Summary: It is quite possible that Maurice ‘Hank’ Greenberg could win the lawsuit he filed against the government for bailing out his firm, according to Bloomberg.
It is quite possible that Maurice ‘Hank’ Greenberg could win the lawsuit he filed against the government for bailing out his firm, according to Bloomberg and The Huffington Post.
Greenberg’s firm, AIG, was bailed out by the government as part of its effort to rescue struggling mortgage companies.
Greenberg has been at trial for the past six weeks and is getting closer to victory with his lawyer, David Boies.
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His lawsuit claims that the government bailed out AIG on ‘unfair’ terms. If he wins, Greenberg could leave with $25 billion.
The $25 billion is twice the value of the aid provided through TARP, which was a relief program for mortgage holders in trouble.
The $25 billion is also the same amount of money set aside for housing that has yet to be spent by TARP.
According to Bloomberg, Judge Thomas Wheeler “appears intent on writing an opinion that will guide what regulators are permitted to do in the next financial crisis.”
One of Bloomberg’s legal analysts, Elliott Stein, said that Wheeler “sees a real absence of established precedent about what the government can do. Wheeler planted seeds of doubt about the legality of what the government did, and Boies has been able to water those seeds.”
Greenberg spent almost four decades as the head of AIG prior to leaving his post in 2005.
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