Straight shooter New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson highlights facts surrounding the complicity between the Fed and the banking industry in misappropriating billions of taxpayers dollars to offset their losses and cover their failed bets. Read her article "Revisiting A Fed Waltz With A.I.G." What's fundamentally wrong is the issue of having persons who come from private industries assume oversight roles in government over those industries. The likelihood of these persons upholding the public trust are slim at best, especially in light of the serious pay cuts they take to assume their public positions. It's the age old question of why would someone making millions a year take a job paying 10% of their normal pay? The answer is simple when considering these are persons motivatred by financial gain, they stand to make more in the end by doing so.

I encourage all citizens to do their homework and become better informed about how all this stuff works. It takes a little reading time. Follow Ms. Morgenson's writings. Read the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) report  "Factors Affecting Efforts To Limit Payments To AIG Counterparts", produced by Neil M. Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to get a clearer understanding of where the questions and deceptions lie. Below is an excerpt highliting the reports main conclusions:

Conclusions and Lessons Learned
SIGTARP concludes that: (1) the original terms of federal assistance to AIG, including the high interest rate it adopted from the private bank’s initial term sheet, inadequately addressed AIG’s long term liquidity concerns, thus requiring further Government support; (2) FRBNY’s negotiating strategy to pursue concessions from counterparties offered little opportunity for success, even in light of the willingness of one counterparty to agree to concessions; (3) the structure and effect of FRBNY’s assistance to AIG, both initially through loans to AIG, and through asset purchases in connection with Maiden Lane III effectively transferred tens of billions of dollars of cash from the Government to AIG’s counterparties, even though senior policy makers contend that assistance to AIG’s counterparties was not a relevant consideration in fashioning the assistance to AIG; and (4) while FRBNY may eventually be made whole on its loan to Maiden Lane III, it is difficult to assess the true costs of the Federal Reserve’s actions until there is more clarity as to AIG’s ability to repay all of its assistance from the Government. SIGTARP also draws lessons that should be learned regarding the importance of transparency and the enormous impact that ratings agencies had on the AIG bailout.