Bloomberg says about AIG:

“The insurer made $18.7 billion in payments tied to swaps in the three weeks after AIG’s Sept. 16 bailout, according to another person familiar with the situation. The largest recipients were Societe Generale SA, which got $4.83 billion, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with $2.97 billion, Deutsche Bank AG with $2.92 billion, Calyon Securities with $1.89 billion and Merrill Lynch & Co. with $1.32 billion, the person said.”

Karl Denninger has a concise wrap up of this on his page.

“The bankers think we are chumps!” says Simon Johnson, Former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Here is the link to a very informative Bill Moyers show.

Gerald Celente of trends research predicted runs on banks will occur in February of this year. I believe that prediction was made in the middle of 2008.

Today we have 4 more banks that have gone under making 13 so far this year. It should be clear to the American public that the biggest banks are insolvent. We will most likely see a lot of banks, store chains, malls, restaurants, etc. closing in the near future.

With deflation it might make sense to hide money in your mattress instead of a failing bank. At least move your money to a local bank that has no CDS, MBS, SIV or other toxic asset exposure. That means out of Citibank or Bank of America for sure.

Then there is the stock market, which is starting to look like the 1930’s. Use of this chart as a guide might be useful:

Politico is reporting that newly installed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner issued new rules Tuesday restricting contacts with lobbyists – and then hired Mark Patterson, who was a registered lobbyist for Goldman Sachs from 2005 until April of 2008, to be his top aide.

I guess we are supposed to think that do as I say not as I do is change to believe in.