Word: creditation
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...corporations and consumers to counterparties. A failure of AIG could create a chain reaction of enormous proportion." Among other effects, it could lead to mass redemptions of insurance policies, which would theoretically destabilize the industry; the withdrawal of $12 billion to $15 billion in U.S. consumer lending in a credit-short universe; and even damage airframe maker Boeing and jet-engine maker GE, since AIG's aircraft-leasing unit buys more jets than anyone else...
...With its high credit rating, AIG FP wasn't required to stockpile reserves, or collateral, as traditional insurers must to cover potential losses. As the CDOs that AIG insured began to crater, the counterparties began asking for more collateral to back their policies, which was written into the contracts. Cassano said in August 2007 that he couldn't imagine a situation in which AIG would "lose one dollar in any of these transactions." He was right. AIG didn't lose a dollar; it lost billions of them...
...rare interview, former CEO Greenberg, who is suing AIG and being sued by the company over financial-management issues, tells TIME that once the company lost its top credit rating, AIG FP should have stopped writing swaps and hedged, or reinsured, its existing ones. But Cassano's unit doubled down after the spring of 2005, writing more and more subprime-linked swaps as the ratings plunged, which made the possible need for collateral enormous in the event its debt was downgraded. The downgrades occurred in 2008. "Of course they were going to run out of money," says Greenberg. He adds...
...Last September, with global stock markets collapsing and credit markets frozen, Geithner, then head of the New York Fed, and Bernanke believed AIG was too close to collapse to do anything other than stop the bleeding. Failure by AIG to pay might have threatened its counterparties - for instance, Citigroup and, in turn, Citi's counterparties. A bond or a derivative is, after all, a promise to pay someone, and if there is no confidence in its fulfillment, the financial system ceases to function. It is not a fear that has gone away simply because AIG has been stabilized...
...Lastly, the Obama Administration will need perhaps $750 billion in new funding merely to stabilize U.S. banks, which it hopes will be enough to ease the credit markets, stimulate lending and get the economy moving again. There's no telling what kind of political wrangling will happen over that, but one thing seems certain: if you are an executive of a bank that gets federal money, it wouldn't be a smart idea to count on a bonus...