We Are NOT "Bailing Out" A.I.G.

...and all this time you thought we were 'helping' A.I.G.?

Wrong-o, chump.

So far, A.I.G. has received approximately $186 billion from the U.S. government in a bailout to protect the insurance giant’s huge losses. But, as Josh Marshall noted over the weekend, the bailout of A.I.G. isn’t really a bailout of A.I.G., but a bailout of the counterparties that had insurance policies to back up their mortgage-backed securities (now known as toxic assets).

Got that? We are paying the guys on the OTHER SIDE of the A.I.G. bets.

And who might those people be? You will never know, chump.

Despite the knowledge that the bailout of A.I.G. is, in fact, a bailout of counterparties, A.I.G. and the Federal Reserve refuse to disclose the identities of the counterparties. In a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, Sen. Ron Wyden berated Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke about the failure to release the names of the counterparties, the actual bailout recipients. Bernanke stated that “under normal conditions” the counterparties would “have a presumption of privacy”.

Right, Ben.

And these are "normal conditions"?

Benny, my boy: we OWN A.I.G. Checks they write are checks drawn on the US Taxpayer. Now once again, Benny-boy:

Who ARE they?