Reply #80: Bingo!!! Give the lady a prize.

[Beacool]

AIG was saved for the sole purpose of channeling money through them to Goldman Sachs and over 80 other financial institutions worldwide.

Goldman Sachs made billions by pushing AIG to bankruptcy

By Barry Grey
10 February 2010

An investigative report published Sunday by the New York Times provides a glimpse of the predatory practices of major Wall Street banks that played a central role in the financial meltdown and global economic crisis.

The article, headlined “Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push AIG to Precipice,” documents the role of Goldman Sachs, the biggest and most profitable US investment bank, in pushing the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) to the brink of bankruptcy.

-------

The Times article, by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, is based on a review of internal AIG documents and a recording of a January 28, 2008 conference call between Goldman Sachs executives and AIG. It describes how Goldman, in the two years preceding AIG’s bailout, worked to undermine investor confidence in the insurer, then the biggest seller of credit default swap contracts, and drive down the market value of mortgage-backed securities.

During this period, Goldman was betting on a collapse of the housing bubble, which it had helped inflate by promoting sub-prime mortgages. Even as Goldman’s top traders were structuring credit default contracts with AIG on mortgage-backed securities in a manner that enabled the bank to profit from a decline in the price of these securities, Goldman was making money by purchasing the same type of securities for clients and charging fees for bundling home loans into so-called “collateralized debt obligations” and selling the mortgage-backed CDOs into the market.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/gold-f10.shtml

x(