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- geojanes
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11 Dec 2012, 11:57 am
Gov't is selling it's last shares of AIG:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/u-s-to-sell-last-holdings-of-a-i-g-common-stock/Instead, the federal government has said that it expects to walk away from A.I.G. with a profit — about $15.1 billion to date, by the Treasury Department’s reckoning. That has followed both a steady stream of stock sales over the last two years and a resurgence in the insurer’s core operations.
“It’s gone way better than anyone expected in 2008 and 2009,” said Linus Wilson, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “People thought we’d put money down a dry hole and would never see it again.”
While the Treasury Department did not outline a timetable for its latest stock offering, the sale is expected to be completed quickly.
It still wasn't right, but it's appropriate to mark the occasion.
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- danivon
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11 Dec 2012, 1:32 pm
Well, was it so wrong? What would have happened had AIG not been rescued? They had liabilities all over the place, to a lot of vulnerable banks and institutions.
There may have been a better alternative, but ultimately disaster which was looming was averted and the taxpayer didn't take the haircut that was predicted.
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- geojanes
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11 Dec 2012, 1:42 pm
Don't get me wrong, there was no other alternative. The real problem was that AIG got itself in that kind of trouble in the first place. People in gov't were given a series of choices none of them any good and all of them wrong, but they did the best that they could. The real issue is making sure it never happens again, and I don't think that's happened.
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- Ray Jay
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11 Dec 2012, 2:06 pm
Bailing out AIG was an indirect way of protecting Goldman Sachs. GS had insurance contracts with AIG so much of the bailout money went to GS. I would have preferred that the government gave GS a haircut, say 90 to 95 cents on the dollar. GS and AIG would have stayed solvent, but at least their owners would have felt some deserved pain. That's easy to say in hindsight.
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- geojanes
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13 Dec 2012, 7:40 am
Ray Jay wrote:Bailing out AIG was an indirect way of protecting Goldman Sachs. GS had insurance contracts with AIG so much of the bailout money went to GS. I would have preferred that the government gave GS a haircut, say 90 to 95 cents on the dollar. GS and AIG would have stayed solvent, but at least their owners would have felt some deserved pain. That's easy to say in hindsight.
Causing GS more pain would be something no one would disagree with. If you use Twitter you should follow @GSElevator , which is purportedly things heard in the GS elevator. True or not, it is funny.
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- Ray Jay
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13 Dec 2012, 8:08 am
thanks ... some real gems in a disgusting anti-human sort of way.
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- danivon
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13 Dec 2012, 9:34 am
As much as GS were scummy gits who made out like bandits during the crash, had they been stiffed by AIG, don't for one moment believe it would have caused them much pain. Shareholders and investors, yes. Most employees, sure. But the management would have walked away. If GS had collapsed, it would have been a big domino falling on a load of other institutions.
The problem was getting to the point where every major bank and financial was at massive risk if more than just one of the others went down. That the temporary fix was messy and unjust is a byproduct of that.
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- Doctor Fate
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13 Dec 2012, 11:20 am
danivon wrote:As much as GS were scummy gits who made out like bandits during the crash, had they been stiffed by AIG, don't for one moment believe it would have caused them much pain. Shareholders and investors, yes. Most employees, sure. But the management would have walked away. If GS had collapsed, it would have been a big domino falling on a load of other institutions.
The problem was getting to the point where every major bank and financial was at massive risk if more than just one of the others went down. That the temporary fix was messy and unjust is a byproduct of that.
But, no worries--no bank is now "too big to fail."
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- danivon
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13 Dec 2012, 11:40 am
Oh, some banks still are.
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- geojanes
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13 Dec 2012, 12:09 pm
Doctor Fate wrote:But, no worries--no bank is now "too big to fail."
Go on, what do you mean by that? Do you think that there are banks that are too big to fail? I do, and I think most people would agree with that. What do we do about them? What should the government be doing to break them up? Do you think they should go the route of Ma Bell?
