>>>>>>>Or Crap the Bed
I love it when I don't have to write a word on my blog. It saves me from getting carpel tunnel syndrome for just a while longer. While I am sure that most of you have noticed that Wall St. had a really bad day yesterday, some of the corporations that trade on the NYSE had a much worse day.
You might ask how does this fit into the world of sports? I say it's very simple. If you look to the international soccer league, you will find that there jerseys display the AIG insignia. If you go to most any MLB Park, you will find the sign above hanging on the walls of many of them.
I just wanted to throw my two cents in regarding this two bit piece of manure of a company such as AIG (aka. Assholes In General). There corporate officers have near zero business acumen, all they want their people to do is sell. There are other employees that have nothing better to do than sell their souls just to squeak by as a mediocre businessperson at best. I am including a story from today that was on the news wires. Please read and enjoy.
AIG gets NY state help to hold off cash crunch.
A complex asset swap brokered by New York state officials will give embattled American International Group a $20 billion lifeline, but the insurer's longer term rescue plan will depend on additional funding. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are exploring putting together a syndicated $70 billion to $75 billion credit facility for AIG, among other options.
The banks' efforts are supported by the Federal Reserve, which AIG appealed to for assistance late on Sunday. AIG turned to the Fed after unsuccessful negotiations with several private equity firms and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
AIG's troubles, much like those of some of its Wall Street peers, stem from guarantees it wrote on mortgage-linked derivatives that have left it with a total of $18 billion in losses over the past three quarters.
AIG in recent days has explored a wide range of options to shore up capital and avoid rating cuts, but two of the leading raters downgraded AIG, anyway.
Oh, by the way, this is how he writes.
Bruce Levitus :
(Sr VP/ Managing Director for Investment Advisory Services at AIG Advisor Group Bruce Levitus: "I am working a hiring the best VP of Quality Assurance possible. Bringing back the master of V2Aa")
Yes, that's correct, he can't even proofread his own bio and objectives. AWESOME!!!!! Please let me put all my money in whichever company he is running. I always thought UMass Amherst was a good school. HA HA!
In summation, if Warren Buffet (a highly speculative investor doesn't even want to get involved) that can't be good long term. I believe that business and profits should not be derived from hard working people that put their trust in some financial advisor that only cares about lining his or her own pockets. Their clients have kids they need to put through college just like they do. I can't say I am broken hearted about the near collapse of AIG, but I would be upset if a legitimate and caring company were to go down. There are far too few of them in this world.
Ahhh...The beauty of poetic justice, and the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution.
1 comment:
ahhhh the power of redemption.... AIG will not fail they are to large....
Why the Government Wouldn't Let AIG Fail
By Justin Fox Tuesday, Sep. 16, 2008The offices of of troubled insurer American International Group Inc.
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Facebook Yahoo! Buzz Mixx Permalink Reprints Related After establishing a supposed hard line against bailouts over the weekend with Lehman Brothers, the government abruptly abandoned it Tuesday and announced an $85 billion Federal Reserve loan to insurance giant AIG. The explanation: AIG was deemed too huge (its assets top $1 trillion), too global and too interconnected to fail.
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That, and the fact that unlike with Lehman — where the possibility of failure was openly discussed for months and to a certain extent planned for — federal officials and market participants don't seem to have really focused on AIG's problems until this week. As with all U.S. insurers, the company is regulated not by the Fed but by a state regulator, in this case New York insurance superintendent Eric Dinallo. Plus, it was awfully hard for outsiders — and even insiders — to understand the gravity of the company's problems. "You can read through every financial statement in the world and have absolutely no clue as to the risks they are taking," says Leo Tilman, a former Bear Stearns strategist who now runs the advisory firm L.M. Tilman & Co.
The particular risks that brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy seem to lie not with its core insurance businesses but with its derivatives-trading subsidiary AIG Financial Products. AIG FP, as it's called, merits a mere paragraph in the nine-page description of the company's businesses in its most recent annual report. But it's a huge player in the new and mysterious business of credit-default swaps: derivative securities that allow banks, hedge funds and other financial players to insure against loans gone bad.
AIG generally sells credit-default swaps, thereby promising to insure others against defaults. It's a great business when defaults are low; when they rise it can turn toxic. AIG FP lost more than $10 billion in 2007 and $14.7 billion in the first six months of this year. That, along with losses in other investment portfolios, has cut deeply into the parent company's capital reserves. The credit-default-swap contracts decree that if AIG's credit rating drops below a certain level, it has to fork over $13 billion in collateral to the buyers of the swaps. Monday night, because of the losses at AIG FP and in AIG's investment portfolios, Moody's and S&P cut the company's ratings. After that, the consensus was that the company could survive only another day or two.
The New York Fed asked Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to try to arrange a $70 billion private loan for AIG, but that didn't go anywhere. Treasury officials mulled a government conservatorship as with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but it might have required an act of Congress to make that happen. So the Fed devised a deal in which AIG agrees to repay the loan with asset sales and give the government (and thus taxpayers) a 79.9% equity stake in the company.
Confused? You're not alone. The best case for the bailout seems to be that nobody has the faintest idea what the consequences of AIG's failure for financial markets would be, but the fear was that it could lead to total chaos. The biggest fears had to do with the credit-default swaps, which AIG appears to have sold in large quantities to practically every financial institution of significance on the planet. RBC Capital Markets analyst Hank Calenti estimated Tuesday that AIG's failure would cost its swap counterparties $180 billion.
"Its collapse would be as close to an extinction-level event as the financial markets have seen since the Great Depression," wrote money manager Michael Lewitt in Tuesday morning's New York Times. There's also the fact that through its insurance policies AIG touches far more regular Americans (and consumers around the world) than Lehman Brothers did. Plus, AIG's insurance businesses make so much money that they could conceivably pay off the cost of the bailout within a few years.
Plus AIG has already cut the "fat"
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