AIG's Board Meets Tomorrow To Discuss Whether to Sue the USA For Bailing It Out

You may have seen ads recently from AIG, the bailed-out insurance giant, "thanking" the American people for our financial assistance and celebrating AIG's re-emergence as a wholly private company. But on Wednesday, the company's board of directors is going to meet to consider suing the United States on the grounds that the terms of the bailout were too onerous. The litigation goes back to the fact that though the bailout is the only reason the company is still around as a going concern at all, it wasn't particularly friendly to AIG's shareholders. The government took an over ninety percent stake in the company, and federal funds that flowed "to" AIG were largely using it as a pass-through entity to make sure that banks got paid on their CDS contracts. So Maurice Greenberg, who was CEO until 2005 and is still a major shareholder, launched a lawsuit. And now the compan...