Rage Mounts Over AIG’s Rewarding Of Culprits

WASHINGTON, March 16 – A large portion of the taxpayer money spent to rescue insurer AIG was passed on to Goldman Sachs and several European banks, who were among the major beneficiaries of more than USD 90 billion in payments in the first three-and-a-half months of the government bailout, AIG disclosed on Sunday.

The revelation was another public relations nightmare, coming on the same weekend that the Obama administration expressed outrage over American International Group Inc’s plan to pay massive bonuses to the people in the very division that destroyed the company by issuing billions of dollars in derivatives insuring risky assets.

AIG, an embattled insurance giant that has received federal bailouts totalling USD 173 billion and is now paying USD 165 million in employee bonuses, is at the heart of a global financial crisis that President Barack Obama is trying to address with plans for trillions of dollars in spending. As part of those efforts, Obama will announce steps on Monday to make it easier for small business owners to borrow money, officials said.

But the revelations that billions of US taxpayer dollars were funnelled through AIG to Goldman Sachs – one of Wall Street’s most politically connected firms – and to European banks including Deutsche Bank, France’s Societe Generale and the UK’s Barclays was likely to stoke further outrage at the entire US bank bailout.

While the payments were not illegal, the fact that billions of dollars given to prop up giant insurer AIG were then transferred to European banks and Wall Street investment houses could raise new doubts about whether the rescue was really economically necessary. Goldman Sachs, formerly led by Henry Paulson who was treasury secretary at the time of the original AIG bailout, could not immediately be reached for comment. Deutsche Bank and Barclays declined to comment.

As it seeks to ease the credit crunch that was the original target of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the Treasury will also offer more details this week about the workings of proposed public-private partnerships to take toxic assets off banks’ books, including a timeframe, a senior department official said on Saturday.

“No taxpayer in these arrangements is going to lose money until the investor who put up the money has lost 100 per cent,” said Chief White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers. Treasury officials have said the fund, or funds, would be a vehicle to provide as much as USD 1 trillion in financing for buying bad assets – particularly mortgages gone bad as a result of the US housing bust. The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp would participate. As more Americans lose their jobs and homes, Obama’s new administration is under heavy pressure to show that the rescue plan for AIG and major banks is working to free up lending and rein in the riskier excesses of Wall Street.

The payments to AIG counterparties include the provision of collateral to back up credit default swaps, a form of financial insurance that AIG’s London office was writing, the purchase of the collateralised default obligations, a type of complex debt security that underlay that insurance, and payments to counterparties of a securities lending program.

Through three separate types of transactions, Goldman received an aggregate USD 12.9 billion. Among European banks, SocGen was the biggest recipient at USD 11.9 billion, Deutsche got USD 11.8 billion and Barclays was paid USD 8.5 billion. The list of counterparties was made public by AIG amid growing pressure on the insurer to come clean about the true beneficiaries of the bailout ahead of a congressional hearing on Wednesday at which AIG chief executive Edward Liddy is slated to testify.

Summers – speaking before the payments to banks were made public – called the AIG bonuses “outrageous” but said contracts must be honoured, even though Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had “negotiated very forcefully” with AIG and done all that was “legally permissible” to limit the payments.

“We’re not a country where contacts just get abrogated willy nilly,” Summers, a former treasury secretary, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “What the lesson is, is this: We don’t really have a satisfactory regulatory regime in place.” News of the AIG bonuses sparked outrage beyond political circles and was equally apparent on news Web sites and among ordinary Americans.

To help small businesses, officials said Obama intends to provide USD 730 million from the congressionally approved USD 787 billion economic stimulus program to cut lending fees, boost loan guarantees and expand other programs. “We know that small businesses are the engine of growth,” Christina Romer, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“We absolutely want to do things to help them.” As part of the financial rescue, the Obama administration expects private investors to bolster government funds to help cleanse the banking system of bad assets, said Austan Goolsbee, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. “That is a key component to the plan but that is not the only key component,” Goolsbee told “Fox News Sunday,” stressing that the first step had to be a “thorough examination of what situation the banks are in.”

“It’s better to do this jointly with private capital,” said Goolsbee. “I believe there is a reasonable expectation that people will participate.” The idea of offering financing support from the government for private investors willing to buy the toxic assets was first put forward by Geithner in February but the lack of detail has disappointed financial markets. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said private investors were ready to join the government in buying up toxic assets – “if it is organised well enough.”

“They’re waiting to understand what this program is all about,” Zandi told Fox. “I don’t think stimulus by itself is the answer. In fact, the most important thing is shoring up the banking system.” AIG’s Liddy said in a letter to Geithner the giant insurer was legally obligated to make 2008 employee retention payments but had agreed to revamp its system for future bonuses after the Obama administration objected.

“There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what’s happened at AIG is the most outrageous,” Summers said. Representative Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the powerful House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said the government must see if the bonuses can be recovered, adding that the timing of AIG’s commitment was important.

“We can’t just violate law, legal obligations,” Frank told Fox. “I understand that. But I do want to find out at what point these illegal obligations were incurred.” Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, called the AIG situation an “outrage” and said the nature of the contracts needed to be checked.

“Did they enter into these contracts knowing full well that, as a practical matter, the taxpayers of the United States were going to be reimbursing their employees? Particularly employees who got them into this mess in the first place?” McConnell said on ABC’s “This Week.” – Reuters