Downgrades and Downfall, the last story in a three-part series on AIG, published today in the Washington Post makes for some great reading between ballgames.
The contracts were flying out of AIG Financial Products. Hardly anyone outside Wall Street had ever heard of credit-default swaps, but by early 2005, investment banks were snapping them up to insure all kinds of deals in case of default, fueling one of the great financial booms in U.S. history.
During twice-monthly conference calls that originated from the company’s headquarters in Wilton, Conn., president Joseph Cassano would listen as marketing executive Alan Frost listed the latest swap transactions for associates in the firm’s offices in London, Paris and Tokyo.
Once a small part of the firm’s business, the increasingly popular contracts had helped boost the company’s profits to record levels. The company’s computer models continued to show only a minute chance that the firm would ever pay out a dime on the contracts, and it turned down deals that didn’t meet its standards. (emphasis added) Continue reading “WaPo – AIG a fulcrum of the global financial crisis”