Dodd: "AIG will make us the first trillionaires in history courtesy of our slaves, I mean constituents."
Posted on 03/03/2009 9:16:44 AM PST by marshmallow
It is a simple enough question: who bought the credit default swaps that American International Group sold during the housing bubble? And at this point — after Bailout No. 4, with the government handing A.I.G. another $30 billion to go with the previous $150 billion — you would think that the taxpayers would have the right to know that information. Is it Goldman? Royal Bank of Scotland? The Irish banks that are on the verge of collapse? What happened to all that transparency the new administration keeps talking about?
In the wake of my column on Saturday, I received a number of comments here at Executive Suite along the lines of this one:
Joe, I’m trying to find info re: what percentage of these credit default swaps are “owned” by foreign investors, what percent owned by banks, what percent owned by pension funds. (And if banks are owning them, as your column suggests, which ones?) Seems to me … it’d be helpful to know as A.I.G. continues to be bailed out where exactly the $$$ is going. I’m assuming much of it (most? all?) is going to cover their CDSs. Why this is important? To keep the spin machines honest.
Thanks.
This strikes me as a completely legitimate question. After all, the reason A.I.G. is being propped up is that the government fears that if the company defaulted the counterparties would suddenly be faced with tens of billions of dollars worth of unacknowledged losses — and they would go bust. It would make the Lehman fiasco look like a garden party. As Nouriel Roubini put it on CNBC recently (I’m paraphrasing): It’s not a bailout of A.I.G.; it’s a bailout of the counterparties?
What’s more, a fair amount of what A.I.G. was doing was pretty sleazy behavior, using credit default......
(Excerpt) Read more at executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I heard they hold the congressional retirement money
I do not care about global repercussions. I only care about the USA. If the failure of AIG because we don’t bail it out makes the Saudis or Europe have problems then that is their problem not ours.
I did too.
China.
Yes, I believe this is true; my stock broker told me this as a fact last week! No wonder they want to save their pensions!
It has become apparent that the “openness” the Obama administration promised has failed once again.
Goldman for number 1 on the list. This is a ponzi Scheme that makes Madoff look legit.
The link below will take you to a somewhat lengthy piece by Paul Craig Roberts (a former Treasury official).
It is NOT an easy read: Economics is called the dismal science for good reason. That’s especially true of the cockamamie, voodoo economics birthed by the gang now infesting Washington, Wall Street and the corporate suites of this country.
It is NOT a FUN read: Reading what could be America’s obituary could only be amusing to the criminally deranged.
Roberts hits all the notes in this piece — INCLUDING a common-sense, no cost solution to the current mess.
Let me hasten to say that I have been skeptical of the FREE TRADE crowd for some time. I favor a nationalistic based FAIR TRADE of the sort the mega-corporations threw under the bus decades ago. That attitude was typified years ago in a comment made by Walter Wriston, former head of CITICORP (GEE, THERE’S A NAME IN THE NEWS!) when he was chided for loaning to — thereby PROPPING UP — some of the most brutal and murderous communist (and non-communist) regimes on the planet:
“The form of government in these nations is of no concern to us. All that matters is CAN THEY PAY THEIR BILLS?”
That Walter was a real humanitarian, wasn’t he?
To far too many of these corporate heads and globalist politicians, the place called America is simply the name of a particular land mass on planet earth. The IDEA of America is about as important to them as was Wriston’s concern that his “loans” (most of which were — unbeknownst to them — underwritten by American taxpayers) were enabling tyrants to butcher countless millions of their citizens.
That America will someday disappear into some one-world miasma doesn’t bother them in the least.
I HOPE it bothers you. I pray that it bothers most those of you with children and grandchildren. When once asked if his interventionist and inflationary policies wouldn’t, in the end, destroy the nation, John Maynard Keynes responded that “In the end, we’ll all be dead.”
I hope this piece bothers you to the point of sharing it with others and prompts you to speak out in opposition to the continuation of America’s further decline and, eventually, our demise.
Please remember that, so far at least, YOU ARE NOT POWERLESS TO AFFECT THE OUTCOME OF THIS STRUGGLE.
Start raising hell with your elected representatives — at all levels — until they begin to get their minds right on this issue.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22087.htm
March 2, 2009
6:22 pm
Link
Goldman Sachs must be a major recipient of this help. They told us in the early days how they hedged their subprime exposure and I guess they must have bought lots of ABX protection from AIG. They must have asked themselves how AIG was hedging the risk …
One thing that makes me laugh is when that congressman on CNBC said that AIG was too big to fail because of all the insurance contracts owned by thousands of people across the USA. What he does not realise is that almost all of these people could simply cancel these contracts tomorrow and then replace them with those written by another insurance company. Would the premiums be any different - not too much I would guess and in many cases the premiums could be lower.
Clearly AIG is being bailed out for a few large banks who thought they could pass the parcel to AIG on their sub-prime risks.
— Fred Bloggs
This is nothing more than a “cover your buddy” venture and an out-and-out robbery of the American taxpayers and their children.
For instance, part of the $150 billion already laundered through the AIG bailout went straight to Goldman Sachs, who had significant exposure - I believe $20 billion worth if I’m not mistaken.
So; instead of taking the hit they deserved, Goldman gets the $20 bil as a gift from their former CEO turned SoT Henry Paulson, while neither we nor our children will EVER see it paid back.
It’s a criminal enterprise.
money to aig in the front door money to their buddies out the backdoor. when will this end. is it 2012 yet?
As the group, led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., pondered the collapse of one of America’s oldest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, a more dangerous threat emerged: American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, was teetering. A.I.G. needed billions of dollars to right itself and had suddenly begged for help.
The only Wall Street chief executive participating in the meeting was Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson’s former firm. Mr. Blankfein had particular reason for concern.
Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, according to six people close to the insurer who requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said.....
A Goldman spokesman said in an interview that the firm was never imperiled by A.I.G.’s troubles and that Mr. Blankfein participated in the Fed discussions to safeguard the entire financial system, not his firm’s own interests
Does anyone know if the stockholders of AIG have lost their investment because of the bailout injections? Stockholders should have nothing left because of multiple bailouts. This company should be broken up and sold off in an orderly fashion to preserve asset value. If it is so important to protect those counterparties to the default swaps, then the government should guarantee. But it appears to me that we are still trying to preserve shareholder investment, and that should not be.
Nam Vet
If it means getting rid of Obama, I think all of us are looking forward to 2012. However, this wasn't under his administration.
The first AIG bailout $85 billion was under Bush.
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