We don’t want a deal to get only part of the money back. Taxpayers want it all to come back — after all it is our money that bailed them out. We cannot afford to not get 100% back.
Alice, don’t you trust Turbo Tax Tim to make the best deal for the American Taxpayer who got soaked for $182 Bil on this bailout? While it is true they have paid back a portion by selling assets, they still owe us a big hunk. $49 Bil will not touch it. I smell a skunk and we will still be hosed.
Geitner was not in office when AIG was bailed out. But, he is stuck being the one who has to get us out of this mess. Who can do better and how would YOU get us out of this deal? Give us an idea of what you would do Mr. MR.
You are all smoking funny stuff. AIG owes the taxpayers 182 billion odd dollars. They haven’t paid one cent of interest for 7 quarters. You could sell the entire group, assuming anyone would buy them predicated upon a number underwriting issues, reserving issues and a continued substantial amount of potential loss from existing instruments. The Government deal for 49 billion to convert to common is nothing more than a smoke and mirrors onslaught on common shareholders, whose value isn’t worth $ 3 predicated on the 1 to 20 reverse split. It is a continued diminishment of shareholders value. If the Hong Kong deal ever gets done, AIA will go for an estimated $ 35 billion ( maybe) so add it all up, and give me $ 182 billion for us tax payers.
I write on this subject continually and called the AIG demise in writing a year before it occurred.
A good start would be to fire Turbo Tax Tim who was the head of the Fed Reserve in NY at the time. His grubby hands are all over this problem. AIG was thorougly corrupt and was sending taxpayer bailout money to Europe on the banks that were doing business with them. The SEC were asleep at the switch and didn’t do their jobs to reign this behavior in. As painful as it may have been, AIG probably shouldn’t have been rescued. Our economy will feel this $182 Bil mistake for a long time. This is only the tip of the iceberg since we continue to give Fannie & Freddie whatever they need to continue to do the same thing. They should all be prosecuted.
I have to chime in here. All of these posts are so very wrong – none of you have a real clue about the AIG bailout – other than headlines. Do your homeowrk first versus just reading headlines. First, the $182B number thrown around (constantly on IJ site at every AIG article, shame on you IJ) has never been actualized – it is a figure that the govt had available to lend to the insurer if they needed it. They never came close to borrowing all those available funds. Second, the taxpayers are making out like bandits in this deal. You are sooo wrong that AIG is not paying interest above the loan payback. have you not read AIG’s quarterly 10k’s for the last 2 years? There are billions being paid back in pure interest alone per quarter, which is affecting their net income. And they are paying back loan principal by asset sales. The gov’t literally is principal owner in several non-core profitable business units that were put into SPV’s which the gov’t will sell at an almost guaranteed profit sometime in the next few years as the economy/investment sale arena improves. How could you miss that when it is in AIG public quarterly press releases and financial stmts, including interest paymts? AIG currnelty owes around $17B left off the principal balance which will be paid off within months once a few sales of asian biz units get IPO’d. So…principal paid back + around $12 – 15B in interest to taxpayers within about 2 years…us taxpayers are made whole plus tons extra beyond any other entity in this whole financial meltdown that the gov’t assisted. Don’t forget, Goldman created and marketed these freakin CDO’s – AIG wasn’t the only one in the game insuring them, they were just the platinum financial name that gets the press. Lastly, how ridiculous is it that the gov’t takes an honerous 80% stake in a company beyond the principal + interest loan??? Has that point been forgotten? it will be in college biz books and classes as a case study for years after this whole thing is over. That was totally an unprecedented move and and wrong (even WSJ gave AIG that point back in late ’08). AIG couldn’t fight that clause as it was literally a last hour ‘throw in’ (along with CEO replacment by gov’t puppet CEO) of the terms of the bailout, and without gov’t loan, bankruptcy was only other option at midnight hour. The value of that gov’t stock takeover move is around $49B above and beyond the loan +interest AIG has almost cleared itself of. it killed shareholder value of those that actually owned the stock at the time, causing lots of people to lose some serious cash. AIG is paying the price of the bailout well beyond the loan + interest component (slap your hand penalty)- which frankly, is just beyond what is right and fair for any business to have to deal with. As you recall – the gov’t took major heat from the business world and press for this move and all subsequent restructures with GM, Chysler, Hartford, etc.. had completely different terms with much less honerous stock terms. Sooo, how are you justifying your points that this is a bad deal for taxpayers?? Learn the facts about the AIG / gov’t finance deal before you start posting generic headline knee jerk reactionary comments. Listen, i am not happy about what AIG did with their lack of oversight of the financial products unit that caused their own financial meltdown, let alone contributed to this worldwide meltdown we are still not out of. However, i am not a fan of blaming it all on AIG either because it is not all their fault, and certainly not a fan of false headline stmts about an otherwise good company made up of good employees who do contribute to the economy in a good and massive way (almost every company you know by name worldwide and many gov’t and city municipalities likely has AIG/Chartis insurance somewhere in place in their insurance portfolio). Chartis got won props for best global insurer just recently by 3rd party survey of agents. Education about any issue is key before you make vicious comments. Sorry for being long-winded, but just can’t take more comments that come from a lack of knowledge about a very public issue. Peace out.
That was quite a treatise “Seriously”. There is enough blame to go around for AIG and numerous other financial institutions and the SEC for not monitoring or stopping this bad behaviour before the meltdown happened. I lay most of the blame on Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who insisted Fannie & Freddie were sound and no problem. The sub prime mortgage mess started with them and all the Wall Street boys were doing these bad financial instruments and gambling the bubble wouldn’t burst. The European Banks were also sucked into buying a lot of these notes and eventually the US taxpayer bailed them out when AIG and others sent our money to them. They were all rotten to the core. I thorougly disagree that we will eventually get our money back with interest. The Treasury through Turbo Tax Tim is negotiating as we speak to divest the government interest and we will be left holding the bag for a substantial part of the loan.
We don’t want a deal to get only part of the money back. Taxpayers want it all to come back — after all it is our money that bailed them out. We cannot afford to not get 100% back.
Alice, don’t you trust Turbo Tax Tim to make the best deal for the American Taxpayer who got soaked for $182 Bil on this bailout? While it is true they have paid back a portion by selling assets, they still owe us a big hunk. $49 Bil will not touch it. I smell a skunk and we will still be hosed.
Geitner was not in office when AIG was bailed out. But, he is stuck being the one who has to get us out of this mess. Who can do better and how would YOU get us out of this deal? Give us an idea of what you would do Mr. MR.
You are all smoking funny stuff. AIG owes the taxpayers 182 billion odd dollars. They haven’t paid one cent of interest for 7 quarters. You could sell the entire group, assuming anyone would buy them predicated upon a number underwriting issues, reserving issues and a continued substantial amount of potential loss from existing instruments. The Government deal for 49 billion to convert to common is nothing more than a smoke and mirrors onslaught on common shareholders, whose value isn’t worth $ 3 predicated on the 1 to 20 reverse split. It is a continued diminishment of shareholders value. If the Hong Kong deal ever gets done, AIA will go for an estimated $ 35 billion ( maybe) so add it all up, and give me $ 182 billion for us tax payers.
I write on this subject continually and called the AIG demise in writing a year before it occurred.
Let’s get real folks.
Be well all
A good start would be to fire Turbo Tax Tim who was the head of the Fed Reserve in NY at the time. His grubby hands are all over this problem. AIG was thorougly corrupt and was sending taxpayer bailout money to Europe on the banks that were doing business with them. The SEC were asleep at the switch and didn’t do their jobs to reign this behavior in. As painful as it may have been, AIG probably shouldn’t have been rescued. Our economy will feel this $182 Bil mistake for a long time. This is only the tip of the iceberg since we continue to give Fannie & Freddie whatever they need to continue to do the same thing. They should all be prosecuted.
I have to chime in here. All of these posts are so very wrong – none of you have a real clue about the AIG bailout – other than headlines. Do your homeowrk first versus just reading headlines. First, the $182B number thrown around (constantly on IJ site at every AIG article, shame on you IJ) has never been actualized – it is a figure that the govt had available to lend to the insurer if they needed it. They never came close to borrowing all those available funds. Second, the taxpayers are making out like bandits in this deal. You are sooo wrong that AIG is not paying interest above the loan payback. have you not read AIG’s quarterly 10k’s for the last 2 years? There are billions being paid back in pure interest alone per quarter, which is affecting their net income. And they are paying back loan principal by asset sales. The gov’t literally is principal owner in several non-core profitable business units that were put into SPV’s which the gov’t will sell at an almost guaranteed profit sometime in the next few years as the economy/investment sale arena improves. How could you miss that when it is in AIG public quarterly press releases and financial stmts, including interest paymts? AIG currnelty owes around $17B left off the principal balance which will be paid off within months once a few sales of asian biz units get IPO’d. So…principal paid back + around $12 – 15B in interest to taxpayers within about 2 years…us taxpayers are made whole plus tons extra beyond any other entity in this whole financial meltdown that the gov’t assisted. Don’t forget, Goldman created and marketed these freakin CDO’s – AIG wasn’t the only one in the game insuring them, they were just the platinum financial name that gets the press. Lastly, how ridiculous is it that the gov’t takes an honerous 80% stake in a company beyond the principal + interest loan??? Has that point been forgotten? it will be in college biz books and classes as a case study for years after this whole thing is over. That was totally an unprecedented move and and wrong (even WSJ gave AIG that point back in late ’08). AIG couldn’t fight that clause as it was literally a last hour ‘throw in’ (along with CEO replacment by gov’t puppet CEO) of the terms of the bailout, and without gov’t loan, bankruptcy was only other option at midnight hour. The value of that gov’t stock takeover move is around $49B above and beyond the loan +interest AIG has almost cleared itself of. it killed shareholder value of those that actually owned the stock at the time, causing lots of people to lose some serious cash. AIG is paying the price of the bailout well beyond the loan + interest component (slap your hand penalty)- which frankly, is just beyond what is right and fair for any business to have to deal with. As you recall – the gov’t took major heat from the business world and press for this move and all subsequent restructures with GM, Chysler, Hartford, etc.. had completely different terms with much less honerous stock terms. Sooo, how are you justifying your points that this is a bad deal for taxpayers?? Learn the facts about the AIG / gov’t finance deal before you start posting generic headline knee jerk reactionary comments. Listen, i am not happy about what AIG did with their lack of oversight of the financial products unit that caused their own financial meltdown, let alone contributed to this worldwide meltdown we are still not out of. However, i am not a fan of blaming it all on AIG either because it is not all their fault, and certainly not a fan of false headline stmts about an otherwise good company made up of good employees who do contribute to the economy in a good and massive way (almost every company you know by name worldwide and many gov’t and city municipalities likely has AIG/Chartis insurance somewhere in place in their insurance portfolio). Chartis got won props for best global insurer just recently by 3rd party survey of agents. Education about any issue is key before you make vicious comments. Sorry for being long-winded, but just can’t take more comments that come from a lack of knowledge about a very public issue. Peace out.
That was quite a treatise “Seriously”. There is enough blame to go around for AIG and numerous other financial institutions and the SEC for not monitoring or stopping this bad behaviour before the meltdown happened. I lay most of the blame on Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who insisted Fannie & Freddie were sound and no problem. The sub prime mortgage mess started with them and all the Wall Street boys were doing these bad financial instruments and gambling the bubble wouldn’t burst. The European Banks were also sucked into buying a lot of these notes and eventually the US taxpayer bailed them out when AIG and others sent our money to them. They were all rotten to the core. I thorougly disagree that we will eventually get our money back with interest. The Treasury through Turbo Tax Tim is negotiating as we speak to divest the government interest and we will be left holding the bag for a substantial part of the loan.