So What is the Big Deal About the AIG Deal Being Kept Secret?

AIG is an American insurance company. AIG suffered a crisis of a lack of cash due to finanacial crisis losses with investments and a corresponding big drop in the value of it's stock. The company credit rating was downgraded. A number of large banks from around the world would have suffered enormous financial loss if AIG was allowed to fail. The US Federal Reserve and the US Treasury stepped in with enormous amounts of financial support of AIG to keep them from financial failure. The AIG bailout was the largest bailout of a private company in US history. This was initiated under the Bush Administration, when Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

A part of the outcry against the bailout of AIG was due to the fact that AIG had misrepresented it's investments at a level on inaccuracy much higher than did Lehman Brothers which was allowed to fail. This and other accounting fraud acts by manager led to the demise of AIG finances. The biggest outcry agains the bailout was due to the fact that AIG managers continued to recieve enormous bonuses. Receiving bonuses for management techniques that drove the company to financial catastrophe doesn't make sense the the average American tax payer. The company received a smaller, but still enormous second bailout payment when it was apparent the company would still fail due to mismanagement. There have been additional payments from the Government to AIG.

A week after the first bailout, the company spend $444,000 for employees to attend a resort meeting which included a spa. Shortly after the second bailout, AIG paid almost a half a million dollars on hunting trips and a lavish resort in Arizona. After most of the bailout funds were received, AIG posted record financial losses and still paid out enormous bonuses to managers.

President Obama voted for the bailouts for AIG as a US Senator. When the bonus scandal was reported by the media, Obama publicly urged Secretary of the US Treasury Tim Geithner to block the payment of the bonuses to protect the US taxpayer interests.

Billions of dollars were paid to US and International Banks which had already received US Government money that was designed to keep the US and World financial system from collapsing. These banks also have paid enormous bonuses to their managers. Some of these banks may have failed had the US Government through the US tax payers not bailed out AIG.

Congressional politicians and the State of New York have petitioned courts for information pertaining to how the bonuses were paid. Some of this information is contained in emails to and from Tim Geithner, now US Secretary of the Treasury who was appointed by President Obama to his new post. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) which oversees this type of business (the Banks involved received financial instruments like stocks calle Credit Default Swaps) has sealed some of the information pertaining to the Bank payments for 10 years, thus preventing the public from seeing how the bonuses were paid. The gives the appearance that the Government officials involved are trying to cover up their activities which resulted in enormous bonuses for the managers that managed AIG into financial ruin and the Bankers that provided bad credit to AIG. These bonuses of course came from the US taxpayers.