One AIG office... maybe 500 billion lost.... Wow. Just Wow.

[jco]

Our life insurance is with AIG. Should we cancel our policy with them? I just don't want to pay them anymore if they're just going to tank...

[70Ford]

washingtonpost.com

I did this before. When I lost my job....I started work at Caterpillar. I made 500 bucks a week with overtime. I had a lot of bills...a lot of credit card debt. Sometimes, I couldn't pay one card. I could pay, but I couldn't pay the whole thing...so might as well pay nothing....still gonna be late, ya know? Save it for the next payment.

Slow....suicide. I was looking at bankruptcy lawyers in the phone book....it was that bad. I then found another job in IT...and got back on track...and out of debt.

When I read this article, AIG looks like me. They're sunk. And they don't have the out that I had, 'cept for bankruptcy.

Just let the ****ers die, already. They're in too deep and they have too many obligations. Better to rip off the bandaid fast, than slow.

[floridasandy]

Originally Posted by floridasandy

this absolutely points to the ineptitude of the government officials when structuring the deal in the first place. AIG keep giving more bonuses, the government pretends to complain about it, and then the government gives them more money with no restrictions! i don't see how it could get more pathetic than that.....

....unless you realize that one of the companies being bailed out in this rescue is goldman sachs, associated with our own treasury secretary. all roads lead to goldman sachs evidently.
from the ny times:
According to people briefed on the situation who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about it, the counterparties that taxpayers have bailed out include Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and two French banks, Calyon and Société Générale. Along with other unidentified entities, the counterparties have received 30 percent of the $170 billion allocated to A.I.G. (Goldman has said that it had insulated itself from any financial damage that might have resulted from an A.I.G. collapse.)

today they released the bailout names and here are the biggest names:

The top recipients of CDS-related collateral were France's Societe Generale, with $4.1 billion, Germany's Deutsche Bank (DB), with $2.6 billion, and Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch of the United States, with $2.5 billion and $1.8 billion.

They were also the top recipients of payments under the CDO purchase program, with SocGen getting $6.9 billion, Goldman $5.6 billion, Merrill $3.1 billion and Deutsche Bank $2.8 billion.