American Government bailout AIG insurance

dream431ca said:
*snip* America has officially gone from capitalism to socialism.
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Bit of a stretch, but yeah -- petty scary. Consumer and investor confidence was at an all time low not too long ago. The stock market has just rebounded (slightly) in the past few days with people buying shares on the cheap. Let's hope things look up from here on out.

Here's a better summary of the situation. The U.S. Government gave what amounts to ~$85billion to bail out an insurance giant.
 
Financial organisations are dropping like ninepins. This is something never witnessed since the 1920s. Scary times that we live in.
 
It's gonna get worse before it gets better. The curves will not start pointing up for another year, analysts say.
 
I wish I knew a little more about economics, but it seems to me that there's an amount of hypocrisy here. Big business is all about the small government until it ****s up, and then all of a sudden the economy is held by the balls, and government money is used to bail companies out.
 
It's been the worst drop in the market since after 9/11 (something like that). Hopefully it all gets better.
 
and comunist all over the world are partying
 
It's definitely a scary thing. But, on the upside so much for McCain's "strong fundamentals" argument. This will help Obama.
 
SO much money went into this emergency loan. Oh lawdy.
 
A part of me wants to see everything go to shit.

"The liberator who destroys my property, is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free."
 
79 billion dollars...

thats like 79 billion bacon double cheeseburgers
 
Governments do this all the time to save banks and stuff to save the people's savings. I guess this is the same thing. What's the big deal?
 
The Monkey said:
Governments do this all the time to save banks and stuff to save the people's savings. I guess this is the same thing. What's the big deal?
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Oh come on, don't be silly. :P

This isn't a normal buy out, this is a huge amount of money. Not only that, but the company was (afaik) THE biggest insurance firm in the US. This is a very bad sign.
 
Llama said:
Oh come on, don't be silly. :P

This isn't a normal buy out, this is a huge amount of money. Not only that, but the company was (afaik) THE biggest insurance firm in the US. This is a very bad sign.
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Yes, the collapse of the company is a bad sign, but not the purchase by the government. Otherwise all the investors' money would be fucked.
 
The government is desperately trying to stave off a complete economic crash before the election is safely secured/stolen and they've installed their latest glove puppets 'The penguin' and 'The pitbull' into the Oval office. If the economy went completely down the shitter it would be incredibly hard to persuade the masses once again that it's gone down to the wire on a 51/49 % vote. Esp if the exit polls are 80/20% in Obamas favour. Ultimately it's not their money and they have no intention of paying any of it back, so what do they honestly care? As long as it allows them to get their heads in the trough of political power for another 4 years it's all gravy in their eyes. :rolleyes:
 
Meanwhile the US is spending 1 billion $$$ a day in Iraq...for what.? Peace building!

They should worry about their own shores! Government buying out companies! How very China of you America!
 
What a beautiful gem of an e-mail I just received from one of my family members... it was all color coded and stuff, but I didn't include any of that.

Subject: Food for thought!

It will be interesting to see, as time rolls on, who "takes credit" for our current situation, and who gets "the blame."

George Bush has been in office for 7 1/2 years. During the first six the economy was fine.

A little over one year ago:

1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
3) the unemployment rate was 4.5%.
4) the DOW JONES hit a record high--14,000 +
5) American's were buying new cars, taking cruises, vacations o'seas, living large!...


But American's wanted 'CHANGE'! So, in 2006 they voted in a Democrat Congress & yep--we got 'CHANGE' all right!.....

1) Consumer confidence has plummeted ;
2) Gasoline is now over $4 a gallon & climbing!;
3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase);
4) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $12 TRILLION DOLLARS & prices still dropping;
5) 1% of American homes are in foreclosure.
6) as I write, THE DOW is probing another low~~11,300--$2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS HAS
EVAPORATED FROM THEIR STOCKS, BONDS & MUTUAL FUNDS INVESTMENT PORTFOLIOS!

YEP , IN 2006 AMERICA VOTED FOR CHANGE!...AND WE SURE AS HELL GOT IT!!!....NOW THE DEM'S CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT--AND THE POLLS SAY HE'S GONNA BE 'THE MAN'--CLAIMS HE'S GONNA REALLY GIVE US CHANGE!!....JUST HOW MUCH MORE 'CHANGE' DO YA THINK YOU CAN STAND???.....
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lol... so I decided I would just take the plunge and try to explain my views to them, even though the letter was a forwarded one. I just find it bullshit that people are so quick to blame the Democratic Congress, as if things only went to shit from 2007 onward.

You know, I hear that so much these days, from many people. But the more and more as time went on, the less I started to believe it myself. I don't normally like to talk politics with family, since I no longer share the main course of belief, but I'm just going to go ahead for a moment. I hope I don't offend anyone.

After studying politics for a few years, and studying the root causes of many of these things, I've come to the conclusion that many others have. It's completely false that the state the economy is in today is a result of congress, whether they be the republican majority that held office for the many years before, or the democrat led congress from January 2007 onward. And it certainly wasn't from January that things started to turn south.

It's no coincidence that we're involved in two wars while our economy is starting to face extreme hardships. We have a more talked about war in Iraq, which is the main focus of politics of the two wars, started under some very questionable terms. Then we have Afghanistan, which is my belief that is the real war on terrorism. It is in Afghanistan that we do the real fight against the terrorists who masterminded 9/11, as it's widely known now that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist attacks.

And during these wars, especially Iraq, we have been paying outrageous amounts of money. Wars are very expensive, and not even as powerful as the Unite States is are we able to sustain one without running our economy into the ground.

When Bush took his first term in office, we had a federal budget surplus of more than $200,000,000,000. We had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country in the past 30 years. Americans felt relatively safe in the job security that they had, and were doing quite well for themselves. Our national public debt was about $5,674,000,000,000. Gas prices were at around $1.50 per gallon.

Today, after eight years of conservative republican administration under Bush, we have a federal budget deficit of over $400,000,000,000. We have an unemployment rate of 6.10%, such that even Russia has a lower unemployment rate than us by about 0.20%. Americans no longer feel safe in their job security, and more and more jobs are being shipped overseas. An absolute ton of jobs have been shipped overseas over the past eight years. Citizens have been earning less money overall to put into their wallets. Our national public debt is on the order of around $10,000,000,000,000. Gas prices... well, I'm sure we all know where gas prices are at right now.

Those gas prices certainly didn't result in the past year, since 2007. >From 2000 on up, gas prices have been steadily rising to their current highs, If you look at a chart that extends into the past, and stretches to around 2006 and 2007, from before the Democrat led congress took office, you will see that gas prices were far lower at the start of Bush's first term, and steadily increased an alarming amount. Before the new Congress took office, the gas prices were at about 3 dollars per gallon. That is double what it was before bush took office. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Oil_Prices_1861_2007.svg

Why are they so high? Well as I said before, we're involved in two wars. We are using astronomical amounts of fuel for our tanks, planes, ships, and other military vehicles. We have put ourself in a position where many of the other large oil suppliers in the world feel less secure in the safety of their oil generation. There's also many, like Venezuela, who have simply grown to despise the United States, especially during these past eight years. Some of this is no doubt attributed to Hugo Chavez's volatile personality, but certainly not all of it.

Most of the worlds oil comes from countries which practice the religion of Islam, all in the Arab League of countries. We have a population that is so distrusting of anything Arab sounding, that some people won't even consider voting for a president for the sole reason that he has Hussein in his name. As if that somehow makes him a terrorist or inherently Muslim as a result. It's absurd.

I just wanted to point out that the state of our country's financial crisis cannot be blamed on the current Congress as much as it is, since things have been steadily growing progressively worse since before they took seat, as a result of the Bush Administration, and the wars we're waging. Oh and that $2.19 low mentioned? That's nestled right between two gas prices of around $3.00 per gallon, one earlier in 2006, one later in 2006.

I've researched this stuff extensively over the past couple years, as I've developed a taste for what's going on in the political world, and the state of this country, and what I've mentioned in this email is only a tiny portion of facts that are actually out there.

I'm personally voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden this coming election, because I care about the little guy. Most, if not all of our family falls in the category of the little guy. And the Republican party is certainly not the party of the little guy as it is touted. Across the board, independent and unbiased analysis of both Obama's and Mccain's economic plan puts Obama in the lead of generating more income and security for those who have an income less than $250,000 per year. It's only if you make $250,000 or more per year that you'd be better off under Mccain's(And ironically Bush, since it was the same for his administration) economic plan.

The facts are out there, waiting to be researched. I've grown tired of being told how things are, and where the blame rests, because after I've gone and checked it out... it doesn't check out.

Hope I didn't offend anybody, since I know I might very well be the only liberal minded person in our entire family <chuckles>

Love,
Timothy
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This doesn't really have anything to do with the problems AIG has been having, but I've read that they have $1.050 trillion in company assets.

I like to look at this way: that number to the right of the decimal? That's $50 billion. You know you have a lot of value when $50 billion sounds like a small number.
 
Yeah, I realized this thread wasn't in politics after I posted. And I think I read a response that make me wanted to make a more general statement about the state of the country as a whole without making a new thread.
 
I gave AIG a call last year for my car insurance. Their commercial made it seem like they were the least expensive, but I got a quote, and they weren't. At all.

They had several T.V. commercials a day for several months, maybe even a year. Maybe that's where all their money went. First you have to be able to back up your claim on the commercial, or else you are just wasting money advertising it.
 
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