Saturday, February 28, 2009

Desperately Protecting AIG's House of Cards

The world's biggest insurer seems destined to become the property of the government. I was surprised to see that the government owns about 80% of the company and yet it still posted the worst quarter in market history. Another large infusion of cash is probably going to come within the next week and by that point we will have committed $250 billion into this sinking company. Its too bad that we had to save this company from going bankrupt because ultimately we are going to end up paying for the company's mistakes without getting much back in return for our investment. AIG made the mistake of putting themselves at risk simply to make a few more bucks in fees and so its greed helped put us in the economic mess we find ourselves in today. It is sad to see a company that had been worth almost one half a trillion dollars collapse due poor decision making and greed. And even though we could have let AIG fail, the losses associated with such a decision would have been catastrophic. The one thing we should learn from this company is that regulation is needed to protect the public from having to foot the bill for mistakes that could have been prevented.

1 comment:

Charlie Ruff said...

We are invested in AIG. When AIG turns around, the US government will sell its shares of AIG. Given that the government purchased many of these shares at low prices, it should be able to turn a profit assuming the sale of the shares is handled well.