AIG Names Names

American International Group named names on Sunday, revealing at long last a lengthy list of payouts it made to its creditors for its catastrophically bad bets—all with Uncle Sam's bailout cash. According to the New York Times, tens of billions were paid out to banks, some that are no longer standing on their own. The list includes names like Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion), Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion), and Wachovia ($1.5 billion). Overseas banks—including Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Barclays, and UBS—were also paid off. They claimed a combined $25.5 billion. It doesn't end there. "In total, A.I.G. named nearly 80 companies and municipalities that benefited most from the Fed rescue, though many more that received smaller payments were left out," the newspaper writes. The Wall Street Journal calculates "that roughly two-thirds of the $173.3 billion in federal aid it received has been paid out to trading partners such as banks and municipalities in the U.S. and abroad."

The stricken insurer, now 80 percent owned by the government, is still facing the wrath of just about everybody not employed there. Sunday's disclosure comes "as AIG was lambasted for about $450 million in bonus payments planned for employees at a business unit that lost $40.5 billion last year," the newspaper adds. The latest critics to vent about the AIG bailout include Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and President Obama's chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers. On Sunday, Summers called AIG's behavior "outrageous," the Financial Times reports. Still, he added, the Obama administration is powerless to stop the bonus payments. Bernanke, during a 60 Minutes interview, displayed a rare moment of emotion, saying, "Of all the events and all of the things we’ve done in the last 18 months, the single one that makes me the angriest, that gives me the most angst, is the intervention with A.I.G.," the NYT reports.

Demand for oil may be plummeting, but the fortunes of the global economy look even more precarious. That's the hardly promising logic OPEC employed at a weekend meeting in Vienna in deciding not to cut oil output, the NYT reports. "While some countries favored a tougher line in order to fill their depleted coffers, OPEC’s biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, found support from other moderate nations that believed the global economy remained vulnerable, and that higher crude prices could jeopardize an eventual recovery," the newspaper writes. Rather than cut levels to stimulate the price of a barrel of oil, the cartel vowed to "comply fully" with earlier agreements to curb crude output. Not surprisingly, the price of oil fell 3 percent in early trading on Monday to below $45 a barrel, Reuters reports from Australia. Sunday's move by OPEC could keep prices at the pump down for a while. "Its a very reasonable decision for OPEC to take at this point, but that means they shouldn't expect to see oil prices at $50 for the foreseeable future," an analyst told Reuters.

Last night provided a frisson of excitement for Federal Reserve watchers with a rare media appearance of the less-spotted Ben Bernanke on CBS' 60 Minutes. The last time a Fed chief gave a TV interview was in 1987, when Alan Greenspan went on Meet the Press, the Washington Post reports. Bernanke's interview allowed him to voice some populist anger against the fat cats of AIG but also to forecast, cautiously: "We’ll see the recession coming to an end probably this year." It also let him portray the normally aloof Fed in a more human, transparent light at a time when America is seething at the backdoor dealings that continue to reward Wall Street execs. "I come from Main Street. ... [T]hat's my background. And I've never been on Wall Street. And I care about Wall Street for one reason and one reason only—because what happens on Wall Street matters to Main Street," Bernanke said. Strong stuff from the Fed but, as the Post points out, Bernanke will be hoping his interview is better received on Wall Street than Greenspan's. In the week after Greenspan's 1987 appearance, the stock market had its largest single-day drop in history.

Many state and city governments are struggling to meet their pension-bill commitments due to the tumbling stock market, the WSJ reports. With investments tumbling, municipalities across the land are faced with implementing huge hikes in employer contributions in order to continue paying public-worker pensions that, in many cases, are guaranteed by law. Pennsylvania state employees' and public teachers' pension funds both have warned that employer contribution rates could surge sevenfold from about 4 percent of payroll to 28 percent, starting in 2012. In New Jersey, meanwhile, the funds shortfall is so acute that lawmakers are considering "a bill that would allow municipalities to defer payment of half their annual pension bill, due April 1, for one year," writes the WSJ. The sobering model for state employees across the nation may be Wisconsin, which adjusts benefits paid based on its pension fund's performance. For the first time in 25 years, "the majority of retirees will receive a benefit reduction," notes the WSJ.

And, finally, Yahoo on Monday will unveil its latest video-entertainment strategy—what the NYT is calling "Take Two." It will not be a Web version of sitcoms, reality TV, or talk shows—all genres the struggling Web giant tried in the past and shelved for one reason or another. "This time, Yahoo’s executives say they have found a sustainable model for making original video online, in part by explicitly not competing with television," the newspaper reports. What does that mean? To take one example, "Instead of producing TV, Yahoo now recaps TV in a daily show called 'Primetime in No Time,' " the newspaper writes. The program has an average audience of 400,000 daily streams, a good number for the Web perhaps but certainly not for TV.