VIDEO: “Big Write-Offs Will Inspire You,” Top AIG Exec Raps About Bailout

With AIG finally clear of the US government that saved the company, watch the head of one of its affiliates get down.

Today the US Treasury is expected to sell the last of its stock in the American International Group (AIG), marking the end of the $182 billion bailout that rescued the company. But the AIG brass did not always seem appreciative of the government assistance. Just look at Robert Gifford, president and CEO of AIG Global Real Estate, which oversees $8.4 billion of real estate in various countries. At a 2010 holiday party for AIG employees held at a restaurant in New York City, Gifford rapped, to the tune of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” about working at AIG and having to deal with the government. Mother Jones obtained a copy of the video. Watch:

Read the full lyrics as circulated at AIG.

In this video, first reported (but not posted) by the New York Daily News in August, Gifford raps, “I was hanging out all comfy, at my crib in bed. Now I have endless meetings with…the Fed.” He pokes fun at AIG’s foreign branches. And he tells the crowd, “Big write-offs will inspire you.” In a longer version of the lyrics, sent to AIG employees in an email obtained by Mother Jones, Gifford describes his lifestyle, which doesn’t sound too bad: “Later it Karaoke, drinkin’ soju till I’m smoked…Crusin’ to Tokyo, Hong Kong. It’s a blast.” He adds, “Check out my threads, dawg, I’m Gucci, my junk real good. Check out my bling-bling, so iced out, so Hollywood.”

AIG spokesman James Ankner declined to comment to Mother Jones on the rap, but he confirmed to the Daily News that the party had taken place as described and cost $6,500.

The party occurred the same year AIG chairman Harvey Golub said that pay limits for the salaries of top managers, imposed as part of the bailout, made “little business sense.” And one year after CEO Robert Benmosche told AIG employees, “If you want me, you can have me, but you’ve got to pay. And you have to pay a lot, not because I need the money.”

The Treasury Department is claiming a $22.7 billion profit on the AIG bailout. But Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general of the government’s bailout program for AIG, warns, “incentivizing in the future the exact same types of behavior that led to the last crisis and will almost certainly cause the next.” And possibly lead to other corporate rap parodies.

As AIG Chief Executive Robert Benmosche wrote in a letter to his colleagues on Tuesday, “Take a bow, because today marks our second act.”

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate