21 Seiten …..

hat ein Dokument welches der Washingtoner Regierung vorliegt.

Hier veröffentlichen wir einen Teil des in der New York Times veröffentlichten Artikels vom 2. März 2009.

Der Artikel wurde von Andrew Ross Sorkin geschrieben:

The Case for Saving A.I.G., by A.I.G

Inside the corridors of power in Washington, a 21-page document has been getting a lot of attention. It is marked confidential and titled “A.I.G.: Is the Risk Systemic?”

The report, prepared for regulators by the American International Group, examines the economic apocalypse that would follow if A.I.G. failed.

This document may help explain why the federal government just rescued the insurance giant for the fourth time in six months — and why the government was willing to spend $30 billion more of taxpayers’ money for very little return. The government, which owns nearly 80 percent of A.I.G., not only did not take more equity in A.I.G., but it also converted its preferred shares, which paid a 10 percent dividend, into shares that don’t pay a dividend at all.

“Systemic risk” is a phrase often used to describe the domino effect of one business’s failure on the rest of the economy. We saw the dangers of systemic risk in action when Lehman Brothers failed in September. And we’ve heard a lot from Detroit automobile executives about the systemic risk they say the nation would face should General Motors teeter.

But those failures look like summer thundershowers compared with the financial hurricane that a collapse of A.I.G. would represent, according to the document, which was presented to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Lawrence H. Summers, head of the National Economic Council, in recent weeks.

One of the biggest worries, besides the considerable collateral damage to the banking system, is a risk that most people aren’t talking about, perhaps because it’s too scary. This one is probably easier to understand than any kind of financial chicanery: the dangers lurking below A.I.G.’s seemingly stable, highly regulated life insurance business. A.I.G. has more than 81 million life insurance policies with a face value of $1.9 trillion globally.

If policyholders lost faith in A.I.G. and rushed to cash in their policies all at once, the entire life insurance industry could falter.

“A ‘run on the bank’ in the life and retirement business would have sweeping impacts across the economy in the U.S.,” according to the A.I.G. document. “In countries around the world with higher savings rates than in the U.S., the failure of insurance companies would be a catastrophe.”

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