Taxpayer "bailout" money went to Europe banks

**Dredly** · March 8th, 2009, 12:44 AM

Unreal... just fucking unreal

The beneficiaries of the government's bailout of American International Group Inc. include at least two dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions that have been paid roughly $50 billion since the Federal Reserve first extended aid to the insurance giant.

Among those institutions are Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Germany's Deutsche Bank AG, each of which received roughly $6 billion in payments between mid-September and December 2008, according to a confidential document and people familiar with the matter.

Other banks that received large payouts from AIG late last year include Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America Corp., and French bank Societe Generale SA.

More than a dozen firms with smaller exposures to AIG also received payouts, including Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and HSBC Holdings PLC, according to the confidential document.

The names of all of AIG's derivative counterparties and the money they have received from taxpayers still isn't known, but The Wall Street Journal has identified some of them and is publishing others for the first time.

The AIG bailout has become a political hot potato as the risk of losses to U.S. taxpayers rises. This past week, legislators demanded that the Federal Reserve disclose names of financial firms that have received money from AIG, which Fed officials have described as too systemically important in the financial system to be allowed to fail.

The Fed rescued AIG in September with an $85 billion credit line when investment losses and collateral demands from banks threatened to send the firm into bankruptcy court. A bankruptcy filing would have caused losses and problems for financial institutions and policyholders globally that were relying on AIG to insure them against losses.

Part of AIG's business was to insure bank's investments in complex securities, much of which have now gone bad in the plunging housing market. This has forced AIG to pay out to the banks, including some European banks, apparently with portions of its bailout money.

Since September, the government has had to extend more aid to AIG as its woes have deepened; the rescue package now has swelled to more than $173 billion.