{"id":33,"date":"2008-09-17T22:23:46","date_gmt":"2008-09-17T21:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/?p=33"},"modified":"2012-04-03T23:57:53","modified_gmt":"2012-04-03T22:57:53","slug":"buddy-can-you-spare-100-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/2008\/09\/buddy-can-you-spare-100-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Buddy can you spare $100 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US Federal Reserve bails out AIG with almost $100,000,000,000 as its stock value crumbles. But what has brought this giant of insurance down? The answer appears to be that the value of AIG&#8217;s investments known as Credit Default Swaps (CDS), apparently these are supposed to be a form of insurance policy (AIG&#8217;s business is insurance) against bad debt.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of last year concerns were being expressed that the value of these insurances were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/money\/main.jhtml?xml=\/money\/2008\/02\/12\/cnaig112.xml\">grossly overestimated<\/a> resulting in a write down of $4.88 billion.<\/p>\n<p>It seems that not only was AIG&#8217;s insurance risk assessment lacking but their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aiguk.co.uk\/_354_58167.html\">Crisis Management<\/a> Services just wasn&#8217;t up to the job either.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last couple of decades companies like AIG have charged huge fees, and paid themselves <a href=\"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/?p=27\">massive bonuses<\/a>, for advising on, and selling derivative investments like Credit Default Swaps.<\/p>\n<p>Today many suspect these derivatives are worthless.<\/p>\n[audio:http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/the_kings_new_clothes.mp3]\n<p><br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Federal Reserve bails out AIG with almost $100,000,000,000 as its stock value crumbles. But what has brought this giant of insurance down? The answer appears to be that the value of AIG&#8217;s investments known as Credit Default Swaps (CDS), apparently these are supposed to be a form of insurance policy (AIG&#8217;s business is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,21,15,38,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporations","category-economics","category-financial-markets","category-government","category-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250,"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spark-in-the-ashes.net\/warr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}