It's all Goldman Sachs' fault says Matt Taibbi

[Jan Klimkowski]

In the board game Monopoly, it's known as a Get Out of Jail Free card.

If you're as crooked as Goldman Sachs and other major banks, it seems like the so-called Regulators are quite happy to hand you a couple.

In U.S. Bailout of A.I.G., Forgiveness for Big Banks
By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: June 29, 2010

At the end of the American International Group’s annual meeting last month, a shareholder approached the microphone with a question for Robert Benmosche, the insurer’s chief executive.

“I’d like to know, what does A.I.G. plan to do with Goldman Sachs?” he asked. “Are you going to get — recoup — some of our money that was given to them?”

Mr. Benmosche, steward of an insurer brought to its knees two years ago after making too many risky, outsize financial bets and paying billions of dollars in claims to Goldman and other banks, said he would continue evaluating his legal options. But, in reality, A.I.G. has precious few.

When the government began rescuing it from collapse in the fall of 2008 with what has become a $182 billion lifeline, A.I.G. was required to forfeit its right to sue several banks — including Goldman, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch — over any irregularities with most of the mortgage securities it insured in the precrisis years.

But after the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil fraud suit filed in April against Goldman for possibly misrepresenting a mortgage deal to investors, A.I.G. executives and shareholders are asking whether A.I.G. may have been misled by Goldman into insuring mortgage deals that the bank and others may have known were flawed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/busine...&th&emc=th