A news program on NPR today was "analysing" the entire AIG mess, and while they didn't dig too deeply into the whole quagmire they did make some interesting points.

The initial bailout money to AIG was made by the Federal Reserve, prior to any real authorization from Congress - or anyone else (so they said - we can look for confirmation).

AIG has provided a "sort of" list of where most of that money went. In fact, according to this NPR report, the bulk of it went to French and UK banks who had "insured" themselves against being stupid, in order to lower reserve requirements so that they could have more money available to do additional acts of the same stupidity. (Note that they were by no means alone - they just happened to be the ones who bought the most "insurance" from AIG.)

So in effect, the US taxpayers, by bailing out AIG have (inadvertently?) bailed out mostly French and UK banks - (so they said - subject to confirmation).

A comment, almost an aside, was that the French President called personally to Obama(?) or to the Chairman of the Fed(?) - - I was driving and couldn't make notes - - to "beg" that AIG be bailed out to protect French banks from complete collapse - (as we will know when someone is able to confirm that it actually happened?)

(NPR then played one of Beethoven's clarinet concertos, which also was lovely as usual.)

John