Ex-Citigroup mogul Weill (left) and ex-AIG mogul Greenberg (right).

Ex-AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg keeps coming out smelling like a rose. He got forced out of AIG in 2005 amid federal and state accounting investigations, so he wasn't around for the blame when AIG tanked three years later. He had already made hundreds of millions of dollars from selling only part of his AIG shares after his ouster and before AIG went bust.

And now today, after protracted negotiations, Greenberg is settling that old dispute by shelling out only $15 million to make an SEC lawsuit go away.

The main guy who caused Greenberg's grief in 2005? Then-AG Eliot Spitzer.

Greenberg and his CFO at the time, Howard Smith, "directed several different accounting transactions to materially affect AIG's reported financial results." Robert Khuzami, the SEC's enforcement chief, talked tough today: "Greenberg and Smith oversaw various improper transactions that presented a false financial picture and allowed AIG to claim success in meeting its performance goals."

But in accordance with the SEC's generally accepted unaccountability principles, Greenberg doesn't have to admit or deny wrongdoing. Shit just happens.

Like with Citigroup. The bitterest of foes of the Glass-Steagall Act, Sandy Weill "tore down the wall between commercial and investment banking" and built Citigroup into a mega-mega-conglomerate before gracefully leaving only a few years ago. Well, not exactly leaving. He had a smokin' multiyear deal as a consultant that he terminated only this past April. Wouldn't look good for anyone to have the guy who cobbled together Citigroup to be on the payroll while it was being uncobbled.

Greenberg did the same kind of cobbling with AIG, turning it into one of the world's largest insurers.

Both behemoths proved to be too big for their own good and had to be bailed out. But before the government took over AIG, Greenberg and his personally controlled entities not only reaped hundreds of millions of dollars from selling AIG stock but Greenberg also started his own insurance company from his AIG plunder and then sued AIG, accusing it of securities fraud.