Bob Moon: What’s the rush? That’s what investment consultant Chris Whalen was asking today at Institutional Risk Analytics. He says the government seems to be in a hurry to get the word out that it’s aiming to start unloading its $49 billion in AIG shares within the coming year. Whalen warns the market isn’t ready and won’t support it.<\/p>\n
Chris Whalen: We’re trying to do a public offering of shares in a company that can’t stand by itself, that has to have government support. That’s not going to work.<\/p>\n
Flooding the market with shares, he cautions, is a money-losing proposition. He says it’s the same catch-22 the government faces with General Motors, and has already run up against trying to sell its Citigroup shares. Gauging by AIG’s total market capitalization — the value of all outstanding shares — he argues the idea of taxpayers making all their money back is pie-in-the-sky.<\/p>\n
Whalen: The market cap of this company is single digits. They owe us $100 billion, right? So what the market’s telling you is that the company is worth, today, a tenth of what they owe us.<\/p>\n