Bill Black demands release of AIG emails–calls them ‘black box’ of financial crisis

This morning, Roosevelt Institute Braintruster William K. Black talked to Bloomberg’s Amy Liu about Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and the growing scandal over AIG emails. Black, along with Eliot Spitzer and Frank Partnoy, has been calling for the release of AIG emails on New Deal 2.0 for weeks. As they put in in last Friday’s post, the emails released to Darrell Issa spanning 5 months are just a glimpse (see “Tip of the Iceberg”) of what will be revealed if 10 years of documents are released to the public. In December, the three wrote an op-ed for the NYT insisting that the public be given access to these emails, since we own 80% of the company.

As Black sees it, AIG crashed and burned, and the emails are the ‘black box’ of the financial crisis. He likens the economy to a plane that went down, explaining that the ‘black box’ is what tells you which systems failed and how to prevent the problem that caused the crash from recurring. “You have to understand what caused the crisis, just like you have to understand what caused the plane crash,” said Black. He believes that the AIG emails contain information about multiple cover-ups involving Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and the failure of the financial system.

Click here to view Bloomberg clip.