Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Henry Paulson (remember him?) are being grilled today on Capitol Hill as part of investigations of the AIG bailout by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by Edolphus Towns. (I thought we'd done a post a while back that included a good quote from Towns--something about bankers and corruption. But all I could find was this post, with a quote from Towns about BoA's awesome pecans. But I like how he is dogging the bankers and their government backers.)
Here's the NYTimes's latest article on the hearings.
For background on the AIG bailout, please see the article by Marty Wolfson in our Sept/Oct issue, The AIG Bailout Revisited.
There's also a really good article in the Financial Times called The Hindered Haircut; hat-tip to erstwhile D&S megablogger Larry P. (we still get the occasional post, but not like the old days, alas...). The authors ask: why haircuts for Security Capital Insurance counterparties, but not for AIG counterparties? Could it be that AIG's main counterparty was Goldman Sachs?
Finance: The hindered haircut
Read the rest of the article (it's long-ish, but worth it for the basic background info).