Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday defended the government’s rescue of American International Group Inc (AIG.N) in September 2008, saying it was necessary to prevent the country from plunging into a second Great Depression.
Geithner’s comments came in testimony in the trial of a lawsuit brought by Hank Greenberg, a major AIG shareholder until the bailout and the company’s chief executive until 2005. He contends the terms of the government $85 billion loan to AIG cheated its shareholders.
While few legal experts expect Greenberg’s lawsuit to be successful, it has served to reopen a fraught chapter in American economic history and the outcome could shape how regulators respond to future crises.
Greenberg’s lawyer, star litigator David Boies, spent much of Tuesday morning introducing emails Geithner wrote and received that discussed AIG’s deteriorating condition when he served as president of the New York Federal Reserve in the chaotic days around the initial bailout offer.
via Reuters
Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.
Alfonso Esparza
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Latest posts by Alfonso Esparza (see all)
- Market Rally Still Going Low Holiday Volumes Awaiting Start of 2020 - 27 December 2019
- Market Awaits China Retaliation on Trade - 29 November 2019
- Alibaba to Close Order Book Ahead of Huge IPO - 18 November 2019