The Last Belay

Who got the AIG payouts? Reuters reports that a number of large US and foreign banks got $50 billion from the insurance giant.

Where, oh where, did AIG’s bailout billions go? That question may reverberate even louder through the halls of government in the week ahead now that a partial list of beneficiaries has been published.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that about $50 billion of more than $173 billion that the U.S. government has poured into American International Group Inc since last fall has been paid to at least two dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions.

The newspaper reported that some of the banks paid by AIG since the insurer started getting taxpayer funds were: Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, Calyon, Barclays Plc, Rabobank, Danske, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, Bank of America, and Lloyds Banking Group.

From Wikipedia:

In climbing, belaying is the technique of controlling the rope so that a falling climber does not fall very far. While this task is typically assigned to a belayer, self-belaying is also possible as an advanced technical climbing technique. The term belay is also used to mean the place where the belayer is anchored; this would typically be a ledge, but may instead be a hanging belay, where the belayer is suspended from anchors in the rock. …

The person climbing is said to be on belay when one of these belaying methods is being used. Belaying is a critical part of the climbing system. By using a correct belaying method, the belayer can hold the entire weight of the climber by using relatively little force, and can easily arrest even a long fall. By using a mixture of belaying angle and hand-grip on the rope, a climber can be lowered gently by the belayer to a safe point where climbing can be resumed.

And then there’s climbing without belays, like Alexander Huber.

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