Sunday, March 15, 2009

Where Did the Money Go?
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has resisted calls from Congress that he release the names of the banks that were recipients of the bailout money the Fed gave to AIG to prevent it from collapsing. AIG insured its counterparties against losses from mortgage-backed derivatives. The Fed poured $85 billion into AIG, which paid out $37.3 billion of that money to counterparties that had purchased a certain type of derivative-based protection from AIG, called multi-sector credit default swaps.

The counterparties have never been disclosed but the Wall Street Journal reported that they included Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Deutsche Bank.

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