Treasury sells off remaining AIG shares — for profit of $22.7 billion on bailout
posted at 12:01 pm on December 11, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
How often do we see a government operation end up with a profit? Ironies abound in this denouement of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), bitterly opposed by people across the political spectrum but proposed, passed, and extended in bipartisan votes in the dark hours of the financial collapse of 2008. The insurance conglomerate AIG was one of the biggest beneficiaries of TARP, and the target of much of the ire that resulted from the government’s $182 billion rescue, which gave it a large portion of ownership in the company while the money arguably constituted a second bailout of banks and other financial companies.
Today, though, Treasury sold the last of its stake in AIG — and ended up with a $22.7 billion profit off of the bailout “investment”:
The U.S. Treasury’s sale of its remaining stake in American International Group Inc (AIG.N) will fetch $7.6 billion, bringing the government a total profit of $22.7 billion from its crisis-era bailout of the insurer.
The share offering will close the chapter on one of the most politically contentious rescues of 2008, which ultimately gave AIG up to $182 billion of government support.
At one point, the government estimated that it would never recover all of the bailout money, but as AIG restructured and returned to viability, it was able to repay the entire rescue fund plus generate a profit for U.S. taxpayers.
AIG said on Tuesday that the Treasury agreed to sell 234.2 million shares to investors for $32.50 apiece. The insurer said that Treasury has additional AIG warrants that it can sell to boost the government’s $22.7 billion of total returns so far.
The Reuters article notes the most controversial part of the AIG bailout, which was the distribution of US funds to Europe:
The company also funneled over $90 billion of taxpayer money – more than half the funds the government used to rescue AIG – to various European and Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Barclays Plc.
At the time, critics argued that Treasury was operating a back-door bailout of foreign financial firms, using AIG as just a smoke screen. That criticism is just as valid today, especially with the US backing the IMF’s efforts to bail out Greece, and perhaps especially since the AIG path was significantly less transparent. Congress should have exercised more control over the use of the bailout funds, but with a global collapse arguably in progress, they chose to act quickly at the expense of wisdom and, er, expense.
Still, it’s hard to argue with success. AIG has bounced back, its clients and investors haven’t lost their capital, and taxpayers even made a profit off of the investment, which is highly unusual these days for government investments. (Just consider Solyndra, A123,et al.) Does the profit justify the bailout? Take the poll:
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the people are powerless, and they know it.
rob verdi on March 28, 2013 at 10:03 AM
Yep…the human spirit is done for. You have snot-nosed yuppie kids who will put a rock through a Starbucks just for fun, but these people line up line cattle for slaughter.
ClassicCon on March 28, 2013 at 10:06 AM
I remember visiting East Germany through Checkpoint Charlie as a teenager and having to exchange about $100 or so just to enter the country, that was the price of admission.
Odd how Europeans just accept this sort of thing, as if they learned nothing from the dead claw of the USSR for so many decades.
Bishop on March 28, 2013 at 10:07 AM
OF course they’re calm. They have nothing to fight with, nobody’s coming to their rescue because they’re a dinkball nation and everyone ELSE is also broke…and they know it.
MelonCollie on March 28, 2013 at 10:09 AM
The snot-nosed yuppie kids generally don’t have any money in the banks, mommy and daddy are the ones paying the bills. And mommy and daddy don’t usually go out rioting in the streets. Plus, the state essentially sanctions that kind of violence against small businesses; they definitely don’t sanction that kind of violence against banks and other state or quasi-state entities.
The lesson I’m taking away from Cyprus is that the US government will be able to seize guns, seize bank accounts, and seize other forms of private property with some minor protests… at best. We will not see riots until the EBT cards get turned off and the people in the country used to using political violence to get what they want finally turn on the government.
Doomberg on March 28, 2013 at 10:16 AM
Uh, I think that’s why people remained calm this morning.
Doughboy on March 28, 2013 at 10:18 AM
Between the outflows in January and February and massive transfers of money while the banks were suppose to be “Closed”, all the big money is gone. All gone.
Bahhh. Sheep.
Who knows, maybe the Cypriot natives are thinking “Oh well, It was good while it lasted. Back to raising chickens.”
WisRich on March 28, 2013 at 10:18 AM
Those who think that Americans will react any different to such “tax” should lay off fluoride and bath salts. At least two thirds of the population are so conditioned by the public schools and colleges to bend over on demand that they wouldn’t contemplate armed resistance if their children’s life depended on it.
Archivarix on March 28, 2013 at 10:21 AM
When I saw the picture on the front page I thought to myself:
“why is Dennis Quaid at a bank in Cyprus?”
Gatsu on March 28, 2013 at 10:25 AM
I think you underestimate us. But you are correct, when the EBT cards stop working, it will get ugly.
iurockhead on March 28, 2013 at 10:25 AM
Realistically, you won’t see any kind of real resistance to the government until people can’t put food on the table and have no choice. I basically think national bankruptcy and collapse is all but guaranteed at this point.
Doomberg on March 28, 2013 at 10:25 AM
Other governments are watching and learning…
d1carter on March 28, 2013 at 10:28 AM
Food shortages won’t happen any soon. Unlike the USSR, America produces a massive agricultural surplus. It will take at least a decade of unmitigated socialism to ruin the sector. This land is so rich that it’s capable of feeding the population even when operated under forced-labor condition.
Archivarix on March 28, 2013 at 10:30 AM
The Cypriots can only get 300 Euwos out of the banks and they should be damned glad to get it! /sarc
dogsoldier on March 28, 2013 at 10:30 AM
Yeah, they’d have to wreck agribusiness pretty darn hard. When we have a national epidemic of people on welfare getting FAT – which is unheard of literally anywhere else in the world – it’s not going to come crashing down from a few Democrat screwups.
MelonCollie on March 28, 2013 at 10:35 AM
Strictly speaking, right now the people you refer to are the government. A mixed bag of ex-Sixties radicals, Woodstock burnout cases, and devotees of every kook belief system the Left has ever come up with.
They won’t direct violence against themselves. However, they are quite capable of declaring that it’s all somebody else’s fault, and then striking out at them to divert attention from their own stupidity.
To say nothing of their propensity for violence as a form of entertainment. The only thing more dangerous than an autocrat is a bored autocrat. Nero being a case in point.
It’s not like they won’t have enough ammunition, courtesy of DHS.
clear ether
eon
eon on March 28, 2013 at 10:37 AM
Yeah nothing is uglier than a Detroit welfare queen who can’t get her malt liquor and cigarettes when she wants them./
Seriously, cutting off EBT cards will cause the 21st century equivalent of bread riots. All is fine so long as somebody else is feeling the pain but the minute these filthy parasites don’t get their “free stuff” they will react in a predictable way…. looting stores, torching cars, and rioting like their team just won the Superbowl.
Happy Nomad on March 28, 2013 at 10:39 AM
Suckers.
CycloneCDB on March 28, 2013 at 10:39 AM
Can we kill them all, then?
Archivarix on March 28, 2013 at 10:44 AM
“The restrictions are stiff, but should allow for small depositors to conduct their business as usual, or close to it”Somehow I don’t think those long lines are people waiting to make a deposit.
tommyboy on March 28, 2013 at 10:45 AM
This is where I see our country going, too.
When the turned-off EBT riots start, martial law will be imposed until government-determined “fairness” is enacted.
onlineanalyst on March 28, 2013 at 10:46 AM
There will sure be a lot of people with guns and scores to settle.
And to be brutally truthful, we may have to. When 90% of blacks and about 2/3rds of Hispanics are totally loyal to liberalism, there is simply no way to talk that many people down from their agenda of riot/rape/loot when their welfare checks can’t be cashed.
What may well be required to cleanse society could be legitimately mistaken as a national atrocity if we don’t inform our descendants why it was physically unavoidable.
MelonCollie on March 28, 2013 at 11:00 AM
What in the hell makes any of you think they will ever turn off the flow to the EBT army? That sacred cow will never be touched. This pig of a government will confiscate your 401K and savings long before they would fcking touch the precious EBT and the power it provides them.
There is no fight left in anyone on the right…
ClassicCon on March 28, 2013 at 11:05 AM
At this point, I think them killing me would be less painful after having grown up in a much more civil country. Surviving in this world doesn’t interest me in the least. Obama and like-minded Americans have really increased the chasm between rich/poor, black/white liberal/conservative. Mr Bullet, I’d like you to meet Mr Brain.
Deano1952 on March 28, 2013 at 11:07 AM
The system will collapse. And when EBT’s start working is when most people will finally realize it. The authorization and government funding for the program will last as long as it can, but it won’t last forever. It can’t last forever.
gryphon202 on March 28, 2013 at 11:13 AM
FIFM.
gryphon202 on March 28, 2013 at 11:14 AM
Even worse, such a necessity and discussion may well be used as an excuse to “cleanse Whitey”. Already such a solution is being debated by our darker brethren. See:Here and HERE.
Even in “academia” the final solution for Whites is being discussed openly in the classroom. Already the black panther movement has gained enough power to issue fatwa’s on human beings (Jorge Zimmerman) for their head and no charges have been filed. Gangs membership number well into the hundred thousands, making them by any definition private militias but our police forces are helpless to do anything. Why is the National Guard not sent in to deport say, every member of MS-13? They tattoo their faces for ID for gosh sakes! If fact, let me ask this, WHEN HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A GANG TAKEN DOWN, EVER??
We either fight for our land and admit to ourselves that things like race, culture and group interests exist or go quietly into the night, singing Kumbiya just before the machete reaches our necks.
Bulletchaser on March 28, 2013 at 12:01 PM
Just consider that we are rapidly reaching a point where the Left has enough people who will vote for a living and that avenue of control of the government is closed.
He said it best.
Now what peaceful options do the taxpayers have remaining is the big question of the day.
Aside for 2A options, the only thing we can do is go Galt, go on strike, refuse to feed the beast, whatever.
Make no mistake – this WILL need to be done and done often.
Many have suggested April 15th as a good start of the effort, and I tend to agree.
NMRN123 on March 28, 2013 at 12:04 PM
Why is it I’m not surprised to learn that the “Haiti threat” is still very much alive and well?
Let’s all take a moment to thank the South for importing these savages by the shipload because they were too cheap to pay a fair day’s wage to their fellow Americans, and then kept them on even after the ultimate disaster happened not a day’s sail away.
MelonCollie on March 28, 2013 at 12:07 PM
“…calm maintained…”
THAT is their mistake right there! They just had their government, with the cooperation of these banks, STEAL THEIR MONEY…and Cypress is ‘applauded’ for taking it calmly like a ‘good, sub-servient slave/bi-@tch’?!
Perhaps that is why Obama/Democrats are trying so hard to get guns out of the hands of Americans – it’s easier to steal someone’s property when they have no way of defending themselves or their property!
easyt65 on March 28, 2013 at 12:15 PM
The question I would have is how did these companies see the handwriting on the wall? Are they in cahoots with the political class? It looks like what would be considered”insider trading” if it happened on Wall Street.
djaymick on March 28, 2013 at 2:25 PM
wow…
and
Smell the coffee people.
or is that something else?
dogsoldier on March 28, 2013 at 2:29 PM
Not even paychecks? That’s a killer for those living paycheck to paycheck.
There Goes The Neighborhood on March 28, 2013 at 2:51 PM
Their money is in the banks, and the government won’t let them get it. People tend to be very calm and cooperative when you have them by the you-know-what.
The overton window has moved now on the government stealing your money direct from your savings. We need to take precautions against the possibility of the government freezing our accounts or taking our 401Ks. And of course that fear in itself leads to a weaker economy. If people start withdrawing money from banks for fear of government action, then capital starts to dry up.
There Goes The Neighborhood on March 28, 2013 at 3:02 PM
Paid in = put into the account, subject to further confiscation. It’s all about forcing people into behavior that will not create a bank run…which means the tighter things get in Cyrpus, the more tyranical it will become.
gryphon202 on March 28, 2013 at 3:32 PM