Okay, I get it. It got out of the suite just to ferry materials to and from the Kinko’s. But the expression “one of the only” is annoying. It means either “the only person who” or it means, “one of a small number.” But it doesn’t tell you which it means. Grrrr.

I’m ok with saying Goldman was the root of only 1/3 of the evil. I don’t hold them at fault for the crisis, only that they got way more than they should have, in fact, there should have been some pain inflicted on them for buying those swaps from AIG in the first place. I don’t even know or care if Paulson was determined to protect Goldman, all I know is they bluffed Geithner and Bernanke by basically saying the whole world will collapse if they weren’t made whole, and those two academics (who were negotiating with the best poker players in the business) folded. Goldman was willing to kill off a great customer (AIG) in exchange for short term profits – why anybody is their trading partner is beyond me. The executives at Goldman did not need to be made whole to avoid their own meltdown, and they didn’t care about the future business they wold lose from a decimated AIG, because they only cared about themselves, not the company they worked for, or the industry they worked in.

Rewind the clock, take yourselves back to the week the Lehman imploded and AIG was bailed out. Whether Paulson or anyone else was secretly and quietly determined to protect GS or not really wasn’t all that relevant at the time.

The market was in a state of absolute panic and shock. We were looking into a black hole. The bleeding had to be staunched and it had to be staunched at a single choke point.

It’s Occam’s Razor. The simplest, most logical way to do at that moment was to make sure the dominoes didn’t keep falling as a result of fear and runs. Paying everyone back in full from a gov’t backstopped AIG was MUCH simpler and easier than what would have had to occur if the X number of firms on the other side of those trades–and I’m including the downstream from the direct counterparties such as GS–would have each suddenly gone into play. The market would have turned on one after another wondering who would be undermined by its exposure to AIG haircuts.

in regards to the comment just before that, 3.5 years is a minute on a geological scale. and in politics, looking backwards.

Who knows if Turbo Tax would have been able to browbeat him into accepting a Fed “bailout.” I would guess not.

Imagine Joe Cassano shouting down Hank Greenberg. yeah I didn’t think so either.

AIG might very have failed, if they weren’t first the target of a hostile takeover.