Fatal Risk: AIG Was the Victim of Self-Inflicted Wounds, Says Author Roddy Boyd

the great unknown scam behind aig is that most of these credit default swaps were nothing but gambling tickets from a race track or on a sporting event. they werent truly insurance because the people buying them did not own anything that was being insured. to be quite honest, all that really should have been paid back was the original premiums. no one really suffered the loss that was being insured. all that goldman sachs should have got back were the premiums they paid in

There is no way to punish a single individual, such as Hank Paulson, for the amount of hardship they've inflicted on millions of people. Instead they move our money into their pockets, in a shell game... without even any shells! I never thought I'd sound like a nut rallying against the machine, but isn't that the way of the world today.

AIG a victim? I think u got it twisted.

It's interesting to see that TARP is being touted as profitable. This is a simplistic view which does not address the real and actual costs of the financial crisis, which is ongoing, with damages accumulating daily. Never mentioned are the collateral damages incurred both personal and as a nation which have yet to be measured and reported. Loss of incomes, homes, careers, services such as police, fire,and health have been diminished. Funding for the Social Security System has been lessened in direct amount to unemployment rates, and we'll feel the ripple effect of this in the future. Our education system has been weakened throughout. Many have to work for much less just to be able to work and survive. The net worth of the average family decreased 23% from 2007-2009, with likely more decreases between then and now. Our State and Local Governments are forced to layoff workers and cut services, many that are necessary to the well being of those that depend on the help of others, such as the handicapped and the elderly.
There has been a great harm done to this nation, and it needs to be accounted for. No, we have not been paid back, far from it. To call it profitable is ludicrous.

Yes Tarp was successful, if you close our eyes to Fannie and Freddie and AIG. Unfortunately they are about 20 times the size of the ones that have paid back . . .

GM and Chrysler still owe Joe Taxpayer. What rock have you been living under Daniel.
Ohhh, you mistaken a SMALL release in gov't owned GM stock as paypack for the entire bailout of $50B. Uhh huh.

To say TARP was profitable while the government was pumping money into the system and going deeper into debt is complete deception.

The next person to boast about this "fact" is a complete and utter buffoon.

Insurance is a good thing, within reason, but it fosters the false hope of a life free of risk. Americans are insured up the ying-yang, and through public or private institutions, we insure our cars, houses, loss of income from illness, injury, death, layoffs or firings, and aging, appliance and car repair expenses, medical expenses, liability losses from our mistakes, educational expenses, and more. We spend more than an average person makes on insurance, instead of self-insuring through savings and living with some risk. Our lives are less free, and our well-being more dependent on external forces as a result.
- - Catastrophic insurance coverage takes the edge off of the worst risks, and since catastrophes are relatively infrequent, the math works out well. Once we begin to insure against routine expenses, though, whole market sectors become distorted by the effects of deep-pocketed third-party payers, which invite fraud, disable downward pressure on costs, and undermine economic conscience among the players in that sector. And this doesn't consider the parasitic administrative expenses incurred, at both the central bureaucracies and at the offices of providers of goods and services. To compensate, insurers have to make arbitrary policies to reduce costs coercively, setting up adversarial relationships and increasing motivations for fraud and decreasing economic conscience further.
- - The Bill of Rights guarantees that American citizens can pursue the means to their happiness without undue government intrusions, but nowhere does it guarantee physical goods and services. Yet our hyper-insured society fosters the illusion that material well-being can be guaranteed and even be treated as a "right," and this in turn leads to a semi-privatized semi-centralized planned economy that increasingly resembles that of the Soviet Union. Distant institutions clumsily make economic decisions, while intruding into personal choice, in order to "guarantee" material "rights."
- - Natural disasters and human behavior demonstrate the limits to the intellectual arrogance of making everything predictable. Regarding human behavior, whatever system is devised, there will be people who devise ways to game it.
- - More Americans would live freer lives and would have self-insuring nest-eggs, if we hadn't allowed ourselves to be sucked into the coercive system of hyper-insurance and risk-aversion, which raises goods-and-services costs to the point where even the more independent can't afford not to participate.
- - Theoretically, insurance spreads risk among premium- (and tax-) payers, but in fact, it concentrates it into huge bureaucracies like AIG and federal-budgeted agencies, while eroding the kind of non-intrusiveness guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Increasingly, even the federal government appears not to be immune from house-of-cards failure, and other nations whose peoples haven't been seduced by the extravagant allure of risk-free societies are passing us by. In another several decades, the US could go the way of the USSR, the other country that tried to guarantee "rights" to physical goods and services and freedom from risk. Europe may take longer, because it has depended on the US as world policeman, its infrastructure is newer, and it's benefitting from the motivating high of unification and increased clout. Asia will pass us all by, because they aren't deluded into thinking that risk can be bought off.

NOW HERE WE GO AGAIN! The RICH get RICHER!

How can 400 people out of 300,000,000 control over 50% of all our wealth?

Because WE LET THEM! There are tons of ways to stop this and yet people just sit back and let it happen.

I say NO MORE! Take a look below and you will see what I mean.

G������gle the term CASH' TEACHER and click the very first site. Go right to the penny' stock page to see what the rich do not want you to know.

IT IS OUR CHANCE TO CLAIM THE WEALTH FOR OURSELVES AND OUR FAMILIES!

Declaring TARP a success is a blatant lie and just self-serving propaganda. People lost their savings, their jobs, their houses, and their businesses. Did TARP recover this? No! We lost investments in our schools & universities, our roads, and our national parks. Did TARP recover this? No! We lost investments in research medicine and basic science programs that benefit everyone. Did TARP recover this? No! We lost societal safety nets that made taking the risk in everything else worthwhile. The only thing that TARP did was refund 1% of the nation at 100% on the dollar so that they can recreate their skyboxes and feel good about disconnecting from the rest of society via collective greed and corporate failure.

if you want to see how the rich really scam the government, research this : an equity swap allows them to sell their stock without paying capital gains taxes

"Fatal Instinct"

Good clip. Keep up the good work.

They couldn't shut down AIG, but they sure can shut down the government. mmm mmm mmm! Our president lacks integrity and leadership when it comes to AIG vs. the Government. Pitiful isn't? Later gang!

Actually AIG was a victim of an Industry that grew too large as a percentage of the whole economy. ;-)