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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  AIG bailout benefits European banks, raises questions
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AIG bailout benefits European banks, raises questions

AIG bailout benefits European banks, raises questions

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Washington/New York: Goldman Sachs Group Inc and a parade of European banks were the major beneficiaries of $93 billion in payments from AIG - more than half of the US taxpayer money spent to rescue the massive insurer.

The revelation on Sunday by American International Group Inc was another potential public relations nightmare, coming on the same weekend that the Obama administration expressed outrage over AIG’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.

The size of the payments also illustrates how seriously a potential collapse of AIG was viewed by the regulatory authorities. US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said in an interview with CBS news magazine “60 Minutes" that the failure of AIG would have brought down the financial system.

AIG, an embattled insurance giant that has received federal bailouts totaling $173 billion and is now paying $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 funneled 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 could stoke further outrage at the entire US bank bailout.

Financial system at stake?

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.

“It doesn’t to me seem fair that the American taxpayer has got to bear the 100% of the downside," said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University.

“A hedge is not a hedge if you did not factor in the counterparty risk. And the US taxpayer should not be obligated to make people whole for hedges that were not properly executed."

Goldman Sachs, formerly led by Henry Paulson who was treasury secretary at the time of the original AIG bailout, said, as it has in the past, that its AIG positions were “collateralized and hedged."

Deutsche Bank and Barclays declined to comment. Societe Generale was not available for 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.

Treasury officials have said the fund, or funds, would be a vehicle to provide as much as $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 collateralized 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 $12.9 billion. Among European banks, SocGen was the biggest recipient at $11.9 billion, Deutsche got $11.8 billion and Barclays was paid $8.5 billion.

The AIG disclosures are still incomplete in that they do not include payments to the banks since 31December.

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.

To help small businesses, officials said Obama intends to provide $730 million from the congressionally approved $787 billion economic stimulus program to cut lending fees, boost loan guarantees and expand other programs.

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.

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.

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Published: 16 Mar 2009, 12:00 PM IST
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