[palmer]

Ignore the $45T comments above. I don't know how much AIG has written (i.e. insured). The answer is nobody knows. The number came to my mind from an article, probably from Mish like this one:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/02/shadows-of-cds-market.html which links to one of his previous articles:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/02/credit-default-swap-tsunami-approaches.html where he says AIG wrote $78B in CDO swaps.

[palmer]

The bottom line is the $45T in swaps is at risk of cascading defaults, but the taxpayer owners (via the Fed) of AIG are not on the hook for anything close to that.