AIG: Billions Dished Out in the Shadows  This is crazy! Forget
the bleating of Rush Limbaugh; the problem is not with the quite
reasonable and, if anything, underfunded stimulus package, which
in any case will be debated long and hard in Congress. The
problem is with what is not being debated: the far more
expensive Wall Street bailout that is being pushed through—as in
the case of the latest AIG rescue—in secret, hurried deal-making
primarily by the unelected secretary of the treasury and the
chairman of the Federal Reserve.  Six months ago, we taxpayers
began bailing out AIG with more than $140 billion, and then it
went and lost $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter, more than any
other company in history had ever lost in one quarter. So
Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke huddled late into the night
last weekend and decided to reward AIG for its startling failure
with 30 billion more of our dollars. Plus, they sweetened the
deal by letting AIG off the hook for interest it had been
obligated to pay on the money