Friday, January 02, 2009

The AIG Saga

If even after that hangover from the New Year's Eve party receded, you still find yourself not knowing what to do to spend the rest of the holidays, I'd like to offer you a small healthy dose of reading that will not ruin your joyful feeling.

From the last year's one of the biggest financial fiasco, a trilogy of AIG's (and American taxpayers') journey to hell (The Beautiful Machine, A Crack in The System, and Downgrades and Downfall), from The Washington Post.

It's a wonderful journalistic work (based on, I guess, mostly interviews and legal documents) that introduces you to the state of the art --well, before the crash obviously--, of some arcane financial securities, the rise of quants and risk modeling, and money - helluva lot of money.

It's also a great story line for a movie, I believe, in which I already imagine Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Michael Douglas to star. But I still can't figure out who should play Alan Greenspan.

3 comments:

  1. Save Hoffman for Larry Summers, Zal. As for Greenspan, definitely Malkovitch: the one and only John Malkovitch! (He might even play a better Greenspan than Alan Greenspan himself)

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  2. I'd like to see David Mamet write the screenplay and perhaps he'll invite some of the Glengarry Glen Ross cast members (minus the late Jack Lemmon) plus Willam H. Macy.

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  3. OK, Hoffman's out, perhaps for a different film based on Rubin's In An Uncertain World.

    And Pacino's in, as ex AIG's Joseph Cassano.

    As for Greenspan, maybe he himself can do some cameo roles here.

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