AIG Magically Makes All Its Problems Vanish
When historians look back on the collapse of the global financial system in 2008 and 2009, they will find a single culprit. It won't be the completely asymmetric system of risk and reward that compensated executives and traders handsomely regardless of whether they made or lost billions, nor will it be a 30-year trend in widening inequality between the investment class and people who make money the old-fashioned way (by "working"), nor will it be the demise of the manufacturing sector to the benefit of the financial services sector until we became a nation of bankers selling worthless shit to each other for increasingly laughable amounts of money. No, the dastardly poison in the American heart was one very simple thing: the names of these criminal companies that lost all of our dollars. And once we change their names, the entire system will heal itself.
Thus AIG, the company once known as a stalwart and reliable insurance giant, which then became known as a slithering nest of venal money-hungry warthogs, shall completely restore its public image by changing its name to "Blackwater."
Many thanks to Wonkette Financial Services Operative Dan Albanese for capturing this magical transformation of the Water Street branch of AIG in beautiful Manhattan.