PolitiFact | Beating a retreat on a lavish retreat

PolitiFact | Beating a retreat on a lavish retreat:

Obama's comments suggest a misunderstanding of the details behind AIG’s collapse, or a deliberate effort to skip over the realities of AIG's corporate structure in order to make a good point. Also, Obama slams AIG for two junkets at a time when the company had only held one. AIG might have had a tin ear when it came to organizing corporate events. But Obama’s wrong to lay blame for the financial meltdown on a highly regulated, profitable part of the business that sells life insurance. We rule the claim Barely True."

Turns out the AIG junket involved a business unit which dealt in insurance, not the unit which lost all that money on mortgage-backed securities. And many of the attendees were independent AIG insurance agents, not employees of AIG. And of course the cost of the junket was several orders of magnitude smaller than the cost of the AIG bailout.

Even in the financial crisis, there are few simple truths.