from the desk of mr chrisattack

AIG was insuring debt that was being sold from bank to bank and now has had to pay a lot of claims on the debt they insured.  What I don’t understand is how no one though this was the same thing Enron was doing by trading weather and other ‘new commodities’?  It simply was a bad idea and greed made it easy to see quick profits instead of insanely high risks.

Problem is that if AIG were to fail it would likely take a good chunk of financial institutions with them, as they are closely intertwined with Wall St.  I don’t like that taxpayers have almost an 80% stake in a failed company, which is as high as the government can take before having to put AIG on it’s books.  I don’t think AIG is a good investment for taxpayers, but I can’t argue with experts saying that letting AIG fail will make things a lot worse.