Fed to Give AIG $85 Billion Loan and Take 80% Stake
September 17th, 2008Via: IHT:
In an extraordinary turn, the Federal Reserve agreed Tuesday night to take a nearly 80 percent stake in the troubled giant insurance company, the American International Group, in exchange for an $85 billion loan.
The Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase had been trying to arrange a $75 billion loan for the company to stave off the financial crisis caused by complex debt securities and credit default swaps. The Federal Reserve stepped in after it became clear Tuesday afternoon that the banking consortium would not be able to complete the deal.
Without the help, AIG was expected to be forced to file for bankruptcy protection.
The need for the loans became necessary after the major credit ratings agencies downgraded AIG late Monday, a move that likely to have forced the company to turn over billions of dollars in collateral to its derivatives trading partners worsening its financial health.
Until this week, it would have been unthinkable for the Federal Reserve to bail out an insurance company, and AIG’s request for help from the Fed of just a few days ago was rebuffed.
But with the prospect of a giant bankruptcy looming — one with unpredictable consequences for the world financial system — the Fed abandoned precedent and agreed to let the money flow.
I think Grover Norquist should take his cue from those Buddhist monks during the Viet Nam war: immolate himself in protest of this horrible transgression against “free market capitalism”.
I’ll bring the marshmallows.
What do you know about AIG’s connection to covert ops and the CIA?
I am not sure if Ruppert is brilliant, insane, zionist, DARPA disinformationalist or what, but this article is sure to blow your image of AIG insuring grandma’s Oldsmobile 88.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/part_2.html
“Deconstructing AIG
The seemingly mundane insurance business is, in fact, one of the primary weapons of intelligence gathering around the world. And the founder of AIG, Cornelius Starr, was an architect of its use in World War II. Consider these
quotes from a September 22, 2000 story by Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Fritz entitled, “The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men.”
“COLLEGE PARK, Md.They knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience. They had pothole counts for roads used for invasion and head counts for city blocks marked for incineration.
“They weren’t just secret agents. They were secret insurance agents. These undercover underwriters gave their World War II spymasters access to a global industry that both bankrolled and, ultimately, helped bring down Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
“Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2.”
FWIW, I think Ruppert’s an honest guy w/good instincts whose belief in his own powers of “prophecy” destabilize him sometimes. Having said that, I think he, like all of us on the “outside” trying to look “inside”, gets a lot of it right, and some of it wrong.
Here’s a link to the original article he quotes: http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/22/news/mn-25118
@ anothernut:
after reading Ruppert’s 911 book and some of the stuff that went on with FTW later, i have to agree with you. i’m sure that AIG was nationalised for lots of reason we won’t read about in the NYT.