According to the New York Times AIG is weighing whether to join a $25 billion lawsuit against the U.S. government (US Taxpayers) for forcing unacceptably high losses on shareholders in its bailout. - Your Kidding Right?
The company’s financial products division had been selling guarantees against losses on highly rated securities tied to mortgages. When those securities plummeted in value, the losses in that division were so great that it brought one of the world’s biggest financial firms to the brink of bankruptcy. When AIG executives turned to the government for help on Sept. 16, 2008, the day after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, they had no other options; no private entity would lend them money.
AIG was loaned 182 Billion dollars of US taxpayer dollars based on too big too fail. U.S. Taxpayers were forced to bail the company out, without the loan the shareholders would have received squat and AIG would have joined Lehman Brothers in bankruptcy court.
“Of all the events and all of the things we’ve done in the last 18 months,” Ben Bernanke told “60 Minutes” in March 2009, “the single one that makes me the angriest, that gives me the most angst, is the intervention with AIG. Here was a company that made all kinds of unconscionable bets. Then, when those bets went wrong, we had a situation where the failure of that company would have brought down the financial system. I understand why the American people are angry. It’s absolutely unfair that taxpayer dollars are going to prop up a company that made these terrible bets–that was operating out of the sight of regulators, but which we have no choice but to stabilize, or else risk enormous impact, not just in the financial system, but on the whole U.S. economy.”
Just a reminder - This is the same AIG that took the U.S. taxpayer bailout monies and awarded to it's execs in the form of huge bonuses and junkets to Hawaii ect...
