Reading the history of Joe Cassano's stewardship of AIG Financial Products, one thing -- aside from the frequent lying about the lack of risk in the bets AIGFP was laying on -- stands out: The entire unit's strategy rested on one principle -- leveraging the AAA rating of the original AIG insurance business.
Of course, leveraging was threaded through the AIGFP business model, but without that gold-plated credit rating for the parent company, none of the rest of the...
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