Quotes of the Day

AIG could have cut a deal and perhaps saved taxpayers billions of dollars.

According to a report produced by a division of bond manager BlackRock in November 2008, AIG would probably have been able to strike settlements that, at least at the time, could have saved the giant troubled insurer, and taxpayers, billions of dollars. Instead, after a few days of harried discussions, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which was orchestrating the government's bailout of AIG — instructed the insurer to pay its counterparties, which included Goldman Sachs and a number of European banks, in full. The BlackRock report is one of many documents recently unearthed by a congressional investigation into the controversial bailout of AIG, which could still cost taxpayers as much as $180 billion.

It's not certain that any of the banks would, at the end of the day, have gone along with any offers from BlackRock, an adviser to the Fed. Nor is it clear whether any deals would have been more profitable for AIG, given the rebound in the credit markets. But what is clear is that the troubled insurer had more room to bargain than it and its government rescuers have let on. AIG and BlackRock declined to comment both on the bond manager's report and AIG's bond-insurance dealings.

The AIG bailout has become one of the most enduring controversies from the financial crisis. On Wednesday, a congressional hearing again probed the moves and possible mistakes the government made when it rescued the insurer. At the center of the hearing, which was held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, were the payments that AIG made to banks that bought credit-default-swap (CDS) bond insurance from the firm. Members of the panel grilled Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in late 2008, as to why he allowed AIG to pay the banks the starting value of the CDS contracts when the bonds had fallen significantly in price. Other mortgage-bond insurers at the time were able to strike deals to tear up similar contracts and pay reduced prices. Some called the AIG payments, funded by the government, a backdoor bailout of Wall Street, in particular Goldman Sachs. Also at issue were the moves the Federal Reserve made to cover up the fact that AIG had paid out the contracts at par, which was the contract's full original amount. "Why shouldn't we ask for your resignation as Secretary of Treasury?" said John Mica, a Republican Representative from Florida.

Geithner replied that he believes that the way he and the Fed devised to get AIG out of its CDS contracts will prove to be the least costly for taxpayers. He said he had no role in hiding facts about what AIG had paid its counterparties or who those counterparties were. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who also testified at the hearing, said he was broadly supportive of the AIG bailout but had no knowledge of any payments that AIG made to particular banks.

"If we had tried to force counterparties to take less than they were entitled, AIG would have collapsed," Geithner told the congressional committee. "There were no better alternatives."

Back in late 2008, though, even at the height of the financial crisis, BlackRock believed AIG could have struck deals with the big banks that would have saved the company money. At issue were the credit-default swaps — essentially bond insurance that would pay out if borrowers didn't — that AIG had sold to a number of large banks and financial firms. Lawyers say there would have been nothing legally wrong with AIG's negotiating to pay some banks less than others on the CDS insurance they had bought from AIG. In fact, since the CDS contracts insured different bonds, it would have been normal for those insurance contracts to be settled at different prices.

"The idea that you had to come to some unified settlement with all of the banks was ridiculous," says Thomas Adams, a lawyer at Paykin Krieg and Adams, LLP, and a former managing director at bond insurer FGIC. "But that seems to be the working logic at the Federal Reserve."

The BlackRock report said that five of the six biggest creditors of AIG's financial-products division would have been willing to end the contracts for less than face value. French bank Société Générale, which was AIG's largest CDS counterparty, for instance, according to Blackrock was willing to unwind the bond insurance its had bought from AIG on its lowest quality bonds for 90 cents on the dollar, or for 10% less than what AIG had originally promised to pay. About 30% of the $16.4 billion in CDS contracts that SocGen had bought from AIG were on bonds rated BBB or worse. A 10% discount on those contracts would have saved AIG $475 million.

Other banks were willing to strike even more generous deals. UBS initially told AIG that it would take collateral worth 35% less than what the insurer owned on 55% of the $4.3 billion in CDS contracts it had sold to the Swiss bank. For the remaining 45%, UBS was willing to allow AIG to pay 10% less than what it had originally promised. Those deals would have saved AIG about $1 billion. AIG later broke off those negotiations, and as with all of its other counterparties, paid UBS in full. BlackRock, in the report, said Goldman Sachs, French bank Calyon and German financial giant Deutsche Bank were also willing to strike deals.

BlackRock, though, stressed that it is unlikely that any of those banks would have been willing to make a "deep concession" on price. Nor is it clear that all of the deals, including those with SocGen or UBS, could have been completed. French regulators pressured SocGen and Calyon not to negotiate with AIG. What's more, BlackRock said that investment bank Merrill Lynch, which had recently agreed to be purchased by Bank of America, was not willing to strike a deal. If AIG had then paid off only Merrill's bond insurance in full, the other banks may have balked on their less-than-full deals.

What's more, the deals the banks wanted to strike with AIG would have involved the insurer and the government giving up their right to reclaim the underlying bonds. Some have argued that would have led to a worse deal for AIG. Instead, the Federal Reserve decided to give AIG the money to pay off the CDS contracts in exchange for the soured bonds. As credit markets have rebounded, those investments, most of which were risky mortgage bonds, have risen in value.

But it's still questionable that the Federal Reserve saved taxpayers money by paying off Goldman and others in exchange for the bonds. The government gave AIG $29.6 billion to pay off the rest of its CDS contracts, acquiring the bonds in the process. Those bonds are now worth $23.5 billion. Either way, Uncle Sam winds up in the red.

"It is very clear that the New York Fed was preoccupied with looking out for the interests of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street," says California Congressman Darrell Issa, a Republican, who questioned Geithner and others on Wednesday. "Given the circumstances and the fact that they were dealing with taxpayer dollars, the Fed had an obligation to try and secure the best deal possible for the taxpayers and instead brokered a deal that helped the rich get richer and then tried to cover it up."

• Stephen Gandel
• In bailing out AIG, the U.S. paid AIG's counterparties more than their securities were worth. New documents reveal that the counterparties might have accepted less