Apparently Goldman was betting on AIG’s demise, and the bet paid off, seemingly perfectly – Tyler explains the details.
Preliminary Goldman Call Observations
Courtesy of Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
In a nutshell – Goldman had bought billions in AIG CDS in the 2004 to 2006 timeframe. Whether this was predicated by their expectation that subprime would blow up, or their very early understanding just how bad things at AIG were, one will never know, especially not the SEC. However, one look at the CDS chart below shows what prevailing levels for AIG’s CDS was in that time frame. As one can see, AIG 5 yr CDS traded in a range of 4 bps to 52.50 bps between October 1, 2004 (only goes back so far) and December 31, 2006. Indicatively 5 yr CDS closed yesterday at a comparable running spread equivalent of 1,942 bps.
Purchasing $10 billion in CDS (roughly in line with what Viniar claims happened) at a hypothetical average price of 25 bps (and realistically much less than that) and rolling that would imply that at today’s AIG 5 yr CDS price of 1,942 bps, the company made roughly $4.7 billion in profit from shorting AIG alone! This would more than make up for the $2.5 billion collateral shortfall (out of $4.4 billion total) GS claims AIG had with Goldman Sachs… If AIG had filed for bankruptcy, and assuming Lehman is any indication, the P&L would have likely hit $6+ billion.
Implicitly, one could say GS was incentivized to see AIG fail. Does that maybe answer some of the questions of why GS allegedly pulled AIG’s collateral and started the avalanche that lead to its bailout? However, a fine point – if AIG had really tanked none of the CDS would be collectible as the entire CDS market would have likely imploded… Thus demonstrating the need for a zombie bank system: not totally dead (systemic collapse) but barely alive to pocket a nice little CDS annuity from daily cash collateral posts as it leaks wider (and taxpayers foot the bill).
Full preliminary conference call transcript here.
