Word: toxicants
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...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...
...Geithner's backers note that he took over an office that was drowning in crises and has had to address failing banks; impossible-to-price toxic securities; a continuing auto-bailout program; woes at Citigroup, AIG and other financial houses; a housing crisis; and an upcoming G-20 summit all at the same time. Even his detractors admit that the to-do list is the deepest any Treasury boss has faced in 80 years...
...like other institutions, was making a mint dealing in derivatives tied to the U.S. real estate market. The boom was financed in part by collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), securities based on subprime mortgages that have come to define toxic asset. Companies that held CDOs could offset their risk by buying CDSs from AIG FP. Or they could simply speculate with the instrument. It all worked fine until overbuilding by housing firms and overleveraging by consumers caused the bubble to burst. Which in turn caused the value of CDOs to plunge. Which caused holders of CDSs on such securities to demand...
...insurer doesn't offer the same policy on your house to everyone else in the neighborhood; if it did and your house went up in flames, the insurer could get wiped out. In its CDS contracts, though, AIG wrote multiple insurance policies covering the same underlying package of increasingly toxic assets. In essence, it was underwriting systemic risk. This is the opposite of what insurance companies are supposed to do: diversify risk across the universe of policyholders. "One thing about the insurance model: it relies on diversification as its means to exist," says a top exec at an AIG competitor...
Even if Citi is not facing more risk in its portfolio of potentially toxic assets, there are plenty of other landmines facing the firm and the market seems to be ignoring them...