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Ear to the Ground

Geithner’s Fed Made AIG Pay Banks to the Max

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Posted on Oct 28, 2009
White House / Pete Souza

That Timothy Geithner must love the big banks he spends all day talking to. Back when he was in charge of things, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York forced AIG to pay off Wall Street tycoons for all those toxic bets, even though the mega-insurer was busy trying to negotiate a better deal.

Goldman Sachs alone got $14 billion that will never be recouped by taxpayers, who shelled out $180 billion to keep AIG from going under.

So, despite dodging his taxes, failing to regulate Wall Street as it destroyed the global economy and worrying more about reckless bankers than cash-strapped taxpayers, Geithner got promoted to run the American economy.

How is it that real unemployment is at 17 percent and this guy still has a job?  —PZS

Washington Post:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Tuesday that it had no choice but to instruct American International Group last November to reimburse the full amount of what it owed to big banks on derivatives contracts, a move that ended months of effort by the insurance giant to negotiate lower payments.

Fed officials offered the explanation in a rare response to a media report after Bloomberg News said that the New York Fed, led at the time by then-President Timothy F. Geithner, directed AIG to make the payments after it received a massive government bailout. The officials said AIG lost its leverage in demanding a better deal once the company had been saved from bankruptcy.

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By Alma Kee, November 12, 2009 at 12:58 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Plain and simple… AIG probably could not have been allowed to fail and thus not be able to pay the claims on the Credit Default Insurance for all of the bad mortgages they guaranteed.  If China, Japan and UK investors lost a significant amount of money they may have refuse to fund the US treasury auctions.  We probably didn’t have any other choice from a “national economic security” standpoint.  Otherwise our interest rates would have climbed substantially and froze our economy.

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By ChaoticGood, October 28, 2009 at 11:43 am Link to this comment

If you want to blame him, then blame the American System.  The American System (otherwise known as American Dream) is upward mobility and wealth preservation.
Under the American System, the Wealthy upper class are guarenteed that they will get richer if they invest their money.  This is the socialism of loss and capitalism of gain (known now as bailouts).  Furthermore, the middle class well-to-do are guarenteed that they will make not lose money because of Federal insurance on their deposits.  Also the middle class are protected because the FED protects against inflation.  This benefits the middle class and upper classes.
Finally, the lower classes are fed a line that says if you work very hard and play by the rules you can become well-to-do and move up into the middle class.

Here is the American dream in a nutshell

Geithner is doing nothing more than keeping this game going.  Blame the game, not him.

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By LostHills, October 28, 2009 at 8:48 am Link to this comment

The tragedy is that this fucker will never see the inside of a jail cell….

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By thebeerdoctor, October 28, 2009 at 8:09 am Link to this comment

It seems quite dubious that the bill, HR 1207/S604 will ever get out of committee. I certainly hope I am wrong.

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By Fat Freddy, October 28, 2009 at 6:48 am Link to this comment

The Federal Reserve has declined to detail the terms of the deals and specifics about negotiations with creditors.

Of course not. That would threaten their “independence”. This doesn’t surprise me. AIG is an insurance company, and isn’t part of that “inner circle”. They didn’t have the influence to “negotiate” with the NY Fed the way JP Morgan Chase did. AIG’s CEO wasn’t on the board of the NY Fed, like JP Morgan’s (Jamie Dimon) was when they negotiated to absorb Bear Stearns.

Tell you CongressCritters and the POTUS to support HR 1207/S604 NOW.


http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1207

People need to contact the committee [House Committee on Financial Services] and inundate them with demands that the bill be reported on and put up to a vote. Show the public support.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/committee.xpd?id=HSBA

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By sollipsist, October 28, 2009 at 6:33 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

“That Timothy Geithner must love the big banks he spends all day talking to.”

Geithner’e performance at his duties is no worse than your use of the English language…begging the question: how is it that you still have a writing job?

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