"The US government executed an emergency bailout of troubled AIG without sufficient planning, botching its initial $85bn (£50bn) effort to rescue the ailing business and further weakening the multinational insurer's financial position, according to a critical official report into last year's near collapse of the company. An inspector charged with overseeing the treasury's bail-out efforts concludes today that the intervention by the Federal Reserve and the treasury applied such onerous terms on a loan to AIG in September 2008 that it made matters worse. The report also questions a decision to pay out $35bn in collateral to "make whole" all of AIG's counterparties on controversial credit default swaps, suggesting that government officials could have tried harder to squeeze concessions from top banks such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Barclays." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet