[...] I’ve bemoaned before the absence of critical thinking that goes into this style of reporting.  The New York Times is at it again today, this time on a subject far more important than whether a hot artist’s most valuable products infringe the copyrights of other creators — how AIG got our country into the financial mess it’s in and whether we ought to trust the people who brought us here to lead us out.  Hank Greenberg, the long-time head of AIG who was deposed in 2005, testified yesterday to Congress and claimed that the Obama administration should have let AIG go bankrupt, that the administration’s policies have deprived AIG of its most valuable assets by driving off the people who led AIG into its catastrophic state, and that Mr. Greenberg’s policies, which included the creation of the credit default swaps that “insured” the mortgage backed securities that were doomed to failure, had nothing to do with the eventual failure of AIG.  He might not have provided reserves to allow AIG to afford the liabilities it had assumed when it sold the credit default swaps (thereby earning itself enormous amounts of money, profits that of course contributed to the fortunes made by Mr. Greenberg and the other geniuses who our government has driven away), but, he says, he would have had he been allowed to stick around. [...]