Hasn't the identity of AIG Counterparties been on the web since May '09

[FarCenter]

See Schedule A of this 8K filed with the SEC and available on Edgar Online.

http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/EFX_dll/EDGARpro.dll?FetchFilingHTML1?ID=6606440&SessionID=CuR1HC9nzzzxP_7

Stupid congressmen apparently don't know how to use the web?

Note that this is refered to as the Schedule A in the story at
http://www.businessinsider.com/here-it-is-aig-derivatives-schedule-a-listings-unveiled-2010-1

[JackRiddler]

1. Why complain?

It should have been a huge story then, and it should be now. Until the day Goldman and Co. are liquidated and their managers and all their little helper-helpers (the ratings agencies, the mortgage sellers, the negligent and complicit regulators no doubt including both Paulson and Geithner) land in prison to await trial. (Imagine trying to find 12 jurors who haven't in some way been bilked and milked by these fuckers.)

[FarCenter]

2. Soc Gen received more than GS, and Deutsche Bank was number 3

The point is that the Fed has limited authority over most of the counterparties, which were foreign banks. So imposing a haircut couldn't be done without negotiating an agreement with all of them. Else the holdout(s) could always force AIG into bankruptcy court. AIG bankruptcy would trigger covenants in othet derivatives, and the whole hundreds of trillions of dollars derivative edifice would come crashing down. The financial system would have become insolvent. Pension funds, money market funds, mutual funds, life insurance, annuities, 401Ks, IRAs, stocks, bonds, etc, all would have become worth pennies on the dollar. There would be no money or commerce. No paychecks.

[sharesunited]

3. Geithner did explain this repeatedly. But it still bugs the hell out of everybody.

Let the floggings continue until morale improves!

[JackRiddler]

5. You too, see Post #4.

[sharesunited]

6. Oh no, I think you are wrong. People down the food chain had the good life for a brief glimpse.

So bad financial business management got a lot money deep down in the system. We need to find a way to do that again.

[JackRiddler]

7. Hello? The other shoe dropping (debt comes due) was inevitable.

"People down the food chain" prosper through better wages and conditions, health care, money for schools and mass transit. Borrowing money you can't pay back from loan sharks at variable rates and then waiting for the value of your oversize energy-sink of a house to rise 20 percent a year until 2030 is not the good life. It's allowing predators to delude you and lure you into your own self-destruction.

People down the food chain need incomes, not more debt.

[JackRiddler]

4. Why are you promoting myths for the bankers?

The point is the Federal Reserve didn't have to bail out any of these criminal fuckers for their bad bets on credit-default swaps. No one told them to bet 20 times the value of the world economy against each other, and the government didn't have any obligation whatsoever to actually put real money into paying off these fantasy bets. Fuck Societe Generale. Haircut?! They should have got ZERO. They made the bad bets knowing that it was all a casino game and they when the house went bankrupt they were holding chips instead of cash. Too bad.

The only US government obligation was to cover depositors under FDIC.

The second point is it wasn't only the Federal Reserve. In the case of the AIG bailout it was the Fed paying these fuckers out of the Treasury's money.

"The whole hundreds of trillions of dollars derivative edifice" should come crashing down. The financial system would not "have become insolvent," it already WAS insolvent and remains so today. The only reason they've stayed ahead of the payments treadmill is that Fed and Treasury have pumped 8 trillion dollars into them and the Fed and SEC have suspended accounting rules altogether (lifting of mark-to-market means the fraudsters can make up their books whole cloth).

The third point is, this didn't happen as a surprise to irresponsible actors. It happened as the predictable outcome of the witting actions of bad actors committing the fraud of the millennium. Bailing them out and leaving them in charge - in fact, giving them more power in what was a Wall Street bankers' coup - was the equivalent of surrendering to terrorists. Far worse, in fact.

We'll talk at the next crash. God help us, because in this country's politics it will be blamed on Obama and then instead of FDR we're going to get a Republican on Horseback.

As for your nightmare scenario - I love how it's always, "and then Ma and Pa don't get no paychecks anymore." Bullshit. There would have been a day after the collapse of the parasitic bankers' ponzi scheme, and the governments would have been free to restart a financial system on an honest, solid footing, without carrying over the awesome burden of debt owed to the criminals.

The bailouts and trillion-dollar Fed money prints could have (and should have) gone SOLELY to solvent banks and credit unions. (Instead, the most irresponsible and criminal actors were rewarded and the honest ones screwed.)

Or, better yet, to pay ALL debt of ALL 50 states, and require them to start state banks and spend at 10 percent deficits for the next 5 years. There were many options for how to respond to the crisis other than saying, "Hey, BoAGoldmanJPMCiti: Take it all! Thank you sir may I please have another?!"

You're talking as though financial systems haven't collapsed before. Well they have, for much the same reasons - the greed and lies of players who understand that bubbles are the way to fast riches - and the world always went on. It wasn't always world war and famines. Currencies can be reset and economies recover anyway.

The difference is that instead of biting the bullet and building a just and rational system, in September 2008 the United States ceded its remaining sovereignty to the very same criminals who had wittingly created the crisis in the first place through their consciously fraudulent behavior.

And they have since paid themselves another two rounds of tens of billions in bonuses, which is what this is all about. They kill the six-ton elephant to get their 50 pounds of ivory, and fuck the world. And you want to keep them in charge.