Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Something doesn't add up here

Here's what I don't get about this whole bailout thing. Let's say that I owned a house that was worth $100,000 (could happen soon, in this market) and of course I had homeowners insurance, say, with, oh, I don't know...American Insurance Group. And one day my house burns down, and I file a claim and AIG doens't have the money. They go to the government and beg for an $100,000 bailout, so they can pay me, and they get it. The same day, I go to Washington with my own hat in hand. "My house burned down. I need $100,000!"

Because in the real world, most of this money that we're paying AIG, some $170 billion, is going to banks that insured their craptacular packages of toxic mortgage loans. But these banks get bailout money, too. But why do they need the money? They have insurance, right? According to this article:

Financial companies that received multibillion-dollar payments owed by A.I.G. include Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion), Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion), Bank of America ($5.2 billion), Citigroup ($2.3 billion) and Wachovia ($1.5 billion).

Are these people double-dipping, or what?

Also, Obama's completely losing me on AIG here. His newfound "outrage" seems totally phony, as backed up by this report.