chuckmo48 wrote:
(Reuters) - 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.Quote:
The sale closes out AIG's bailout.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/11/us-aig-ustreasury-sale-idUSBRE8BA0GY20121211 Ahhh not so fast grasshopper ......
The sale closes out the Treasuries role in AIG. The FED still holds 2 companies that were handed over by AIG in order to reduce their credit line by a tune of $20 Billion dollars.
In addition you don't have the full accounting of what the FED did with their portion of the debt. That has been masked by about an opaque of a process as you can possibly have. The Fed took in assets from AIG under the accounts of Maiden Lane II and III and then later sold them back to AIG for a discount (WTF??????)
And finally ..... The US Treasury granted AIG a waver to allow them to use deferred losses as a tax credit. In 2010 alone it amounted to $17.7 Billion dollars, and has totaled over $30 Billion to date. Deferred losses are not allowed to be taken when there is a majority ownership change in a company, but the US Treasury ruled that it did not apply when it was due to a government bailout. AIG has used these tax credits to buy stock back from the US treasury. Again ...WTF?
So saying the US came out ahead is not easy or simple ...because of accounting tricks.