Remember the surprise announcements that Citigroup and other banks turned profits in January and February? One pseudonymous columnist on Seeking Alpha is convinced he knows why, based on a discussion with an anonymous insider who suggests some rather curious gifting from AIG to counterparty banks.

"Knowing it would need to ask for much more capital from the Treasury imminently, (AIG) decided to throw in the towel, and gifted major bank counter-parties with trades which were egregiously profitable to the banks, and even more egregiously money losing to the U.S. taxpayers, who had to dump more and more cash into AIG, without having the U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disclose the real extent of this, for lack of a better word, fraudulent scam." That explains the surprise profits, Barron's suggests. 

For more:
- here's the item
- here's the Barron's item

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