Now that Bank of America (BAC), Citi (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC) have extricated themselves from TARP and are basically off the public dole, you might be wondering about that other behemoth known as AIG (AIG), which got into so much trouble in the CDS market. The reverberations from those troubles, you may recall, traveled far, with big implications for AIG among others.

There may not be an imminent payback. The problem at AIG ran deep. CEO Robert Benmosche spoke to the Financial Times and said he was confident about AIG's ability to repay the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, but it will be about two years before anything happens on that front. The government has plowed $80 billion into the insurer-cum-CDS purveyor and currently owns an 80 percent stake. The next immediate hurdle for him is an agreement on salaries and bonuses for 2010. This appears, as of now, to be a losing deal for the government. The GAO last week forecast that taxpayers would lose $30.4 billion on AIG. But that could change over the next few years, if the stock rallies. 

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- here's the article 

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