AIG in derivatives spotlight

[TacticalPeek]

Source: Financial Times

AIG in derivatives spotlight - Skips New Controls

By Michael Mackenzie and Francesco Guerrera in New York

Published: April 12 2009 23:29 | Last updated: April 12 2009 23:29

The unit that all but destroyed AIG has failed to sign up for the overhaul of the global derivatives market which was given added impetus by the troubles at the US insurance group.

AIG confirmed that its financial products unit, whose soured bets on credit default swaps forced the company into government hands last year, did not adopt the “Big Bang” protocol that has been signed by more than 2,000 market participants.

The protocol, created under the auspices of International Swaps & Derivatives Association, is intended to make it easier for investors in the opaque market for credit derivatives to know what will happen to their contracts if debt defaults occur. It came into force on Wednesday.

AIG Financial Products opted to eschew the protocol and make bilateral agreements with counterparties on more than 200 outstanding derivatives trades.



Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cb2ddafc-278c-11de-9b77-00144feabdc0.html

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How can anyone be surprised that the exact same mistakes continue and continue and continue to be made? And allowed.

[mbperrin]

1. Can we send the SEALS after THESE pirates, now, please?

They've stolen a lot more than the Somalis!

[truedelphi]

2. I'm personally ready and willing to don my armor and

hack my way aboard.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. And killed more people as well.

[mbperrin]

11. True dat.

:(

[sarcasmo]

4. This company should be done and gone, that to big to fail shit drives me crazier.

[tooeyeten]

5. They got some balls!

Tool of enforcement.

[Triana]

6. AIG is a CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE that needs to be shut down. They are a threat to national security

period.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

7. The Crime is that they allow derivatives to continue...

...these are so easily rigged and manipulated, which is why they were created in the first place. And did I mention (like for the 19th time) that derivatives are and have been UNREGULATED since allowed to be used as financial "instruments"? These derivatives run right through the middle of the current economic fiasco we are in. They seem to have been created for this exact effect.

[Hannah Bell]

8. AIG = spies

LA Times: The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men (AIG & OSS)
Edited on Sat Apr-11-09 08:06 PM by Hannah Bell
By Mark Fritz
September 22, 2000


...Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2.

Though rarely numbering more than a half dozen agents, the unit gathered intelligence on the enemy's insurance industry, Nazi insurance titans and suspected collaborators in the insurance business. But, more significantly, the unit mined standard insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables of tide changes and thousands of other details about targets, from a brewery in Bangkok to a candy company in Bergedorf...

The men behind the insurance unit were OSS head William "Wild Bill" Donovan and California-born insurance magnate Cornelius V. Starr. Starr had started out selling insurance to Chinese in Shanghai in 1919 and, over the next 50 years, would build what is now American International Group, one of the biggest insurance companies in the world...

Starr sent insurance agents into Asia and Europe even before the bombs stopped falling and built what eventually became AIG, which today has its world headquarters in the same downtown New York building where the tiny OSS unit toiled in the deepest secrecy.


http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/22/news/mn-25118?s...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5437617&mesg_id=5437617


Frank G. Wisner Jr., AIG Vice Chairman, is son of Frank Sr., head of OSS & CIA Directorate of Plans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner

Frank Gardiner Wisner (June 23, 1909 – October 29, 1965) was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_G._Wisner

Frank George Wisner II (born 1938) is an American businessman and former diplomat. He is the son of Frank Wisner.

Wisner is currently Vice Chairman of American International Group. He retired from this post as of February 13, 2009, according to an internal AIG memo issued by Edward Liddy, CEO.

He joined the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer... Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State. He was United States Ambassador to Zambia, 1979-82; Egypt, 1986-91; Philippines, 1991-92; India, 1994-97.

Wisner joined the board at a subsidiary of Enron...on the board of Hakluyt & Company...

Wisner is married to Christine de Ganay (former wife of Pal Sarkozy and former stepmother of French president Nicolas Sarkozy).



http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Fe...



& drug profits...origins of the co. in shanghai 1919, cv starr's first job = working for the aspinwalls & howlands (china opium trade) front pacific steamship co out of yokohama...

[No Elephants]

9. WOW. I did not know any of that. Thanks.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

10. Great Find!!!

... I had read the same thing a few years ago, but lost the bookmark for it. I knew AIG got it's start in Shanghai and was rife with shady dealings. Also famous for, "We've (I've) been Shanghai'd", as in double crossed.