Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

What’s going on with AIG?  Just in the past few days the entire country has suddenly become outraged by the fact that much of the federal bailout money going to AIG is being used to pay off its creditors. Creditors, in this case, being people who bought insurance via credit default swaps and are now owed payment either for mortgage-backed securities that have gone bad or for increased collateral requirements caused by AIG’s downgrade from AAA.  And some of these creditors are other banks!  And some of them are even foreign banks!!!

But look.  Last year “counterparty risk” was practically crowned the phrase of the year.  You couldn’t swing a dead copy of the Wall Street Journal without coming across it.  It’s the reason we’re bailing out all these guys in the first place: if a big bank goes bust and stiffs all its creditors, then there’s a chance that they’ll go bust too, and before long you have a cascading series of failures that’s brought down the entire world.  We tried letting Lehman Brothers — a relatively small bank in the grand scheme of things — go under, and all hell broke loose.  That’s why the Fed stepped in a few days later to save AIG.

So why is everyone suddenly acting as if we just discovered yesterday that bailout money is being used to pay off AIG’s counterparties?  And that this is some kind of scandal?  Help me out here.  I’m genuinely confused about why, after six months, this has suddenly become the populist outrage du jour.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate