AIG and Hank Greenberg: Revenge of the Patriarch

"When it became increasingly clear that AIG faced an intensifying liquidity crisis, I offered to assist the company in any way I could," Greenberg told lawmakers, "including by raising tens of billions of dollars in private capital. Unfortunately, I was not able to even arrange a meeting with the company to present my proposals." Or, in other words: Hey, I tried to help, and no one would even take my call.

There are certainly enough questions hanging over Greenberg's tenure that no one should be too quick in letting him off the hook. However, it's meaningful that Greenberg left AIG a meaningful amount of time before the collapse. The financial carnival that combined housing insanity with derivatives mania really played for a surprisingly short run: The greatest excesses by far came in no more than three years, from 2005 to 2007. Greenberg wasn't just sent packing before the final explosion. He left before the party really got started.

That's something else that Greenberg shares with Citi's Weill, who left the CEO spot in 2003 after an agonizing and very public search for a successor (he settled on the disastrous Chuck Prince), and Ace Greenberg, who handed off the chairmanship of Bear Stearns in 2001. All three were risk takers with an enormous appetite for putting their companies' capital on the line. Nonetheless, all of them left their houses in something approaching order.

Which leaves some questions that the historians of the financial crash will be pondering for years: Was the fall of American finance a foreseeable consequence of the hubris of empire building? Were Citi, Bear, and AIG companies that were doomed to fail by the mistakes of the men who built them? Or, on the other hand, did their failures come from the managers who were left behind, people left with the keys to the kingdom and free reign to risk other people's money without worrying about what the boss would think?

• Slideshow: Companies at Greatest Risk for Default

The subtext of Greenberg's lawsuit comes down to this: It would have been different had he been allowed to stay at the helm. Tarnished as his reputation might be, it's an idea that is at least worth considering. Over the last months, you've heard a lot about the lack of accountability in corporate America-accountability to customers, shareholders, or the public at large. Indeed, all those failures of accountability are written in glowing letters. But it's also worth asking whether the retirement of the patriarchs might indeed have left the simplest accountability gap of all: a boss who understood his business and could look further ahead than next year's bonus.

© 2012 Slate.com

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