The thing that is frustrating about this to me is the following: Imagine that two years ago, a giant hurricane hit somewhere and AIG's insurance business wasn'

The thing that is frustrating about this to me is the following: Imagine that two years ago, a giant hurricane hit somewhere and AIG's insurance business wasn't properly reserved/diversified. The losses were just too huge to absorb. Now, since this is two years ago, the AIG Financial Product's CDS trades look immensely profitable, so Joseph Cassano screams about the fact that he had nothing to do with the losses and he deserves his full bonus. I don't see how that situation is two different from the current one, just with the players switched around. Of course we don't know that this guy's trades are bad, but we also don't know that they are really profitable at the level he claims (hundreds of millions of dollars a year in his group).