Declarations

Meant It

“I meant exactly what I said in August 2007. I did not expect actual, economic losses on the portfolio. That said, I was truthful at all times about the unrealized accounting losses and did my very best to estimate them accurately.”

—Joseph Cassano, the former head of the American International Group Financial Products unit that precipitated a $182 billion bailout pledge from taxpayers in his testimony before a congressionally-appointed panel looking into the financial crisis. He stood by a 2007 proclamation that the insurer would not lose even a dollar on a portfolio of securities that included subprime mortgages.

Mine Collapse

“I have searched and thought about how we can stop this. It’s alarming and I’m trying to figure out how to make it better.”

—Kentucky Mine Safety and Licensing Director Johnny Greene meeting face-to-face with coal miners at the job site to urge them to be vigilant about potential underground collapses, which have killed four miners in Kentucky this year. Greene said he has pulled two-dozen mine safety analysts off their regular duties to meet with groups of workers going into or coming out of the mines.

Beyond Nashville

“I wish we could get some country music artist to do a concert for us. They raised all this money but they’re just keeping it in Nashville.”

—Terry Work, director of the nonprofit Helping Hands of Hickman County in Tennessee, who’s trying to find help for people far from the spotlight shining on the Nashville victims of May’s deadly floods. Nashville was the municipality that was hardest hit by the flooding that killed 22 people. But with a population of only about 24,000 to Nashville’s more than 626,000, Hickman has had more victims per capita and fewer resources to deal with the aftermath.

More Spills

“BP and other oil companies have tried to portray this spill as an accident or an aberration, but in fact there are spills on off-shore and on-shore sites around the world, increasingly.”

—Bret Gustafson, PhD, associate professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who maintains the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not simply a random accident. He says there will be more of these spills to come, as the days of easy oil are over.