The Fox News Hate Machine Has a New Target
March 15, 2005
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Neil Cavuto is beginning such a process with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Eliot Spitzer is a very confident, very well respected Democrat who has made no secret of the fact that he intends to run for higher office, most likely Governor of New York. Fox never sleeps and in their view there's no time like the present to start painting Eliot Spitzer as a bad guy. If and when Spitzer announces what he will do next, the foundation will be laid and all Fox will have to do is build on that foundation.
Today (March 15, 2005) on Your World w/Neil Cavuto, Cavuto invoked Spitzers name two times when speaking about the resignation of the CEO of AIG. Hank Greenberg, the CEO of AIG for the past 40 years, was forced to resign over the weekend by AIG's board of directors.
In the "Biz Blast" portion of the show Cavuto announced Greenberg's resignation, saying, "AIG's Hank Greenberg is officially out. Greenberg, retiring after 40 years.
Done in by Eliot Spitzer's probe of the insurance industry." (It was interesting that this came immediately after Cavuto said the SEC (see below) was going after "former hot shots at Qwest Communications.")
During an interview with a Harvard business professor about corporate boards, Cavuto asked, "What do you make of the fact that some of them, even before this trouble at AIG, the fact that Eliot Spitzer was sorta going down on Hank Greenberg and very carefully watching how that company was recording its profits..."
According to an article in Forbes magazine,
http://www.forbes.com/business/healthcare/feeds/ap/2005/03/15/ap1884583.htmlThe move came amid a widening investigation of AIG by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulators are looking into the use of so-called finite insurance, or financial reinsurance, which critics say could be used to manipulate earnings.London's Financial Times said,
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1b53a32e-94fa-11d9-89c8-00000e2511c8.htmlThe triggers were subpeonas sent to the company last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Eliot Spitzer, New York State attorney-general, seeking information about an insurance contract agreed between AIG and General Reinsurance in 2000. The regulators were looking for evidence that Mr Greenberg was directly responsible for the contract and that it was used to inflate AIG's reserves by $500m.Comment: There are hundreds of articles about Greenberg's ouster on the Internet. From a quick read of several of them it sounds as if there is much more to Greenberg's ouster than simply the attention Eliot Spitzer, (and the SEC!) is paying to the insurance industry. But, in the world of Fox, again, there's no time like the present to make this about Eliot Spitzer, the renegade bad boy of corporate destruction, going after all those patriotic CEOs who are working hard to make America great and to provide jobs for "the folks."
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http://www.newshounds.us/2005/03/15/the_fox_news_hate_machine_has_a_new_target.php"We watch FOX so you don't have to."