Busted: AIG Caught Living High on the Hog with Taxpayers' Money (Again)

Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress at 3:16 PM on November 12, 2008.

Last month, a House committee discovered that just one week after the federal government bailed out insurance giant AIG, company executives went on $500,000 retreat to a luxury resort. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) asked in astonishment, "Have you heard of anything more outrageous?"

But yesterday, just as the federal government agreed to increase its bailout package to AIG, ABC News's Brian Ross reported that the company's executives gathered last week at a posh resort in Phoenix for a business conference, complete with "cocktail parties, limousines, and dinner out at a top restaurant." AIG "instructed the hotel to keep its involvement secret, no signs with its name allowed." Watch the report:

AIG CEO Edward Liddy defended the extravagant conference on CNN last night, claiming that the lack of signage was a result of cost cutting measures. "[W]e are really cutting corners. We're doing the same thing the American taxpayer is doing," Liddy said. "We are tightening our belts. We didn't use any signage."

Watch it:

Cummings has now called on Liddy to resign. "That a firm already reliant on taxpayers' funding would organize such an event is outrageous," Cummings said.

Tagged as: congress, ceos, economic crisis, taxpayers, aig, taxpayers' money, aig ceo edward liddy

Benjamin J. Armbruster is a Research Associate for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.