Last month, A.I.G. asked for additional $38 billion in financing on top of the $85 billion it has already received, raising questions, according to the New York Times, “about how a company claiming to be solvent in September could have developed such a big hole by October.”
Here is a crucial part of the answer:
While about $7 billion of its quarterly losses … were connected with the insurance coverage ... a bigger share of the losses, about $18 billion, were incurred because the assets in A.I.G.’s investment portfolio had fallen in value. Of that total amount, losses of a little less than $12 billion were on investments made under A.I.G.’s securities lending program.To understand what is taking place in the financial markets, on top of the theory, one must also know the nitty-gritty of the ways money is made. Only then theory could be deployed to connect the dots. Theorizing alone would not do.
