A key question at the heart of the controversial bailout of AIG is just how much money the government lost. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have worked to keep that number secret and to conceal who was on the winning end.

An unredacted document obtained by the Huffington Post list the damage in detail. Goldman Sachs alone, for instance, got $14 billion in government money for assets worth $6 billion at the time -- a de facto $8 billion subsidy, courtesy of taxpayers.

The truly extraordinary disclosures were that Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner all purported to have had no involvement in one of the most expensive decisions in history -- the decision to pay 100 cents on the dollar to the least deserving of recipients (and who, if Geithner's testimony were to be believed, did not need to receive that largess) -- and the unprincipled and indefensible decision to try to get AIG to cover up that fact and the beneficiaries of that largess.

Readers: Just when it seemed like things could not get any weirder, this story seems to indicate that violating the law or even a sense of reason seems to be the standard way of doing business if it serves the interests of the Wall Street banks and their trade organization the US Federal Reserve. Perhaps it was in the water at Jekyll Island or that the franchise for endless rentier wealth also translates into no crime too flagrant to commit if it is in the name of profit.

(see also http://economics.arawakcity.org/node/370 for a copy of Shelia Bair's Testimony on Jan 14th 2010)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wall Street's chiefs acknowledged taking on "too much risk" and having "choked" on their own cooking, but stopped short of an apology as they sparred with a commission looking into the origins of the financial crisis.

Barack Obama | Natural Disasters

The first public hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission came on Wednesday as the Obama administration readies a plan to recoup taxpayer bailout funds through a special bank fee and lawmakers wrestle with changes to financial regulation.

BEIJING, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A small Chinese power generator on Tuesday rejected demands from a Goldman Sachs unit to pay for nearly $80 million lost on two oil hedging contracts, part of a long-running dispute over how China deals with derivatives losses.

Goldman Sachs (GS.N) was one of the foreign banks, along with Citigroup (C.N), Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), blamed by the state assets watchdog for providing "extremely complicated" and difficult to understand derivatives products. [ID:nPEK242617]

A lawsuit filed against investment bank Goldman Sachs by a shareholder alleges that the company spent more money on corporate bonuses than it earned in 2008. Shareholder Ken Brown's lawsuit is one of two suits filed against the company this week over its controversial decision to hand out billions of dollars in bonuses even after it was accused of playing a central role in the financial collapse of 2008 and receiving $10 billion in direct aid from the US government.

Readers: This is in effect a replay, as in as long as the music is playing, you get up and dance. My expectation is that although Goldman Sachs' double dealing has been exposed in this sort of "arson" for profit scamming, there is much more to be exposed. Remember that the CDSs were explicitly legislated to not be regulated.

Readers: Please, this is generally applicable in many realms not just real estate, financial speculation, contracting, and non-profit organizations. This article connects very well with the Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome article also posted here:
http://economics.arawakcity.org/node/230 Admin

Readers: This is how the confidence game is played beside the outright lies and evasion there are the buzz words and the alphabet soup of misdirection. All were perpetrated under the cover story of that the market did not need to be regulated and the corporate capture of the regulating agencies through the bribing of admiring politicians eager to be corrupted. The banksters are still in control of the "house" so we will continue to lose. It is a guarantee. Admin

In late October 2007, as the financial markets were starting to come