How AIG Became Too Big to Fail

(3 of 3)

Between the CDS and securities-lending fiascoes, AIG still has lots of work to do. Gerry Pasciucco, the new head of AIG FP, is working to whittle down AIG's trading book by $1.1 trillion. Which raises the question, Does he really need those $165 million bonus babies to finish the job? AIG says yes, because they know the trades and the system, but not everyone agrees. "This is an engineering problem," says Rick Bookstaber, a risk expert and the author of A Demon of Our Own Design, which predicted the predicament we're in. "Right now there are probably a million guys out there who can do it."

Related

Special Report

25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis

Photos

The Dangers of Printing Money

Stories

• Treasury Learned of AIG Bonuses Earlier Than Claimed

• The AIG Bonuses: Getting Mad and Getting Even

The Great Clawback
How was AIG able to live so dangerously for so long? In part because for years Washington looked the other way. The company befriended politicians with campaign cash — $9.3 million divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans from 1990 to 2008, the Center for Responsive Politics reported. And it spent more than $70 million to lobby them over the past decade, escaping the kind of regulation that might have prevented the current crisis.

The fact that AIG was in Washington long before the current Administration hasn't spared the Obama team from criticism over the recent bonus payouts. The main target for the opprobrium is Geithner. He still enjoys the confidence of U.S. allies abroad and understands the deeply complicated world of global finance far better than the lawmakers who may soon write new legislation to regulate it. But he has not been a strong public face for a government that needs to project confidence. He has been slow to staff his department, hampering the Administration's ability to react to the crisis — and possibly helping explain Treasury's leaden-footed reaction to the AIG bonuses, which were first reported in January. A former Treasury official blames Geithner for a "strategic hesitation that has really affected the confidence index, not just in the financial marketplace but in the political marketplace." A veteran Washington Democrat was more direct: "He's not a wartime consigliere."

Geithner's backers note that he took over an office that was drowning in crises and has had to address failing banks; impossible-to-price toxic securities; a continuing auto-bailout program; woes at Citigroup, AIG and other financial houses; a housing crisis; and an upcoming G-20 summit all at the same time. Even his detractors admit that the to-do list is the deepest any Treasury boss has faced in 80 years.

Which helps explain why, at least for now, Geithner benefits from a rare bipartisan agreement. Republicans have largely been reluctant to scare away a Treasury chief who has roots in the Bush era and understands their benefactors' core businesses; Democrats are even more reluctant to publicly criticize the President's choice at a moment of economic peril. "I have complete confidence in Tim Geithner and my entire economic team," Barack Obama said. "He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand." Still, a longtime Treasury observer says, "his margin for error has been reduced."

Geithner's failure to reckon quickly with the existence of large retention bonuses for AIG employees in the Financial Products division is perplexing. On Jan. 27, Bloomberg News reported that AIG has offered "about $450 million in retention pay" to the AIG FP staff, a program that AIG confirmed. Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, knew about the bonuses two weeks earlier, on Jan. 15, when he met with Liddy, and the Congressman never kept his displeasure secret. Nor was he alone in raising alarms. In January, Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, called the bonuses a "waste of taxpayer money."

But Geithner, who was overseeing the AIG rescue effort with the Federal Reserve, says he had no idea until March 10 that more bonuses were in the pipeline for AIG FP. The President found out two days later, igniting an internal firestorm of White House indignation as officials scrambled to stem the public-relations damage. And now both the White House and Congress are determined to limit the pay packets of executives of any company that is getting TARP money or other government assistance.

There are proposals in Congress to reverse some of the bonuses through legislation, and Liddy called on executives to spit back half their bonus. Some have done so. The program for 2009 has already been pared. That my placate, for now, Main Street constituents who want to get back at those overpaid Wall Street types.

But, considering the risks still infecting the system, the clawback is pointless. Geithner and Bernanke have way more important things on their plate. Did we mention the economy, with unemployment headed toward 10%? And the upcoming G-20 meeting that has the U.S. and Europe at odds over what to do first — regulate the global economy or stimulate it? Nor will the albatross of AIG be removed from the government's neck anytime soon. Liddy said his goal is to restructure AIG's core businesses into "clearly separate, independent" companies that are "worthy of investor confidence." AIG has "made meaningful progress," but the company is still at the mercy of the economy. In the businesses it wants to keep, like commercial insurance, competitors sense an opportunity to grab market share. For the assets it wants to sell, there are few buyers. What remains is still a huge, vulnerable company.

Lastly, the Obama Administration will need perhaps $750 billion in new funding merely to stabilize U.S. banks, which it hopes will be enough to ease the credit markets, stimulate lending and get the economy moving again. There's no telling what kind of political wrangling will happen over that, but one thing seems certain: if you are an executive of a bank that gets federal money, it wouldn't be a smart idea to count on a bonus.

— With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy, Jay Newton-Small, Michael Scherer, Mark Thompson, Michael Weisskopf and Adam Zagorin / Washington

See pictures of the global financial crisis.

See more TIME stories on AIG.