The Treasury Department today announced that it has sold off the rest of its stake in A.I.G. Treasury will focus on the claim that taxpayers made a profit on the deal. As I’ve written before, the story is a bit more complicated.
But that’s a sideshow. The point of nationalizing A.I.G. (what else do you call it when the government buys 80% of a company?) wasn’t to make money; it was supposedly to save the global economy. In any case, things have worked out pretty well: the global economy is intact, though still not healthy, and A.I.G. is a private company again.
Which brings up what, to me, is the bigger question: Why were we so afraid of nationalizing Citigroup and Bank of America four years ago? And isn’t A.I.G. looking like a better company today than those two?
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