>Which they are doing with money they will borrow from Asia and who knows where, or from the private banks which make the Federal Reserve.
>
>Who cares, if it's a good investment? AIG's core insurance business is fundamentally sound and not based on any sort of bubble. Strip out the silly subprime stuff (that only represented a tiny fraction of AIG business- check it out) and it's a great successful insurance company. "Borrowing" to purchase such an appreciating asset is smart. I wish I could do it. ;-)

But... if it's so good, why the need to bail them out?

>Hey, daylight robbery can take whole day, but not longer.
>
>When industries are privatized, often their value is set on the assumption that a responsible maintenance/reinvestment strategy will be followed as would have occurred were it still in public ownership. Whereas the new owners can increase the value hugely and sell for a bonanza if they can maximize profit by deferring maintenance and not reinvesting. What do you suppose happened? It's a government failure too if it sets value based on assumptions that do not match how human beings behave.

It's a failure of the system in general. The same model, that capitalist owner will see to the welfare of the enterprise and reinvest and think long term, was the theory behind the privatization of all the state and society and employee owned businesses in the countries transitioning back. But it didn't work that way - they mostly wanted to take the money and run. Or they were just the front for the who knows which interests, who aren't the steward capitalists in Adam Smith's sense; they generally don't know where are their assets and don't really care, they want profit and they want it now, before the end of quarter. Most of them should be quartered too.