Manhattan Adult Entertainment: What’s Still Hidden In AIG’s Files?
AIG was a pioneer and the world’s top player in the trade of credit default swaps – exotic instruments blamed for fueling the cascade of financial disasters in 2007 and 2008. The company ultimately received four separate federal bailouts and, unlike big banks, is unlikely to pay it all back to taxpayers.
AIG’s financial products division, which handled the swaps, is a “black box, the epicenter” of the financial crisis, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer said in an interview. Given that taxpayers own nearly 80 percent of the company, Spitzer said, the public is entitled to see a decade’s worth of AIG’s e-mail, internal accounting documents and financial models. This information will help prosecutors determine whether AIG employees broke the law, he said.
“It’s the best use of our money,” said Spitzer, who as New York’s attorney general was known as the Sheriff of Wall Street for prosecuting financial titans. Spitzer leveraged his performance as attorney general into the governor’s mansion before resigning in a prostitution scandal in 2008.