Joseph Cassano is Really a Hero

The man responsible for blowing up AIG, nay our entire financial system, has finally slithered out from his hole to say his piece to Congress. A reasonable person might expect a tone of contrition from the tool who bankrupted the world's largest insurance company in a matter of years because he loved subprime so much he couldn't stop selling insurance way too cheaply on it. Maybe something like: "Props to you guys and all your constituents for all the dough. We did a few trades that didn't really work out, so, it's awesome that the government could be a backstop for us. I mean, we could've just gone bankrupt and that would've sucked." Or even "Wow, I feel so bad about causing all this trouble that I'm gonna write a $300 million check, equal to all the pay I collected on profits I never made." But then apparently none of you people know Joseph Cassano. Widely reported to be an arrogant jerk BEFORE the crisis, it turns out that the implosion of AIG has only strengthened his self love. The following are the highlights from the WSJ's account of Mr. Cassano's testimony:

• Joseph Cassano, who led the division of American International Group Inc. responsible for the mortgage trades that proved the insurer's downfall, on Wednesday staunchly defended his actions, maintaining he made "prudent" decisions and that American taxpayers would have been better off had he stayed on.
• AIG's problems, he said, were brought on by a liquidity crisis when credit markets seized up— and weren't a result of lax underwriting practices or defaults among mortgage assets his unit had insured.
• "I think I would have negotiated a much better deal for the taxpayer than what the taxpayer got"
• Mr. Cassano said things might have turned out differently, had he not been asked to leave AIG.
• Mr. Cassano did not hesitate to parcel blame and responsibility elsewhere. He said he still disagrees with the decision by AIG's outside auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, to disallow an accounting adjustment that made his unit's reported losses from derivatives look smaller. "I still believe now that it was a wholly appropriate adjustment," his testimony said. The accounting firm declined to comment, saying it does not comment on client matters.

He didn't cause any of these problems. But still, he would've handled the clean-up way better from all those problems he never caused to begin with. The market was wrong, the auditors were wrong, the government was wrong, Goldman Sachs was wrong. All those margin calls? Meaningless! My marks were right. I'm never wrong about anything! EVER! Somebody should give me a cape. Oh, and build a statue of me too. Several statues. Like that guy who used to run Uzbekistan. No wait, maybe its Turkmenistan? One of the Stans. Anyway, you know what I mean. I'm a friggin hero!