest of the world. I was just being flip. And also thinking about who our country owes, and what inflation will do to that bill. I actually was going to post something about hoping China fell hard too – but decided someone might say that was racist. BTW, my thinking on china is that they own a lot of our debt.
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October 8th 2008 - 12:42:17 |
Oh, and I don’t want to be a 3rd world country. So if we all fall, that would prevent us from being at the bottom of the heap.
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October 8th 2008 - 13:35:34 |
Katie_Scarlett wrote:
half of our country is a third world country anyways.
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October 8th 2008 - 14:44:43 |
Hats of to AIG. They truly understand the meaning of regressive tax. After getting an $85 billion buyout by the government and tax payers they hold a 440k covention for top employees. the market rips into their blatant excessive spending – so they decide to have another convention at the Ritz Carlton. at least they are going out in style.
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October 8th 2008 - 14:59:29 |
Hobo91 wrote:
This was an event for independent insurance agents/distributors. These are the people that generate the business at the very profitable insurance subsidiaries. This was not an event for top employees. The only top employees there were there for the express purpose of interacting with AIG’s independent sales force (who are not AIG employees). Without these sales people, AIG has no value so if AIG has to throw some marketing money at these folks to make them happy, then so be it.
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October 9th 2008 - 07:52:14 |
Matt, i still call total b.s. on the whole spending. it’s totally excessive.
they need to spend and entertain -yes. keep it under the radar and in in control – especially now.
it would be comparable to Roboerts & Hoboken entertaing a 10k dinner with some sweet arse wine and then charging it to the city….while he’s running a 12 mio defecit.
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October 9th 2008 - 08:39:51 |
Hobo91 wrote:
Why is it excessive? The insurance subsidiaries are very profitable. If they want to use some of these profits to entertain the independent agents that sell their products, then what is wrong with that? It is those profits that make these units so valuable and it is that value that will be used to repay the government when they sell these units to the highest bidder.
And you analysis is way off. AIG didn’t lose money in this unit. Their losses were mostly out of London where one of their units was selling insurance on mortgage backed paper (Credit Default Swaps – CDS for short). So likening this unit to Hoboken isn’t really accurate. Again, the insurance subsidiaries holding these events are very profitable and very valuable. But the AIG Financial Products unit that wrote lots of CDS contracts was heavily exposed to subprime mortgages and it is this unit that dragged AIG over the cliff.
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October 9th 2008 - 09:32:20 |
didn’t they announce the sale of their insurance unit? that’s actually a pretty reasonable explanation for the expense. i saw a few articles about it online, and the event was already planned, and it was mostly guests. so it’s not as infuriating, but still, they could have reigned in the spending a little bit i think, but the explanation is certainly a fair one.
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October 9th 2008 - 09:57:27 |
no brady, they said they were going back to their core business [which is insurance] and shedding the entities they had picked up over the past number of years.
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October 9th 2008 - 09:59:09 |
did you say AIG had announced the sale of “their insurance unit”? do you know anything about the company beyond the stock symbol?
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October 9th 2008 - 10:10:52 |
strand tramp wrote:
second hand information, that’s why I asked. my coworker’s brother works in the accounting department there and called him in a bit of a panic the other day thinking he’d lose his job. i just asked my coworker, it’s their “life” insurance unit….does that sound right?
anyways, i was just asking a question
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October 9th 2008 - 11:10:42 |
AIG is a vast holding company, but their primary business is insurance, and the life division is 48.6% of their revenue.
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October 9th 2008 - 11:16:40 |
strand tramp wrote:
yeah, well this kid is in the life division, and he’s worried about his job because they are selling it. i don’t really know much more than that. i assumed you guys would. i haven’t really followed it.
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