Reply #3: AIG has received more than $182 billion from the U.S. taxpayers.

[Octafish]

We the People always seem to be left holding the bag -- usually it's empty, but in the AIG case it was stuck with IOUs we are now liable for.

AIG's Small London Office May Have Lost $500B

Feds, Brits Probe AIG's London Office on $500B Losses

JAY SHAYLOR, LAUREN PEARLE and TINA BABAROVIC
ABC News
March 10, 2009 —

Ground zero for AIG's spectacular implosion, which has soaked up more federal bailout money than any other entity, appears to have been a small London branch office that may have lost nearly half a trillion dollars in bad deals.

The disastrous deals were built up in a decade and, when the crisis hit, the man who ran the unit for the last eight years retired after making $280 million for himself and leaving with a $1 million-a-month consulting contract.

The struggling New York-based insurance giant has avoided collapse with the massive infusion of $160 billion in taxpayer money. The U.S. government has agreed to prop up AIG because it fears that AIG has such extensive financial involvement around the world that its failure would be far more costly.

Britain's serious fraud office and U.S. regulators are combing through the records of AIG's Financial Products Group, formerly located on the fifth floor of an office building in London's Mayfair section.

The unit's small group of traders risked nearly half a trillion dollars to insure U.S. mortgages and other debt using complex financial products called credit default swaps, according to recent congressional testimony.

"AIG financial products was the core, the hottest point of the global financial crisis," freelance investigative reporter Peter Koenig told "Good Morning America" today. "It was the epicenter."

The group's traders "found a crack in the system that was unregulated," Koenig told "GMA."

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7045889&page=1

I'm with you, Hillbillybob. Out with the crooks -- all of them. In with the good -- starting with Democrats.