SEC considered ‘national security status’ for AIG

We now know that in October 2008, during the last months of the Bush administration as it frantically addressed a financial bubble which it in large measure had caused and contributed to, and in the midst of the 2008 presidential election campaign, lawyers for the NY Federal Reserve Bank advised lawyers for AIG, which was receiving $185 billion from the Treasury and the NY Fed, not to reveal the true identity of certain creditors and not to reveal that some of those creditors had been promised one hundred cents on the dollar. Preferring some creditors over others during a bailout or reorganization or bankruptcy is a violation of federal law. Failing to advise the SEC fully of information required by law to be reported to the SEC is a violation of federal law. We now know that the SEC was in on this deception as well. It now appears that SEC lawyers had contemplated keeping the truth from the public by arguing that the AIG bailout was a matter of national security. This shows that the government thinks it is immune from obeying its own laws, and will not hesitate to commit fraud if it will suit its own purposes. If the facts surrounding the feds bailing out a bank can be kept secret under the guise of national security, then anything can.