Financial Crisis, Bank Bailout | featured news

Four and a half years after insurance giant AIG collapsed, leading to the biggest bailout of the financial crisis, former CEO Hank Greenberg has one message: Don't blame me....

But you know what? The bailout, by the numbers, clearly did work. Not only did it forestall a worldwide financial meltdown, but a Fortune analysis shows that U.S. taxpayers are also coming out ahead on it — by at least $40 billion, and possibly by as much as $100 billion eventually. This is our count for the entire bailout, not just the 3 percent represented by the massively unpopular Troubled Assets Relief Program. Yes, that’s right — TARP is only 3 percent of the bailout, even though it gets 97 percent of the attention.

Banks are finally beginning to lend, the big ones that is. Commercial and industrial lending is up this quarter 0.2% from the third quarter, according to Moody's Analytics. That might not sound like much, but it's the first quarterly increase in two years. This is great, right? After all, if banks are lending more to businesses, they can expand and begin to hire. That's true, but this trend reveals something else: the financial crisis has created an environment where big banks are getting bigger, as the small ones struggle.

The Treasury Department will begin selling off the remaining 2.4 billion shares of Citigroup common stock the government holds as a result of aid provided to the bank during the financial crisis.

The ultimate size will depend on whether Dublin merely tries to shore up and restructure its crippled banks, or whether a larger package is offered to give it more breathing room.

American International Group Inc and the U.S. government agreed on a plan that would see the insurer repay taxpayers fully for bailing it out at the height of the financial crisis.

The Treasury Department said Monday that it plans to sell up to 1.5 billion shares of Citigroup stock, its latest move to unwind the support it provided big banks during the financial crisis....

The department persuaded some big banks to pay more than market estimates to repurchase warrants issued to the government during the financial crisis, suggesting taxpayers could benefit from costly financial-rescue programs.

U.S. stock markets plunged by 4 percent to close at the lowest levels in nearly 12 years, igniting fresh concern over the depth of the financial crisis and where the bear market would find a bottom.