Elizabeth Warren On Fox Business Network

TARP Congressional Oversight Panel Chair Elizabeth Warren told FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Liz Claman and David Asman that FBN’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) victory was a “very important part” of their investigation into AIG and said that the government “crossed a line” with the AIG bailout. Here are the excerpts of the conversation courtesy of Fox Business Network. On documents secured by FBN’s FOIA suit: “FOX News and the congressional oversight panel has pushed, pushed, pushed, for transparency, give us the documents, let us look at everything. Your Freedom of Information Act suit, which ultimately produced 250,000 pages of documentation, was a very important part of our report. We were able to rely on the documents that you pried out for a significant part of our being able to put this report together.” On what would have happened if the government allowed AIG to go bankrupt: “We can’t run the clock both ways. There is a point in which the government needed to do something. We were at the edge of a real abyss, but doing something that says we will throw tax payers under the bus instead of the well to do, those who are already making money- stepping in, in that way imposed a huge cost on us, on our economy, our confidence. We crossed a line with AIG the government has never crossed before.” On the government’s decision to bail out AIG: “Two choices; Either we bailout in full 100 percent government money, pay everybody off, no haircut. Or, watch the economy crash.” On whether taxpayers lost $85 billion without cause: “We have become partners in a business deal with AIG like it or not. And whether we get all our money back or not depends on how well they do.” On who is at fault for the financial crisis: “This company grew in ways that no one understood, expect to say that it seemed to find every regulatory loophole. So that at the end of the day it had created a sort of corporate Frankenstein, the sole purpose of which seemed to be to bring in lots of risk, lots of return, as long as everything worked. Ultimately, as you say, not only to bring down the company, but to risk bringing down the worldwide economy. On any indication whether AIG has been selling credit default swaps on Greek debt? “We don’t have good documentation. But we have not quit yet.” On “double-dipping”: “Problems with conflicts of interest is a sort of under-explored issue and we talking about that within the report. That the same banks, the same investment houses, even the same law firms keep showing up in different positions all the way through us.”