Posted by
Kenneth Hanson on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 4:19:54 PM
The Obama administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan/Pakistan is Richard Holbrook, who with apologies to Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton considers himself the world’s greatest living diplomat. Just ask him. His nickname for Secretary Clinton? "Grasshopper".
It turns out that Richard Holbrook is the latest Democrat to have AIG entanglements. Holbrook was a member of the board of directors of AIG from 2001 to 2008 and receiving more than $800,000 in compensation, leaving just last July. That means that he was on the board of directors when they approved the dramatic expansion into risky real-estate credit default swaps that brought down the company and forced the U.S. taxpayers to pour $170 billion into AIG's ravenous maw to prevent a systemic economic collapse.
It that is not bad enough, it is only the beginning. Holbrook was also a managing director at Lehman Brothers, a business so badly run that when it collapsed the Fed and Treasury could not find a buyer – even at a Bear Sterns like $2 a share. What caused Lehman’s collapse? The same overexposure to risky mortgage backed securities as AIG.
The kicker is that like Senator Chris Dodd, Holbrook was a beneficiary of Countrywide’s “Friends of Angelo” loan program where influential government officials and business movers and shakers were given the equivalent of a bribe in exchange for favorable treatment.
A member of the board of directors at AIG during the destruction of its business, managing director at collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers, and a tainted mortgage from Angelo Mozillo’s Countrywide. Now that’s what I call the Trifecta of Sleaze. It’s a wonder Obama didn’t name Holbrook Treasury Secretary, given all the other top administration officials that are mired in charges of corruption or dubious ethics.