Archive for October 8th, 2008

AIG hits up Fed for more money – Oct. 8, 2008

I don’t know about those claims that the amount of liquidity needed to recreate the market is closer to $5 trillion than $700 billion, but I’m not sure the latter is enough to cover the actual amount of risky, “toxic” assets in all these financial institutions, either.

AIG is asking for this money because they were hit up to give back cash by investors – the original loan from the federal government was to just get them on their feet.  This was like a big right hook immediately after getting up before the count reached 10 on the previous knockdown.  I don’t think that’ll happen with the $700 billion – presumably banks aren’t going to immediately lend to borrowers with bad credit and use inappropriate lending terms in the process all over again.  But, again…is $700 billion enough?

Last night, before I had class, I spent a good 20 minutes wandering around from building to building on campus trying to find a broadcast of the debate.  The servers at cnn.com were overwhelmed and I couldn’t quickly find another online stream.  I tried the business school building in general – believe it or not, I could not find it anywhere.  I realized that I don’t think there is a general lounge anywhere, either.  I think there are areas in which we can lounge, but not a lounge.  

So I tried arts and sciences and they had one small room, packed full.  No good there.  

So then I wandered over to my office, where I thought a wired network connection (the connections at the biz school didn’t seem to want to give me an IP) might help me get onto the CNN servers.  Fortunately, the student lounge here had it on.  It was the Fox News feed, which was kind of funny (though it’s not like they had biased commentary running on a ticker or anything).  I was hanging out in the student lounge with various law students, trying to blend in with them (it’s a fine line when you’re administration with the students and trying not to look like an actual student or mistaken for one).  

I cannot believe how much trouble it was to find a broadcast of the debate on a university campus.