Sunday, March 08, 2009

Who Stole our Country?

Every wonder who got the hundreds of billions of dollars (180 billion at lost count) that Bush and Obama gave to AIG?

It turns out that much of the money is going to foreigners (though exactly who is getting how much money hasn't been released):

some of the banks paid by AIG since the insurer started getting taxpayer funds were: Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, Calyon, Barclays Plc, Rabobank, Danske, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, Bank of America, and Lloyds Banking Group.

"That's why we could not allow AIG to fail as we allowed Lehman to fail, because that would have precipitated the failure of the European banking system," said Kanjorski, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who chairs the House Insurance Subcommittee.

U.S. lawmakers have said they are running out of patience with regulators' refusal to identify AIG's counterparties.
On Thursday, Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the banking committee, said: "The Fed and Treasury can be secretive for a while but not forever."