Daily Archives: June 27, 2005

The risks of exporting freedom

Posted on by
7

Liberty.jpgMichael Ignatieff is the Carr professor of human rights at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and the editor of the new book American Exceptionalism and Human Rights. In this superb NY Sunday Times Magazine piece, Professor Ignatieff analyzes the risks that American society faces in pursuing a foreign policy based on the Jeffersonian dream of inevitable world-wide Republicanism. The entire article is balanced and well-written, as the following excerpts reflect:

Until George W. Bush, no American president — not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson — actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right. But this gambler from Texas has bet his place in history on the proposition, as he stated in a speech in March, that decades of American presidents’ “excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability” in the Middle East inflamed the hatred of the fanatics who piloted the planes into the twin towers on Sept. 11.

Continue reading →

Lord of the Lawsuit

Posted on by
Reply

jackson.jpgEverything is not so comfortable these days in the Shire.
Peter Jackson, Oscar-winning director of the “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, is suing Time Warner subsidiary New Line Cinema, the company that financed and distributed the three movies, for at least $100 million in connection New Line Cinema’s handling of revenues from the “Fellowship of the Ring” movie in the trilogy.
In essence, Mr. Jackson is claiming in the lawsuit that New Line did not offer the subsidiary rights to such things as “Lord of the Rings” books, DVD’s and merchandise to the open market and, thus, sold them to affiliated companies for far less than fair market value. And in typical Hollywood style, the gloves are already off in the litigation, as the following quote about the portly Mr. Jackson from one of New Line’s lawyers reflects:

A litigator for New Line, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is working on this lawsuit, said the money paid to Mr. Jackson so far is in line with the contract he signed.
“Peter Jackson is an incredible filmmaker who did the impossible on ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” this lawyer said. “But there’s a certain piggishness involved here. New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it’s still not enough for him.”

Mr. Jackson has received about $200 million to date from the Rings trilogy, which was produced for about $285 million and has produced over $4 billion in retail sales from worldwide film exhibition, home video, soundtracks, merchandise and television showings. New Line has made over $1 billion in net profits from the trilogy.

Does Hank Greenberg read Clear Thinkers?

Posted on by
Reply

Greenberg8.jpgThis post from last week made the following comment about the “finite risk” insurance transaction that is at the center of Eliot Spitzer‘s investigation of AIG and Berkshire Hathaway unit General Re, and AIG’s former chairman and CEO, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg:

Despite the government’s bludgeoning of various AIG and General Re executives into plea deals and the AIG’s board acquiescence to Mr. Spitzer and other governmental investigators, it still has not been proven that the transaction in question in AIG’s case was even accounted for improperly, much less illegal. Should not the government wait to address possible criminality (and its corresponding negative effect on value) until at least the underlying transaction has been proven to be violative of applicable accounting rules?

In this letter to the editor in today’s Wall Street Journal ($), Mr. Greenberg observes as follows about the same transaction:

That transaction is the subject of litigation so I am not free to respond fully. I can assure you that an appropriate response will be made at a proper time in a proper forum. (I do note that rules for finite reinsurance are opaque and only now have the NAIC and FASB undertaken to clarify these rules.)