Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Today's Crisis: AIG

Posted Sep 16, 2008 09:56am EDT by Henry Blodget in Investing, Recession, Banking

From ClusterStock.com, Sept. 16, 2008:

The rating agencies finally downgraded AIG last night, which means the company immediately has to come up with $14.5 billion of capital it doesn't have.

The government is trying to broker an astoundingly large loan facility of $70-$75 billion from Goldman and JP Morgan to keep the firm solvent, but this seems a Hail Mary: Goldman and Morgan don't have that kind of money, either.

The consensus is that an AIG bankruptcy would be far worse for the markets than the failure of Lehman. We're skeptical -- so far Lehman's failure has been much easier on the markets than people expected -- but AIG is a hell of a lot bigger. Thus, Paulson and Bernanke have another tough decision to make. Here's hoping they hold fast.

I sat down with Portfolio's Jesse Eisinger to discuss AIG's future and today's Fed meeting.

Also this morning, former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg told CNBC it is in America's national interest that AIG survive, adding an AIG bankruptcy would take "years" to sort out.


http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/60509/Today%27s-Crisis-AIG?tickers=aig,xlf,leh

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