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By CJP | March 5, 2009
 Janes, today we followed the Senate Banking Committee hearing on what happened to A.I.G. and what we’re all supposed to do to save it, and the global economy, from itself. In the words of Sen. Chris Dodd, the discussion was “very troubling.”Â
We posted a few Tweets live during the proceedings, but here’s what was said:
- AIG was a healthy insurance company, which in 1999, applied to also be a bank, began aggressively investing and eventually became, according to Sen. Shelby, “an insurance company with a hedge fund bolted on to it;”
- As a newly created insurance company/ bank hybrid, A.I.G. could choose how it wanted to be regulated, since no single federal agency regulated everything it was doing. Eventually nobody had authrotiy to regulate all of AIG at the same time;
- AIG began to sell “credit default swaps,” which is insurance that investors buy to protect against investments going bad, just as you buy insurance to protect against your home being damaged. Unlike traditional insurance, though, CDS’s are totally unregulated and have no requirement that the insurer do anything to prove it could pay on potential losses;
- Investors flocked to buy A.I.G.’s CDS’s for the new, hot investment in the late 90’s, subprime mortgage-backed securities;
- With some mortgage-backed securities going belly up in 2007 and 2008, AIG would be on the hook for the losses, but had not put away nearly enough cash in case people called their investments;
- One witness called A.I.G. “the great enabler of the meltdown,” since investors told their managers sub-prime investments were basically risk-free, since they had credit default swaps from A.I.G.
Choice quotes from the senators included, Menendez: “I’m angrier than hell!” Bunning: “I’m not interested in a press release, I’m interested in facts!” Merkley: “This is lipstick on a pig.” Dodd: “The current course of action is unacceptable and must change.” The Fed: “We had no choice.” And finally, when asked how much more money A.I.G. would need, none of the three witnesses, all top regulators, had any idea.  As we said, troubling. Â
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March 9th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
One thing no one seems to want to blame is the real problem. It’s called interest indexing. I figure our pathetic 8 cent dollar was cut in half last year to at big blustery 4 cents left. Of course no one wants to talk about everyone’s income being cut in half and evryone’s debt being doubled. The dollar has lost 22 cents of it,s value from 2001 to 2008. That’s almost 1/4 of a full 1913 dollar. In 2008 it cost 21.57 dollars to equal 1 dollar in 1913. Looks like the private stock holders at the fed are doing alright. We have funneled 96% of the value of a dollar to these jerks and wonder what Obama is doing wrong. Is AIG a stock holder of the federal reserve? Do not know? The Bank of America is and more than 50% of their stock is owned by foreign intrests which means our rule of US banks being only federal reserve stock holders is being spit on.
do away with the federal reserve and put our money system with the treasure. The public is know the stockholders and congress has oversight not just review. Then if we do not get a stable dollar so GDP is not important anymore the People Have The POWER to vote for someone that will. I think all the the banks companies and oil monopolies should fail.