Additional Perspectives On The AIG Fiasco
While Tim Geithner may hope the AIG situation is now dead and buried, it is likely anything but, with the recently launched investigation into disclosure fraud by the SIGTARP, and the relentless efforts by Darrell Issa to metaphorically crucify the tax-challenged treasury secretary currently ongoing.
As these noble pursuits continue, we ask two simple questions:
1) In Yesterday's hearings, it became clear that everyone essentially recused themselves of any oversight over the AIG disclosure issue, including Hank Paulson, with most, even Bernanke, claiming they had no control over the counterparty decision-making process. We ask - then who did? Surely someone at the FRBNY had to pull a trigger at some point. Who is that person? And if it is merely Sarah Dahlgren, is there a formal notification that she had obtained proxy power from Tim Geithner, who yesterday disclosed had recused himself only informally to a very select circle of TurboTax-challenged friends.
2) Why did the Fed not guarantee AIG's assets ahead of the firm's implosion. Surely, the realization, which as everyone trumpets these days, that AIG's failure would have destroyed the world should have been known to at least one person in authority? And as all know, the collateral call toxic spiral commenced only once AIG was formally downgraded by the rating agencies. Well, had the AIG had the formal guarantee of the Federal Reserve, which is implicitly a guarantee by the U.S., then AIG would not have been downgraded in the first place, and no collateral calls would be forthcoming. Of course, Goldman would end up owning CDOs that as Janet Tavakoli points out, and contrary to what the Fed claims, are now worth at best pennies on the dollar. Furthermore, Goldman's AIG CDS would immediately have become worthless, with Goldman unable to sell them in the open market for a profit of billions of dollars, yet the firm would continue extracting collateral as per its prior arrangement with AIG, in essence not impairing Goldman at all. And had AIG not started down the downgrade spiral, then numerous other adverse consequences of the nationalization of the insurance company would not have transpired. While it would not have saved America's financial system, it would have made the descent more manageable. Yet with Goldman having benefited massively from the elimination of a vast swath of competitors, one wonders if the guarantee track may have been considered and subsequently denied, under the wise tutelage of 85 Broad advisors. We suggest Senator Issa and Neil Barofsky focus very closely on any email released as part of the disclosure process that highlight the Fed's reasoning as to why AIG should not receive a guarantee, and what the nature of such reasoning may have been.
Profiteering and Track-Covering: Possible Reasons for RedactionThe financial windfall conferred by AIG's bailout, the self-serving claim that the crisis prevented negotiation, and the subsequent cover-up of details were very much to the benefit of Goldman Sachs and its current and former officers involved in the bailout discussions.
In the example above, I show the Davis Square IV portfolio as of January 2008. One would need similar snapshots of all the CDOs to figure out who did what to whom.The fact that the Fed and SEC suppressed potentially explosive facts is bad enough, but the delay in making the information public has given interested parties a window of opportunity to cover their tracks by dumping the worst of the assets, thus hiding them forever from public view.
Suppressing the details of AIG's trades made it easier for AIG's counterparties to cover-up profiteering and then exploit public funds. If details of these trades had been made public in September 2008, a reasonable negotiator would have demanded that the billions of dollars that had been extracted from AIG (including the $7.5 billion Goldman extracted by then) should be recharacterized as a loan.
Instead, the Fed gifted tens of billions of dollars to banks that supplied the financing for bad loans that damaged the U.S. economy. More than that, these banks engaged in suspect deals that covered up losses and allowed them to continue to report apparent "profits" and pay inflated bonuses. Meanwhile, their securitization activities continued to harm the economy during a period at which the United States was at war.
Goldman is not solely responsible, but it had a large role in AIG's crisis and a unique position of conflicted interest and influence over the terms of the bailout. Now that the crisis is over, this issue should be reopened, and billions in collateral should be clawed back to pay down public debt, before Goldman Sachs pays more than $16 billion in taxpayer subsidized bonuses to its employees.
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