Biting the Hand

YOU MAY FIND THIS difficult to believe, but financial giant AIG is thinking about suing the federal government. What this probably means is that the company (the board of directors and CEO), in a smoke filled room, has decided to do exactly that, and is wanting to realease the news to the public- gently, slowly, almost as if afraid we might get mad about it. 

You'll recall that five or six years ago AIG was bankrupt, and, along with several other major financial services corporations, went belly up nearly sinultaneously. This happened because they were all treating american currency as if it were monopoly money, in a fit of seemingly contagious greed.

Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, and several others, all because it was a booming economy, were financing mortgages several years ago as if they were risk free, to anybody who walked in off the streets. I was one of them; i offered no downpayment, no collateral, no nothing - and was immediately accepted. That was then, this is now.

And so after much ado and gnashing of teeth throughout the land of the free market, the united states government, aka we the people, saved much of corporate america from itself, from its own greed and stupidity.

most americans, conservatives and liberals alike, were against this; conservatives do not like government intervention in the private sector economy, and liberals wanted to see the evil corporate monsters crash and burn. A lovely mix of public sentiment.

the stock of all these huge corporations went to zero, but they recovered, and repaid back the government loans, and are today again thriving, proving that obama's bail out policy was correct.

I was always in favor of it because i understand that, for better or worse, the american economy, and thus the american people, are entirely at the mercy of their corporate masters, and, as go the corporate masters, so go the rest of us. they fail, we fail. we had to save them to save ourselves.

and now AIG wants to sue the government, aka we the american people, for charging too much interest on the bail out loans, thus depriving their shareholders of tens of billions of dollars. now, doesn't that just take the cake?

and of course since nearly all shareholders in corporations like AIG are american citizens, if this suit is filed, the AIG shareholders will, in a sense, be suing themselves, since they, as much as the rest of us, are part of the american government.

So, in quick review, giant american corporations go bankrupt, beg for help from government, amid much dissention gets it, recover, and much later decide to sue government for not being generous enough with the terms of said assistance.

I guess the AIG big boys figure that since only the government could save AIG, and nobody else could, the government took advantage of AIG's dependance on the government. Still, whatever happened to good old fashioned gratitude?