Spitzer: AIG Bailout an 'Inside Job'

Eliot Spitzer is mad about AIG, and not because it’s giving out bonuses. No, the real scandal, he writes for Slate, is the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars going to pay back AIG’s counterparties. The decision to bail out AIG was made by Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke—and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. Which happens to be an AIG counterparty.

“It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure,” Spitzer fumes. The bailout was just a hidden cash infusion for the likes of Goldman, Bank of America, JPMorgan and other usual suspects. The government needs to come clean about who got how much, says the former governor, and how the decision was made. (More AIG stories.)