Original post:
I hope you understand that this last post of the day bumped "Osama bin Laden and the Markets" to Wednesday. From those comment** (and hit) addicted sluts*at MarketBeat:
Frequent MarketBeat readers know we love pointing out that shares of a certain government-controlled insurance giant are likely worth little-to-pretty-much-squat.
Citigroup said it. Credit Suisse said it. S&P said it.
Of course, plenty of the people who are buying these shares don’t really care if the company has any value. They care about being able to sell them to someone willing to buy the stock for a higher price. And it seemed like they were having some success earlier today, when AIG was up today by a bit under 5%. Since then however the shares have turned sharply lower. (It seems that some market rumors about a possible new equity offering might be the culprit.)
Today’s action followed yesterday’s run by AIG which was sparked by news that a powerful House committee is considering a proposal to ease some of the terms of the government’s loans to AIG. The plan was submitted by former AIG Chairman Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who has been in an Ahabian pursuit of AIG since stepping down as the company was under investigation for its accounting back in 2005....MORE
*I know it's "whore" when you're paid for your services but what's the term of art when you're barely paid enough to live in NYC?
**Speaking of comments, what on earth is going on with the Environmental Capital post "Steven Chu: Americans Are Like ‘Teenage Kids’ When It Comes to Energy"?
As I type this the post has garnered 935 comments!!! That is, I'm quite sure, far-and-away, the record for EC.
Here's the one I didn't add to the pile, the first thing I thought of when I saw the headline was this quote of Paul Erlich's:
"Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."
