ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½

There’s too much business news and too little time these days. Actually, just following ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ can be a full-time job. Since most of you hopefully still have full-time day jobs, it’s possible you missed some of the most recent ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ developments:

Democrats and Republicans raked former CEOs Martin Sullivan and Robert Willumstad over the coals during Congressional hearings into the $85 billion loan. The CEOs said the company got into trouble because there was just too little private capital available when it was needed. Neither believed he could have done anything differently to save ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½, other than the little he tried. Former CEO Sullivan said ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ actually did heed various market warnings and that as a result ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½FP stopped selling the risky products in 2006 — a little too late.

Congressional testimony indicated that ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ executives reacted either too little or not at all to several warnings about trouble in the London ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ Financial Products unit that sold too many products tied to the subprime market. The warnings included letters from their own accounting firm and from the federal government’s Office of Thrift Supervision saying too little attention was being paid to risk controls.

Management also paid too little attention to the accountant hired to oversee the ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½FP transactions and valuations who quit because he said ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½FP President Joseph Cassano blocked him from obtaining information he needed to do his job.

Politicians and the press got excited about the $400,000 price tag for an alleged ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ executive retreat at a posh resort, which turned out not to be a party for executives or even employees but a motivational meeting of top life producers, complete with golf, sauna and cocktails. Still, it was too much, too soon after the government bailout.

The man who built ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ into a company too big to fail, former ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ CEO and major stockholder Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, has been in the news a little too much for some. First, he maintained that he had offered to help before everything came crashing down but Sullivan and Willumstad were too small to listen. Then he said Sullivan was too willing to weaken risk controls that Greenberg had put in place. More recently, he warned that ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½, too, was likely to fail unless the government reworked the terms of the $85 billion loan. The current terms were too much.

As of Oct. 8, ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ had already used up $70.3 billion of the government’s money and on that day the New York Fed agreed to come up with another $37.8 billion investment to keep ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ operating. Turns out the $85 billion was too little.

Too little, too much, too soon, too big — the news is happening too fast. Those of us with day jobs, including the men and women who still work at ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½, are left to worry: is it also too late?

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