My Net Worth Has Fallen And It Can't Get Up

Former AIG CEO Martin Sullivan Tuesday kept telling legislators that his company provided "fulsome" disclosures to stockholders it on the state of its business, though those seemed to have left out the part about that business bleeding billions in losses.

That was according to C-SPAN’s fascinating coverage of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Tuesday on insurance company AIG, which got an $85 billion government bailout of its credit swaps in the subprime mortgage market (I don’t know what that means beyond the fact that my net worth has fallen and can’t get up). That coverage included footage of protestors crying shame on you and holding up signs decrying corporate greed.

The first definition of the term "fulsome" is abundant or copious, which seemed to be Sullivan’s meaning of the term. But the second definition seems to me to be more in keeping with the tone of the hearing: "aesthetically, morally or generally offensive." That about sums it up.

Hearings coming up on C-SPAN are ones on hedge funds and financial oversight, or perhaps that should be the widespread lack of it given that according to the AP, pension funds have lost $2 trillion in value in the past 18 months.