What a surprise to see Goldman Sachs as the largest single $ recipient from the aig bailout
By Daniel at 17 March, 2009, 11:05 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Taxpayer benefit program for the already ultra wealthy”. gee, the chairman of Goldman sitting on the committee to save aig, who could have seen that coming?
An educated guess would surmise that the payment per recipient amounts recently divulged is small potatoes related to the real reason aig was left alive.
Could it be that some firms (gosh, i wonder who?) also wrote LARGE dollar amounts of credit default derivatives on aig paper? enough to sink these firms writing the credit default derivatives should aig have been allowed to file bankruptcy. might we surmise if aig were allowed to fail during the duration of coverage of these credit default derivatives, one or two very prominent firms would have gone bye bye? gosh, I wonder what major investment bank (oops there are no investment banks anymore, they are all banks now) had a ton of credit default derivatives on aig related paper?
Wouldn’t it be a surprise if the cost of paying off those credit default derivatives, on a default by aig, was of a $ size MANY magnitude larger then the funds so far payed out to aig winning bet counter-parties. as soon as those credit default derivatives time limits expire, so will the necessity of keeping aig alive.
Might this be the real reason the taxpayers have been forced to shovel well over $180 billion into aig? so the parties who wrote credit default insurance on aig do not have to pay up? The old magicians trick, mis-direction. while everyone focuses on the small potatoes (what an ironic use of the term but probably correct in relevance in this case) of who got paid out the obscene $75 billion or so for winning bets, they fail to look for the likely real, and much large $, reason aig was kept alive at taxpayer expense:
The question the public should be asking is what favored firm would have been on the hook for hundreds of billions in credit default derivatives if aig had filed for bankruptcy last year (gee, could it be someone also on the recently released list of $’s received from aig?). Also, regarding the term “credit default derivative” don’t get hung up on the exact wording. it may not be called “credit default derivative” but you get the idea. nothing like being able to answer a direct congressional inquiry in the negative, because the terminology is not a perfect match for the question asked. Time reveals all. Nothing like taxpayer charity for the already ultra wealthy.
Luckily the above scenario could not be the case because the U. s. markets are self regulating and free of corruption and self dealing. I know this because Alan Greenspan and others have stated this, so it must be true.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am already beginning to feel that tax payer’s money is being used to bail out big institutions only to benefit ultra rich!
The affairs of the government is really becoming worse