Mr. Greenberg Should Look In The Mirror

They say that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones–a time-honored piece of advice ignored earlier this week by Maurice Greenberg, AIG’s former head honcho, when he tossed regulators under the bus, blaming them for our current economic mess without taking much responsibility for the failings of his own kind.

Mr. Greenberg sent mixed messages during his late afternoon talk on “Risk Management in the 21st Century,” part of the William J. Parkinson Distinguished Lecture Series at the St. John’s University School of Risk Management. (For the complete news story on the speech, go to http://bit.ly/e6bIs.)

On the one hand, he said we don’t necessarily need anymore regulations or regulatory bodies for insurance companies–just better regulators to enforce the rules already on the books. 

He went so far as to contend that regulators already had the authority to examine insurer holding companies that traded in the toxic securities that nearly did in firms such as his own AIG.