Deregulating AIG Was a Mistake

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2017/10/11/440570/deregulating-aig-mistake/
"The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), under the direction of Secretary of the Treasury and FSOC Chairman Steven Mnuchin, recently voted to deregulate American International Group (AIG) by removing its designation as a systemically important financial institution (SIFI)—basically declaring that the mega-insurer no longer warrants heightened scrutiny from regulators. The $500 billion international insurance giant received a $182 billion federal bailout during the global financial crisis of 2007 through 2008. While significantly smaller and less complex than it was at the height of the crisis, it is not fundamentally different than it was in 2013 when the FSOC determined that it was systemically important. That is why removing AIG’s SIFI designation—which comes with enhanced oversight and regulation by the Federal Reserve Board—is a serious mistake. The 6-3 vote to deregulate AIG pitted the Obama-era regulators on the FSOC representing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)—all of whom opposed this decision—against four President Donald Trump-appointed FSOC members who were joined by Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen and an independent FSOC member with insurance expertise. The vote to deregulate AIG was even more disturbing, given remarks made by AIG’s new CEO, Brian Duperreault, who said in May, “I didn’t come here to break the company up. I came here to grow it.” One of the many wake-up calls coming out of the global financial crisis was that systemic risks in the financial sector can build up outside of traditional banks. The failure or potential failure of massive, interconnected financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers and AIG demonstrated the need for enhanced regulations and oversight for systemically important, nonbank financial institutions."