Two news items at the end of this week reflect the festering cauldron of resentment toward business in American society that government is manipulating to advance its troubling regulation-through-criminalization policy.
First, there was the news that New York’s Attorney General Eliot Spitzer — after defaming former AIG chairman and CEO Hank Greenberg in the media (see also here) and strong-arming the company to show Greenberg the door — dropped virtually all the substantive charges of wrongdoing in his lawsuit against Greenberg. All that is left in the lawsuit is what amounts to an arcane accounting dispute over about $25 million in the context of a $150-200 billion company.
So, over this relative pittance, Spitzer blemished the reputation and career of a man who generated enormous wealth for millions of AIG shareholders, while extracting a $1.64 billion fine from AIG by threatening to cause the company to endure an Enronesque meltdown (see also here). For this and other anti-business crusades, Spitzer will soon be rewarded with the governorship of New York. Larry Ribstein adds additional perspective.
And lest you think that Spitzer’s manipulation of AIG and Greenberg is an isolated incident, just review what happened to the Merrill Lynch executives in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge case and the prosecutor who caused that outrage.
Meanwhile, a day after Spitzer dropped his lawsuit, New York authorities arrested Peter Dicks, the chairman of the English publicly-owned gambling company, Sportingbet. Dicks was detained under an outstanding warrant issued by Louisiana gaming authorities and the arrest comes just a couple of months after federal authorities arrested David Carruthers, the former CEO of BetOnSports, another British publicly-owned gaming company.
By the way, while Dicks sits in jail today, gamblers will place billions of dollars worth of bets in Louisiana casinos.
As Geoffrey Manne aptly asks, “Where’s the outrage?”