As I write this, AIG — American International Group — is meeting to consider filing a lawsuit against America for…

That’s right. For bailing it out.

By loaning $182 billion to AIG, back at the start of the Obama administration.

Just so you know, here is what The Astonished Tamale! thinks of that:

As the above video demonstrates, the letters of “American International Group” transpose to spell:

• “An amateur, reptilian crooning.”
• “I’m an ungenial, incorporate rat.”
• “I am unrelenting, paranoiac rot.”
• “Ignorant manipulation career.”
• “Alarming, uncertain operation.”
• “I am a large, incontinent uproar.”
• “Neurotic, ignorant apeman liar.”
• “Alienating, un-American torpor.”
• “un-American rat, reptilian goon.”
• “Reptilian mountain arrogance.”
• “A repugnant, irrational income.”
• “Our ‘nice’, loan-pirating mean rat!”

Please note, the lawsuit already was filed by former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg. The suit originally was dismissed in November by a Federal court, but is still pending in the US Court of Federal Claims. Greenberg now wants the company and its shareholders to join him in the suit and in his appeal.

According to news reports, the company is seriously considering doing exactly that.

Greenberg’s claim is that the Obama administration, in saving the company from bankruptcy, charged too much interest. Now I don’t know the official interest rate, from the standpoint of technical finance. But after the loan was repaid, US taxpayers did make a profit of $22 billion. Is that excessive?

Lemme see … (Hmm. …carry the two …) Okay, that represents a profit of 12 percent. A 12 percent profit over a period of four years. In other words, three percent per year.

Now riddle me this: Do you imagine that YOU can borrow money from AIG at a rate of three percent per year? No, I didn’t think so either. And we certainly couldn’t do it without putting up some sort of collateral, like our home or some other trinket. (Can you say “foreclosure”?)

It appeared, at the time of the bailout, that we the people would lose, if not all of the $182 billion, at least a great deal of it. The deal was a risk that no private entity — certainly not AIG — would have undertaken.

But at a meager investment return of three percent per year, we saved AIG from bankruptcy. Last year alone, AIG stock rose 52 percent, three times the rate of the S&P’s insurance company index.

Gratitude, AIG style. Go figure.