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So why is AIG spending tens of thousands of dollars every month on four big p.r. firms? Spokesman Nick Ashooh said his in-house communications team needs additional mouthpieces to respond to the "tsunami" of bad news from its collapse last September, including a lavish executive junket and hefty bonuses covered by the $180 billion taxpayer transfusion.
...It's not unusual for private companies to deploy outside p.r. flacks when they get into trouble. The biggest firms can charge as much as $40,000 a month to deal with fallout. AIG is now 80% owned by the government, which has pumped in public funds to allow the company to cover its claims and not bring down the world banking system with it. But some of that money appears to be financing damage control. Just how much, is the kind of question that publicly financed bodies are obligated to answer. When he was asked for AIG's p.r. tab, Ashooh gave a stock corporate response: "Contracts are proprietary."
"That's the whole culture of concealment that's helped some of our bigger financial enterprises get away with murder," Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, told TIME. He said taxpayers are majority shareholders who are "entitled to know how company money is being spent" without the data's being "dressed up with the benefit of high-priced media folks."
Rich Ashooh, 5/10:
"AIG, Citibank, Chrysler, GM and now Greece?" asked Ashooh. "The current mentality of rushing to bail out failing institutions that have rung up massive debt instead of cutting spending and demanding accountability must end.
and:
Ashooh also said he was opposed to both the most recent bailout of GM and companies like AIG.
"There is a difference between trying to prevent a disaster (using taxpayer money) and managing it," he said. "There are things the government could have done without bailouts."
Also, and because some have a hard time understanding it: Carol Shea-Porter voted AGAINST the outrageous AIG and other bankster bailouts. Republican Judd Gregg voted for it, however.
