AIG Gets Another $38 Billion
From the Washington Post 1 hour ago [here]
Only one day after it was revealed that AIG had sprung for a $440,000 spa vacation shortly after getting an $84 billion government-loan bailout comes this report: The government is loaning AIG another $38 billion.
AIG, the world’s largest insurer, said it has already drawn down $61 billion on its $84 billion line of credit from the government. AIG’s financial products division got into the mortgage-backed securities market and incurred billions in losses, sending the entire company teetering toward bankruptcy. The $84 billion loan was meant to help prop up AIG.
The New York branch of the Fed Reserve will borrow $37.8 billion in investment-grade securities from AIG in exchange for the cash.
During a hearing before the House Oversight committee on Tuesday, it was revealed that just last week, about 70 of the company’s top performers were rewarded with a week-long stay at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., where they ran up a tab of $440,000, The Post’s Peter Whoriskey reported today.
Oversight committee Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) showed a photograph of the resort, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and reported expenses for AIG personnel including $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa, Whoriskey wrote.
Today, AIG chief executive Edward Liddy defended the vacation by pouring gasoline on the fire.
Such trips “are standard practice in our industry,” Liddy said, no doubt thrilling every other major insurance company. …
From Wikipedia [here]
American International Group, Inc. (AIG) was the 18th-largest company in the world. It was on the Dow Jones Industrial Average from April 8, 2004 to September 22, 2008. On September 16, 2008, AIG suffered a liquidity crisis following the downgrade of its credit rating. The United States Federal Reserve loaned money to AIG at AIG’s request, to prevent the company’s collapse… of up to US$85 billion [now US$122 billion]. This was the largest government bailout of a private company in U.S. history…
The people responsible for this looting of the Federal Treasury include Hank Paulson, Edward Liddy, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Chuck Schummer, Henry Waxman, Maxine Waters, Artur Davis, Harry Reid, Lacy Clay, Gregory Meeks, Nancy Pelosi, Jamie Goerlick, Franklin Raines, Daniel Mudd, Jim Johnson, and Barack Hussein Obama, all of whom should be arrested, tried, convicted, stripped of their assets, and sent to prison.
Note that the US Forests Service canceled contracts and programs this summer because of a $400 million shortfall in their fire fund. $400 million is one-third of one percent of $122 billion.
