AIG CEO Compares Bad Publicity Over Bonuses to Lynching

Scoring an interview with The Wall Street Journal‘s Money Beat blog is obviously a little different than going on the Today show, but some rules still apply:

• Don’t try to turn billionaires into victims, because that doesn’t work
• Never compare suffering bad publicity to being kidnapped and murdered

Robert Benmosche, CEO of real estate insurance giant/big time bad guy AIG, discarded both of these rules last week when he sat down with WSJ. In case you don’t recall, AIG was one of the prime movers blamed for the mortgage crisis because it trafficked in worthless credit default swaps before collapsing and receiving the largest government bailout of a private company in history.