AIG Oversight Was Minimal Before $180 Billion Bailout

The Hill:

In the eight months before AIG received a taxpayer bailout that now stands at $180 billion, top officials at the firm's main federal regulator paid scant attention to the troubled insurer.

Read the whole story: The Hill

Comments

[davidwayneosedach]

03:36 PM on 05/14/2009

Isn't it a shame how much AIG has suffered since receving $180 billion in free taxpayer bailout money?

[alabaman]

12:23 PM on 05/14/2009

This lax oversight all began with Reagan and his "government is the problem not the solution " mantra.

[sheilaofmiami]

11:29 AM on 05/14/2009

Deregulation, and the buying of congress and the senate. AIG, they own us all and now they can't afford themselves.

10 years folks, 10 years of hell, we are 2 years in so far, maybe.

[OtayPanky]

12:55 AM on 05/14/2009

Let's get real.

I worked as a low level drone at AIG for a year back in '88, when Hank Greenburg was in his glory, and AIG was the ONLY profitable insurance company, year over year. The long termers there knew why, and bragged about it: They had a tangled web of companies based in all parts of the world, and would move everything around to make the numbers show exactly what they wanted them to show. As a true multi-national, no jurisdiction was able to figure out where they were hiding the salami at any given time.

It was the most gawdawful corporate environment I ever worked in...like Stalinist Russia, with people spying on each other and undermining each other in the most byzantine fashion. I made my one year commitment and left as soon as I could find a decent job.

These scumbags made their bones the old fashioned way: they lied and cheated every chance they could. When someone finally writes the definitive history of this soon to be defunct goliath, it will be an eye-popper.

[research]

03:13 PM on 05/14/2009

Yes, Let's charge them all with Fraud. triple damages and prison!

[moe b]

10:01 PM on 05/13/2009

What are they talking about? There's plenty of oversight - as in overlooking something. Failures here and there - oh, it must have been due to an oversight. That's the order of the day.

[PhilipTaylor]

10:01 PM on 05/13/2009

AIG Funding of Congress=$9.34 Million balanced between Demos and Repubs!

Cycle Total_____Democrats___Republicans

TOTAL $9,342,839 4685600 4636839

2008 $854,905 586426 267579 weighted much higher to Demos
2006 $650,375 361081 274294
2004 $1,076,948 593612 482336
2002 $2,266,357 894517 1371840 weighted much higher to Repubs
2000 $1,642,861 806572 835289
1998 $833,095 392125 440970
1996 $818,088 389640 429448
1994 $384,311 198977 184834
1992 $589,765 327991 258774
1990 $226,134 134659 91475

[jerrypl]

09:43 PM on 05/13/2009

Why should anyone expect differently? The number of regulators were drastically reduced under Boy Bush. He knew what he was doing, and that was to keep regulators away from investigating AIG's and the balance sheets of any financial criminal bank that was waiting to receive the transfers of wealth from the working American to the banking crime syndicate operators. This continues to this very day. As the real economy crashes, the plan is to continue the shifting of wealth--401K wealth, mortgage wealth, and the real economy's wealth.

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com