Page 151 - Aig News Today

>> neil: governor, thank you. we look forward to your interview with netanyahu tonight. i cant confirm this, but i want to pass along reports of attackers setting off a bomb in an empty church in northern egypt. we are not getting reports of casualties this is sort of the escalating sense of violence you get in a day like this. especially, a day when the military has told protesters in cairo, break it up guys, stand down. and they are not. nancy webster is live with new information on the ground...

In other words, we just gave too many mortgages to minorities who just couldnt afford them. thats what almost brought the entire economy down? give me a break. so peter wallison, he wants you to forget what federal reserve chairman ben bernanke said in 2008 that loans to minority communities were not the root of the crisis. and wallison wants you to ignore all the other culprits cited in the commissions report. the federal reserve lacks standards. poor risk management at financial institutions l...

For the economic crisis. in other words, we just gave too many mortgages to minorities who just couldnt afford them. thats what almost brought the entire economy down? give me a break. so peter wallison, he wants you to forget what federal reserve chairman ben bernanke said in 2008 that loans to minority communities were not the root of the crisis. and wallison wants you to ignore all the other culprits cited in the commissions report. the federal reserve lacks standards. poor risk management at...

Fraud, in fact, the accounting fraud by the banks, the fraud from the ratings agencies and then the movement of that money into political circles in order to get accounting changes that are with us to this day, the treasury secretary of this country, in fact, directly responsible for helping to transfer some $3 billion of taxpayer money into aig, through aig and into the bonus pool at goldman sachs and, yet, hes your treasury secretary. the commission has referred its findings and several people...

Today than it was in the run-up to the crisis as a an result of the evis ration of certain of the institutions and the consolidation and mergers of others into larger institutions. >> so a lot of technical jargon. the big point is, the big banks are bigger now than they were before the meltdown. and this group believes that stepped up enforcement and regulation is essential. >> so thats one conclusion they came to. i imagine this is a very long, very thorough report. what else can we glean from ...

Had wall street executives transferring risk into the american pension system and then when it blew up, they had bought insurance, the wall street executives had bought insurance that the garbage they were selling to americas pensions was going to blow up, it did. aig was happy to collect the insurance money but didnt have anything to pay out. so we all had to pay it in our tax dollars to pay off goldman sachs $3 billion that went into their bonus pool and across wall street. the bigger question...

Looks? >> well, theres no question that many people wondered how all the counterparties who were owed money received 100% on the dollar. but that judgment was made by the people in the trenches at the time. and really its not our function as a commission to second guess those judgments. aig entered into credit default swap contracts under which they agreed to insure the counterparties against the failure of those particular securities, and to that extent, aig owes them the money. now, if aig had...

$180 billion into aig and some portion of it has found its way to goldman to compensate them for proprietary trades they made on their own account, should they be able to keep it? well, they were owed it, so thats an argument they ought to be able to keep it. on the other hand, many people are outraged obviously that taxpayers had to be placed on the hook for losses that were created by circumstances people went into with their eyes opened. >> yeah, i didnt make the bet with goldman sachs. aig m...

>>neil: everyone is focused on the health of steve jobs and why he quit apple but another executive would health is of a lot more pressing concern and that gentleman runs the a.i.g. and was brought in some yours back, a little over a year ago to nurse the company back to health and he has done so. and he is fighting an undisclosed cancer, something i tried to get out of him and he says "i am fighting this with agreece ever chemo," and left it at that saying he will stay with the bailed out insur...

To this is 2008 when we ended up having to bail out all of the banks, citigroup and other banks and aig and things like that. the reason we had to bail them out was they said they would never northbound a position where they had to be bailed out, they were so big and healthy we didnt need to worry about it. were in the same situation with a number of states now. we have several states that are in deep, deep financial trouble, and i hope that none of them would have to fill for bankruptcy, but i ...