到底是什么力量让AIG腐而不朽？

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had every reason to think he had seen all of AIG's dirty laundry. The government owned 80% of the company, and Geithner had just orchestrated AIG's most recent handout — its fourth, if you are keeping score, for $30 billion on March 2 — to prevent the teetering insurance giant from going over the cliff and taking the rest of the global financial system with it. AIG had already cost the taxpayers some $170 billion, mostly to repair the damage done by one of its units, AIG Financial Products (AIG FP), which last year alone piled up $40 billion in losses related to its dealings in complex mortgage bond derivatives.

财政部长Tim Geithner有充分理由认定，他见识了AIG所有的烂摊子。政府拥有该公司80%的股份，Geithner刚为AIG最近一次花销买了单——这是第四次，如果有心人在记数的话，3月2号花费了300亿美元——以防止这家摇摇欲坠的保险公司跌下悬崖，捎带着把剩下的全球金融系统拉下去做垫背的。AIG已经让纳税人花了差不多1700亿美元，大部分用来填补它的子公司——AIG金融产品公司（AIG FP，仅去年一年就在复杂的抵押债券业务中损失达400亿美元）所带来的损失。

Then Geithner's staff made the discovery that would infuriate nearly everyone in Washington. On March 10, the Secretary learned, 10 days after his staff first got wind of it, that AIG had paid out $165 million in retention bonuses to executives at the unit that compelled the U.S. to bail out the company in the first place. It took Geithner until 7:40 the next night to place what must have been a tense phone call to AIG's newish CEO, Ed Liddy. The bonuses were not tenable; they had to be canceled, he demanded. Liddy, a dollar-a-year man who took over the company after the bonuses had been promised, replied that AIG's lawyers had decided that the contracts could not be broken without even bigger costs to taxpayers. Geithner sent Treasury's lawyers searching for a way out, but they couldn't find one. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.)
Geithner的职工发现此举可能激怒华盛顿的每个人。3月10号，部长大人（在他的职员闻讯十天后）得知，AIG已为公司的巨头们支付了16500万美元的奖金，还强迫政府在第一时间内帮助AIG走出困境。直到第二天晚上7:40，Geithner才不得不给AIG的新任CEO Ed Liddy打了一个电话（肯定是剑拔弩张式的）。奖金是站不住脚的，应该取消，Geithner要求。年薪一美元的Liddy（他在奖金被允诺之后才接手该公司），回话说AIG的律师们认为不能破坏合同。Geithner让财政部的律师们找点法子，结果无功而返。

On the balance sheet of debacles caused by this economic crisis — the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the stock-market swoon, the credit crunch and the ongoing global recession — $165 million is small change. But the revelations of the AIG bonuses, like nothing else, seemed to finally tip the mounting public furor over corporate malpractice into a full-scale rebellion. Yet Geithner, embarrassed for discovering the bonuses so late, plans to dock AIG that much out of the next $30 billion in bailout funding when it is delivered — which amounts to a mere 0.1% of the total AIG has received. Assorted Senators, from New York Democrat Chuck Schumer to Montana Democrat Max Baucus and Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, have proposed a number of tax and legal schemes to snatch back the bonus bucks from AIG FP executives — 73 of whom got payouts of $1 million or more, according to New York State attorney general Andrew Cuomo. (Read "Treasury Learned of AIG Bonuses Earlier Than Claimed.")
在这次经济危机引起的资产负债平衡表上——耗资7000亿美元的不良资产拯救计划（TARP），股市低迷，信用紧缩和全球经济不景气——16500万美元算是个小数目。但是AIG奖金消息的外露触犯了众怒。Geithner为自己的后知后觉而感到尴尬，打算扣除AIG在接下来的救急基金中的份额——才占 AIG所接受总数的0.1%。与之呼应的参议员们，从纽约民主党员Chuck Schumer到蒙大拿民主党员Max Baucus和爱荷华州共和党人Chuck Grassley，提出了一系列税律措施，以从AIG FP的巨头们（根据纽约州检察长Andrew Cuomo称，他们中有73人得到的份额超过100万美元）手里夺回丁点奖金份额。

With all the political theater and populist grandstanding, though, the bigger issue has been obscured. And that is, Just what is AIG doing with the $170 billion? Does the company's strategy, which is to wind down its exposure to toxic assets and sell some of its profitable insurance divisions to help pay off the government debt, stand a good chance of succeeding? And if it does, will the world avert financial Armageddon?
政治威胁，公众不满掩盖了背后更大的问题。那就是，AIG用这1700亿美元干什么了？该公司逐渐减少不良资产曝光，卖掉一些尚有利润的子公司来帮助偿清政府债务的策略为以后发展提供了更好的机遇吗？如果答案是肯定的，那么世界将会避开金融末日宣判吗？

Those questions have taken on greater urgency, since it turns out that AIG has become the banking industry's ATM, essentially passing along $52 billion of TARP money to an array of U.S. and foreign financial institutions — from Goldman Sachs to Switzerland's UBS. Those firms were counterparties to the credit-default swaps (CDSs) that AIG FP sold at least through 2005, and the companies were collecting on the insurance-like derivatives. AIG paid out an additional $43.7 billion to many of the same banks, which were also customers of the securities-lending operation run out of AIG's insurance division. In this case, AIG managed to take a business specifically designed to be low risk, low return and amp it into another dicey venture — with taxpayers on the hook.
这些问题实际上更为紧急，因为事实上AIG已经成了银行的ATM，为一系列美国和外国的金融机构（从高盛集团到瑞士联合银行）支付了TARP中的520 亿美元。这些公司是AIG FP自2005年开始出售的信用违约互换合约 (CDSs) 的合作伙伴，累积了保险衍生产品。AIG为很多相似的银行支付了额外的437亿美元，他们也是AIG保险分公司的证券借贷的顾客。在这种情况下，AIG接手的业务低风险，低回报，也使之陷入了不确定的风险——与纳税人一起走进圈套。
　　
The outrage will pass, and when it does, we're going to have to focus on whether keeping AIG afloat is preventing a sharp recession from becoming a prolonged one. The reason AIG has cost taxpayers $170 billion — and the reason the Obama Administration seemed willing, at least at first, to hold its nose and accede to bonuses for the company's managers — is that it's too big to fail. It's an often heard phrase, but what does it really mean? (See the top 10 financial collapses of 2008.)
愤怒终将平息，当尘埃落定的时候，我们将会聚焦于：维系AIG是否有助于防止骤然的经济低迷演化成长期的颓势不振？AIG已经花费了纳税人1700亿美元 ——这个理由看起来可以让奥巴马政府，至少刚开始的时候，“堵住鼻子”给AIG的经理们奖金——这就是所谓的大而不倒。这个成语经常被听到，但是它的具体意思是什么？

The idea is that in a global economy so tightly linked that problems in the U.S. real estate market can help bring down Icelandic banks and Asian manufacturers, AIG sits at some of the critical switch points. Its failure, so the fear goes, would set off chains of others, rattling around the globe in short order. Although some critics say the fear is overblown and the world economy could absorb the blow, no one seems particularly keen on testing that approach.
在全球经济紧密相连的形势下，美国不动产市场的问题会导致冰岛银行和亚洲厂家的破产。AIG处在关键的转折点上。如果它破产了，可能会引起多米诺骨牌效应。虽然一些评论家认为恐惧被夸大了，世界经济会逐渐复苏，但是没有人敢冒险尝试。