"The Confluence" sums up "The Big Takeover" by Matt Taibbi.
"The mathmagical formulas were based on a truthiness that sounds kinda like life insurance. When you buy life insurance you're betting on how long you will live - if you die sooner rather than later you win the bet...Those odds are called "actuarial tables." So what these smooth-talking number crunchers did was they cooked up a "system" and sold it as a sure fire way to beat the odds...The difference is we were gambling with our own money. But AIG wasn't investing in collateralized debt obligations, they were insuring them...So basically AIG bet money it didn't have and lost, and all the bailout money we gave it (and any more that we give it) will go to pay off the bookies. All the controversy over bonuses was misplaced - we're talking BILLIONS of dollars in bad bets, while the bonus issue only concerns MILLIONS of our (not-yet) hard-earned tax dollars." http://tinyurl.com/d2yo5y
