Word: bigger
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...newish CEO, Ed Liddy. The bonuses were not tenable; they had to be canceled, he demanded. Liddy, a dollar-a-year man who took over the company after the bonuses had been promised, replied that AIG's lawyers had decided that the contracts could not be broken without even bigger costs to taxpayers. Geithner sent Treasury's lawyers searching for a way out, but they couldn't find one. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...With all the political theater and populist grandstanding, though, the bigger issue has been obscured. And that is, Just what is AIG doing with the $170 billion? Does the company's strategy, which is to wind down its exposure to toxic assets and sell some of its profitable insurance divisions to help pay off the government debt, stand a good chance of succeeding? And if it does, will the world avert financial Armageddon...
...Bailing Out the Bailed Out Keeping the financial system fluid might explain why so many banks got paid in full, which strikes some as a scandal way bigger than the bonus payouts. Many experts wondered why AIG paid 100 cents on the dollar. Among the biggest beneficiaries of the AIG pass-through, at $12.9 billion, was Goldman Sachs, the investment-banking house that has been the single largest supplier of financial talent to the government. Critics have been quick to note - and not favorably - the almost uncanny influence of former Goldman executives. Initial phases of the rescue were orchestrated...
...efforts. He might even spark a stock-market rally. But the banking industry's hopes are more modest: "As long as he comes out with details on the public-private investment fund, then it's not a miss," says Talbott. If he doesn't, he'll have an even bigger mess on his hands. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby - the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee - Senator John McCain and others have called for the government to stop messing around and just let the bad banks fail. If Geithner doesn't deliver, they'll surely deliver the same verdict...
...there's a true insight into this mess if you just step back and consider the bigger picture, not just AIG. Regardless of the details of the various swap contracts, they all represent potential transfers of wealth between financial institutions. If we consolidated the entire financial sector, all these debts would effectively vanish...