The latest trend is Wall Street firms looking to profit from the carcasses of 2008...
The epicenter of 2008 was Lehman, AIG, and Fannie Mae. All three of which were the locus of risk since they backed the trillions of derivatives spawned from subprime.
Whereas Lehman was wound down and no longer exists as a public company. The 2008 government bailouts of AIG and Fannie Mae wiped out the equity holders on paper, but for some reason both companies continued to be listed on the stock exchanges.
Well, as you can imagine, it didn't take long for Wall Street vultures to buy up these discarded stubs and then launch lawsuits in U.S. courts declaring that the government bailout was "illegal". On what basis they could make this claim, only some morally void lawyer could decide; however, suffice to say, both lawsuits made it to court.
SANITY PREVAILS
Fortunately, the one lawsuit was just now settled.
"A federal judge on Tuesday ruled against investors who are trying to collect billions of dollars in profits of government-chartered mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
"During the recent mortgage crisis, the government pumped $187 billion into the troubled companies"
"Investors had hoped lawmakers or the courts would force the government to give up rights to the earnings."
Now, the courts need to kick Hank Greenberg to the curb for having the gall to sue the government over AIG which wouldn't even exist right now were it not for taxpayers.
New Yorker: The AIG Trial is a Comedy:
"That’s three hundred million dollars he wouldn’t have had if Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, then the Fed chairman and the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and Hank Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, had allowed A.I.G. to go belly up."
New Yorker: The AIG Trial is a Comedy:
"That’s three hundred million dollars he wouldn’t have had if Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, then the Fed chairman and the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and Hank Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, had allowed A.I.G. to go belly up."
