AIG in Iraq: A Cruel Way to Make a Buck

Nobody says it better than Workers’ Comp Insider

You’ll want to read the full post and check out the comments.

http://www.workerscompinsider.com/archives/001040.html

AIG has been in the news mostly for its ingenious method of losing money: insuring the riskiest possible financial transactions and tanking after these risks go bad. But give the biggest insurance company in the world some credit. They still know how to make money the old fashioned way: collecting premiums and denying claims. To be sure, this strategy is not easy to do in the states, where public scrutiny is never more than a phone call away. But it works rather effectively in Iraq.

T. Christian Miller from Propublica and Doug Smith from the LA Times have described in great detail how AIG transformed Iraq into a business opportunity with an enormous upside.  

AIG used the argument of extremely high-risk working conditions to boost the premiums. Then they turned around and used the strategy of denial to boost profits. Who says capitalism is dead?

AIG may not know diddly about the risk in risky financial vehicles, but they certainly know how to make money in conventional comp insurance. Of course, it helps that the injured workers are so invisible, like obscure figures in a desert sand storm, struggling blindly to find some kind of shelter in a harsh and unsympathetic world.