Financial Crisis Panel Will Probe AIG Bailouts, Says Chair

TPM:

The man who will lead the special congressional effort to probe the causes of the financial crisis says his panel will also consider the government's response to the events of last fall -- including the controversial serial bailouts of AIG.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Phil Angelides, the former California treasurer who was recently named by Congress to chair the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, noted that the statute that created his panel required it to look not just at the financial institutions that failed, but also at those that would have failed but for massive government intervention. That means that "it's going to be hard not to touch on those issues," said Angelides, referring to the various AIG bailouts -- which some have portrayed as disingenuous backdoor efforts to save AIG counterparties like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch from the consequences of their bad bets -- as well as other moves by the government to prevent a wider collapse of the financial sector.

Angelides -- a Democrat who ran in 2006 for California governor and who was appointed by Nancy Pelosi to lead the commission -- identified several broad areas that he expects the commission's work to focus on: the failure of the regulatory system; the financial sector's lending and securitization practices; the actions of the credit rating agencies; and fraud and abuse in the mortgage marketplace.