It is events like this that prompted me to include a section entitled I Told You So in the Askewedview.com website.  To wit: only yesterday did I predict that a sizable Goldman Sachs IPO would end its first day at a loss.  Today the Treasury sold 200 million shares (15% of its holdings) of insurer AIG at $29 only to see the stock lose a buck by day’s end.

Goldman’s involvement as an underwriter comes as no surprise given that board member Stephen Freidman, then also serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, negotiated the government’s unprecedented 100-cents-on-the-billion dollar bailout of AIG during the financial crisis of 2008.  Freidman knew much of that money would wind up in Goldman’s coffers, as they were a counter party to many of AIG’s soured bets.  At the same time, the Fed swiftly approved Goldman’s conversion to a bank holding company, doling out a $10 billion capital infusion in the process.  That Freidman contemporaneously bought 50,000 shares of Goldman stock remains one of the most brazen if unpunished acts of financial self-dealing since Joseph Kennedy.